SPIRITUAL MOUNTAINS

timeless, ancient and profound

I once went on a fast/meditation for a week and ended it by climbing Cadair Idris in Wales. On the summit I had that sensation of being able to see the whole earth. It was so high that oxygen was thin, a mind altering thing in itself. Then, on the way down I stopped at a spring, loaded with moss and drank some water. When I continued on, I was accompanied by a swarm of flies, buzzing closely around my head. After an unusually long time (in the life of a fly) I said to the swarm, "Thank you! Off you go now!" and they went away instantly!

Also -

In Spain, I lived on a mountain called Almanzor, which means Big Soul. I meditated a lot when I was there, because my off-grid fruit farm was remote and nobody came up that way to disturb me. I asked God, the Universe and Everything, why He/She/It does not accept the negative aspect of itself to return to be part of the whole. There was a sudden silence among all the birds in the trees, something which does happen from time to time.

It was as if Life itself took a sharp intake of breath and stopped to think.....

I remained still, waiting for several minutes. Then the chatter slowly resumed and I had the sensation that a profound connection was rekindled. I laughed at my ignorant question.

The idea that some part of the Universe or Life itself might be estranged from the whole was a man-made mind construct and had no existence in reality. The negative aspects of life are as much a part of the whole as even the purest chunk of carbon! A log of decaying wood is just as precious as a diamond because the seed or potential of the one was present in the other.

I danced around on the top of a huge multi-million year old white granite boulder, which had been scraped from Britain and dumped there in central Spain by a receding glacier during the last ice age, and I felt such a blood buzzing joy! I had the feeling that time and the Universe, were still very young and "undoubtedly the Universe is unfolding as it should" - to quote the Desiderata.

The south face of Almanzor was a Celtic city, 2,000 years ago. The evidence is easy to see in the hand built terraces and rocky tumble-down cottages and field walls which festoon the valleys around the 42 rivers pouring down to the Spanish plains below. A mere click of the fingers in earth's timeless journey and here was I, a privileged soft and naïve carbon-based lifeform, benefiting from living upon a fertile extinct volcano which had continuously maintained an amazing micro-climate that nurtured and protected a teaming array of life from the north winds and the blazing heat of the summer sun.

I was richer than Solomon, older than Methuselah and younger than a freshly made blood cell - all in the same exhilarating moment. That great love and vision of life on its epic journey has never left me since.

Finally - just one more anecdote -

When my ex-husband was dying of lymphoma, he came from Essex to Dorset to spend his last Christmas with my son and I. The journey pained him terribly, but he never complained. It was something he really wanted to do. We talked about many things and he was worrying about his funeral arrangements.

He asked me to promise that I would not attend the ceremony because his second wife would make a spectacle of me and he did not want that to happen. He said the occasion would be nothing more than an excuse to get drunk and he knew that would not be a comfortable experience for me. To be honest, I was happy to oblige. I don’t require to attend funerals to say goodbye to people I have loved.

He died on 24th May 2013 and the instant it happened I was sitting, writing at my desk, in the bay window of my west facing home. I was suddenly blinded by the sun coming out from behind heavy slate grey clouds and I knew he was gone. Tears fell down my face as the phone rang and my son’s choked voice confirmed that the moment had arrived. The guy I had loved through hell and high water was finally set free from the pain. A wave of relief swept over me.

When the funeral was announced, I immediately made plans to visit Ireland where my ex-husband’s Scottish family had connections. I stayed with some good friends and they helped me to be on the Hill of Uisneach at the precise time of the funeral. It was early in June of 2013 and a clear warm day. I went up to the summit alone and I stood next to the Ail na Míreann ("stone of the divisions"), described as the navel of Ireland.

A cacophony of dog yelps and excited barking greeted me. There were hundreds of canine voices echoing all around me. The sound was increasing in rapture and volume until I called “Hello!” joyfully out loud into the valleys below. Then there was a profound silence, in an instant. All I could hear were crows, the wind and a herd of cows grazing in the field around me. I toured the beautiful art installations on the Hill and was enchanted by its profound beauty and Celtic importance to Irish people. Later, out of curiosity, I tried to find the source of the canine chorus which had greeted me. I looked for a boarding kennel or municipal dog pound. There was nothing but small farms and fields. When I got home I scoured the internet…. nothing.

Mountains and hills….. how inexpressibly profound they are. I am so grateful to them for giving me these and many other deeply moving memories and experiences in this brief life of 25,000+ days.