Working from the heart

Remy was standing outside the hospital and just like the first time we met, I felt the pull of his spirit. A spirit who loves endlessly, fully, generously, sometimes addictively...but who is always looking for more opportunities to love. In a situation where he is literally surrounded by insanity I find it amazing that he has found hope and friendship, and is constantly reaching out to those around him in the mental hospital to disconnect them from their minds, and bring them into some aspect of the real world.

This time we met we spent a short time together having coffee; all the baristas know him and he proudly showed me the Costa t-shirt one of the staff has gifted to him! I could see that his heart was back in the game. His head, as ever bright and articulate, is still clouded by confusing circumstances. There is a deep desire within him to find real peace, a direction and a destination, but it is a desire that is aggitated by the numerous practical and medical questions he is facing.

It is clear that it is not my purpose to provide money, a job, a place to stay. I am here because he trusts me, he knows I am writing this and he knows that what I have seen in him is his true self. It is necessary to drop fear, drop agenda, drop personal interest and to just stay open-hearted, offering to listen with love. I hope that what I hear will in some way reflect back at him and he will see it is the same perfect love in play, because in fact, we are no different.

Out of the Blue

The phone rang. I picked it up and it was Remy. My first reaction was slightly shocked.

Over the last few weeks he has come to mind often. I have questioned what unity really is if I couldn't find a way to connect with this man, but I have also known that I couldn't reach out to someone who was being threatening. You might remember, he had suggested that people I knew might also be involved in the conspiracy against him and that as a private spy, I could bring them to settle with him over the £millions he felt he was owed.

Well, he has since undergone cognitive behavioural therapy and rang to apologise. He rang to apologise for his anger, for the endless conspiracy theories he had insisted were true. Whilst he still feels there is an injustice to be righted, the sound in his voice was one of reason, one of practical understanding. He knows how far he has come to face his demons, and that there is further to go, but to have seen even that is quite exceptional.

It is a small miracle that has taken me beyond my small world of frustrations and busyness to connect with someone who's inner work continues to blow me away.

The end of the A line

This is about seeing anger, letting it play its role and letting it go without judgement.

As I listened once again to the angry story of my friend from the street, now in a central London mental hospital, the destructive quality of his repetitive belief in a quite probably fabricated situation came home to me. I stopped him, again, and again, and again.

I know stopping him isn't going to cure the schizophrenia but it is going to disallow it from being what I see in him. As I have said before, I don't see the story, its truths or lies or where its landed him, as being what frames how I came to know this man. I see that it is a shared compassion, a shared connection with something beyond all the ideas. It is a deep calm gentle space, but in order to get to that space anger has a role to play.

It can burn off the illusion, and can quiet the ego; its impact can be forceful enough to fight with what is dark and untrue. This is the anger I am learning about, but I also see that there is an end to any anger, shortly after it has come into play. And in the wake of anger, it is important to reconnect with love and remember the deep calm gentle space that lies beyond it. That is real.

Existence flows

Perhaps I had been a bit naive. A conversation with two medical students revealed the likelihood of Remy, my friend from the street, being paranoid schizophrenic, even if mildly. I had known that it wasn't just his story that had led me to him so hadn't considered fully the implications of his medical condition. However, on reflection following the medics observations and a further call with Remy in the mental hospital he has been sectioned to, I could immediately see the traits of an illness.

The interesting thing is that the love and role of me as a person who he can trust doesn't change as a result. Listening, even when educated as to the illness, is still an incredible remedy to the sound of a disturbed angry and frustrated mind. His exhaustion is clearly linked with the endless energy of creating an imaginary existence, but this flows away when he is actually connecting with someone.

Growing the connection with that which is conscious and not fabricated or governed by external conditions seems incredibly important. We stop travelling away from what is available in the here and now and sink deeply into that which does not change. And the true blessing is that which does not change really is perfect, complete and free, whoever we are and wherever we find ourselves.

Three short discoveries on letting go of fear

Number one: The tears that come

I had sat and told her that I knew that I had so much love to give and it was so easy to offer, but that deep down I was afraid I might love and give all my life and never be fully loved myself.

"Don't be afraid" she told me "of course you have fears, we all do, but that is just what they are, fears. By letting go of each fear you experience, by seeing it and what it is, you don't have to be that fear or be governed by it."

And the tears became a celebration of no longer needing to hold on to that fear, a gift of relief from the heaviest and most deeply carried burden.


Number two: Meandering

Cycling through London it seemed everyone in their cars was swearing and almost crying with the frustration of being a driver in rush hour. I imagined a film in which those awful moments when drivers really lose it, when they assault other road users, when they scream at themselves, were shown. Followed by the statement 'There is another way. Cycle'

Then a cyclist cut up another cyclist and they were swearing and everyone was annoyed at the log jam on the cycle lane. Nobody could see how beautiful the light was as the sun was in the final throws of setting.

So rather than stay on the main roads with everyone speeding to get to their next destination I took a different route. I didn't think about which way I would go or how convenient or fast it would be, I slowed right down and saw beautiful buildings and people walking along, enjoying the slight Autumn chill creeping in. If there is ever the option, if there is ever no real need to rush, we should take the time to let go of what we planned and see what happens!

Number three:

Remy, my friend from the street has called a few times now. Only the anger is getting less strong and he rang today to tell me, he wants his life. A life where he can connect with loving people, by taking care of them, by doing in the world what the people he knows have gone out of their way to destroy him can't. Rather like a candle, he will continue to blow in the wind but he has begun to see himself and the light in himself, and sooner than I think or we think, he could set the world on fire.

Street Connection

On Saturday I had been at lunch on the Southbank in London. I walked back across the bridge and went to the post office to send postcards (even the odd poster!) and as I exited I saw a bright man sitting in a doorway begging for money for a flight back to Canada. I stopped and said: "Tell me your story"

He was, if anything, a story teller. In a much summarised version he says: he is embroiledvery deeply in a conspiracy involving a diamond company and as a result two people called Jack and Sheila are out to kill him. The thing that strikes me in retrospect is that he is wholly caught up in the act of revenge, the anger of the injustice. When I ask what he exposed these two individuals for, why they have destroyed his life, he wheels it back round to the fact they are just bad people who hate and bully and are going to hell.

I don't see the story. I see a bright, beautiful, intelligent capable man who is trapped on the other side of a thick glass wall. He is suffocating himself with the idea of anger. I watch it dance between us and see that all I can do is keep connecting him with the fact that there is something other than this anger. There is an escape route for him, a way away from both the phantoms of his mind and the reality of his homeless situation. It is the present moment. When he connects with it during our 40 minute conversation it causes him deep pain (he cries) but there is also in his eyes a recognition of the light after the darkness. He sees that he could indeed help others move on from substance abuse, that he could just start by volunteering to allow others to be free, that he is in fact totally capable of leaving the situation of the street behind him.

After watching him sit with the light for a little while I left.

He has given me a phone number for him. I messaged him good luck. He called me. He was back in the dark place and again I just listened. This man is so desperate to hold on to the anger that he wants to just rail against it with someone listening. I don't hear that, I hear the man behind and wonder if he will ever find himself.

• I wonder how much these connections really help?
• And how much is possible by offering time in this way?
• How much more might be possible if one could just walk the earth being attached to nothing and only giving what was needed, receiving what was needed, offering it up to the moment?