Cassandra Voices

Tag: Cassandra Voices Society

  • Bullying: It’s You, Not Me

    Bullies can take many shapes, forms, and disguises. It seems a daily occurrence that can be defined as repeated behaviours that are intentional or have malicious intent to cause fear or to instil feelings of superiority in the bully, while also causing anxiety and hopelessness in the victim, due to the bully’s relentless behaviour.

    Northern Ireland, where I grew up, is a hotspot for bullying. It seems to thrive in an environment where tribalistic differences are constantly debated, leading to hostility, sectarian violence, hatred, and ultimately, often, murder.

    When I was a boy, from about the age of six for a few years I was indeed a bully myself. I should add that I have been bullied many times.

    Anyway, I bullied a girl at primary school who had an eating disorder. She used to make large bubbles with her mouth because her stomach was troubled. I mocked her over it, because I was a damaged child and did not know any better. She was thin, wore glasses, and I was a pig-ignorant, angry little boy with blonde hair and blue eyes. It was as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, adults used to say about me once they realised, I was a bully without an emotional processor.

    But I could not understand what I was doing due to poor emotional regulation and underdeveloped emotional skills. One thing was certain: I was damaged.

    I come from a broken home and a troubled, all-encompassing background where violence was often inflicted by a parent or guardian. They were young themselves and did not know any better.

    I was constantly on the defensive. And I remained so for decades. Fight or flight with pounding anxiety, cortisol coursing through my system.

    It is a difficult paradigm to break – the cycle of aggressor abuse and the inflicted aggressions, both verbal and physical.

    I was aggressive and used to demand that other school kids bring in a football to school until two much tougher brothers roughed me up out the front of the school on the grass one afternoon. And the bullied girl’s mother accosted me at the school gates, calling me out, rightly so, but I did not know any better. My bullying was reactive without conscious thought. My prefrontal cortex was not developed. Anyway, that was the end of my primary school bullying career.

    Cottonbro Studio

    Bullying in Adulthood

    There is always an opportunity to make money, poke fun at someone, or treat someone like a lesser human being; and here’s the thing: people definitely do, and try to do it, daily.

    I have watched several TEDx Talks on bullying and other YouTube videos on the topic. There seem to be two types of bullying: implicit and explicit.

    It’s a complex human behaviour to gauge on the social barometer. That is, many people are involved in these actions. It is part of us. Indeed, one wonders which circle of Dante’s Hell houses bullies and what they have awaiting there.

    Is it a deliberate choice or a visceral response to something in their psyche? Sometimes, individuals with damaged self-esteem find it challenging to know how to repair themselves. They have become so deeply traumatised that they cling to what they know, or rather, have become.

    There is the Dark Triad of Personality: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and, in a pitiful corner, Psychopathy, which is quite common in Northern Ireland if you ask me.

    In Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis, he posits that some individuals employ mind games and manipulate others’ emotions to achieve their goals.

    In my teens, a bigger mate bullied me because of his size and skill as a fighter. Needless to say, we are no longer friends.

    A few years ago, he emailed to ask how I was and say that he missed me, or something to that effect. I replied telling him that he had bullied me, and I had dark thoughts about getting revenge on my bullies.

    He emailed back, saying he didn’t believe it, that he, it, the bullying ‘was that bad.’ But he was – he was a bully. He is probably still in denial.

    In some ways, he was a rather unusual character. I believe he was bisexual and concealed it, using aggression as a coping mechanism. He also tried to project an image of being a tough man.

    In Northern Ireland, the projected image of ‘don’t mess with me sunshine’ is all. The knuckle-dragging image of the hard man, the person feared and respected for his reputation as a fighter, is deeply ingrained in the collective, broken Northern Irish psyche.

    Loudmouth

    When I turned eighteen, I was quite the loudmouth, and a young, tough bloke at a local disco bullied me.

    One night, he was waiting outside the disco, itching for a fight, slouched against the wall under the arch of the local hotel. I was walking alone, leaving the disco, and he decided to pick a fight with me. He approached and swung a big, balled-up fist. I took it without ducking, as I was intoxicated – as usual – and he clocked me. Since I was skinnier and therefore fair game, it was on for him.

    He thumped me, and I staggered away. Afterwards, I sat on a low stone wall, and I think I had a bloodied nose – I cannot quite recall, but I do remember putting my jeans in the bath with warm water and salt, which drew the blood out of them.

    On another occasion, I was a bundle of nerves due to anxiety, excessive drug use, and simply not being well. I suffered from cannabis-induced psychosis and alcoholism. When he came over and threatened me I soiled myself. I sat there in the front seat of my mate’s car, let it happen, and wetted my trousers. I didn’t show anything to my friends inside the car, but that’s what occurred. The bully left after realising I wasn’t taking the bait or accepting the challenge of a fight. I was very skinny then, not eating properly, and most likely he would have beaten me to a pulp.

    Years later, I wanted to attack this individual. Full of rage, I was letting him dominate me in a way. I often thought of killing him. Decades of pent-up rage came to the fore in my psyche, and I was not going to lie down and take it anymore. The fact is that he was an ignorant halfwit and would have had little insight into his behaviour.

    Then there was the self-proclaimed ‘Christian’ in a homeless hostel in Belfast. A ‘Baptist’, ‘turn the other cheek?’ They were full of shite. He was, and probably still is, a narcissist who ‘knew better’ than the rest. He bullied me, well, it was institutional abuse, while I was resident in a homeless hostel. He became insanely jealous of the friendly relationship I had with one of the female staff. Getting through that situation over a year severely tested me because I had finally a bit of strength about me then, and I wanted to test that out.

    After that there was bullying, from a verbally abusive, ‘celebrity’ chef, who I worked for. He called me ‘a useless bastard.’ because I didn’t dress a plate of raw salmon to his standard. I informed him that I would not talk to a dog the way he talked to his staff, and I walked away not to return. He was well known as a bully. One day, allegedly, he grabbed one of his smaller trainees by the neck and pinned him up against a fridge. Needless to say, he doesn’t come across as a bully on the television or radio.

    Image: Pietro Lang

    Owning up to my own Failings

    I intentionally bullied a rather large, but chilled out guy with whom I shared a house as he was one of the laziest people I have ever met. He would not lift a finger to keeping the house in shape. He lay in bed all day nursing a hangover, something I had plenty of experience with.

    He was angry with me, but I later apologised and explained I only tried to motivate him when he lay in bed all day. Once I pulled him and his mattress off his bed and took him downstairs, as it was a lovely day outside, and he was lamenting his life while suffering from a hangover. This was his, or rather our norm.

    One day, I made a loud noise behind him in the kitchen, as he didn’t know I was there, which startled him while making a sandwich. He held a steak knife in his hand, turned around, and said: ‘Just you wait, Burnsy. One day I will get you.’

    Bullying also occurs in relationships. They must always be right. They will gaslight you into believing that you are the problem. They play the victim and are rather good at emotional manipulation. They cannot comprehend that a relationship is a collaboration. They call the shots, hold the power, and you must bend to their ways.

    I have been gaslight into believing that I was always the problem. Playing the victim is a form of emotional manipulation. Some cannot comprehend that a relationship is a collaboration. They must call the shots. Bullies rarely change. I work on it.

    Yet, sometimes you have to act aggressively when no other option is working.  Once, back home, a letting agency with questionable ethics, known for rather shoddy practices, failed to answer my calls, refusing to return a deposit of £527.00 owed to me. They dragged their heels and told me one date and then another, and wouldn’t pay.

    The owner has been done for fraud multiple times. It seemed as if the ‘management’ were trying to rip me off for the sheer fun of it. So, I went to their office and told them they had ten minutes to pay me, or I would have to get a bit rough. I got my money back within an hour or so.

    Robert Greene

    Robert Greene on Bullies

    Robert Greene, in his book The 48 Laws of Power, doesn’t explicitly discuss bullying as a primary topic, but he does address behaviours and tactics that are often associated with bullying, particularly in the context of power dynamics and social interactions. He highlights how insecurity and a desire for control can motivate individuals to engage in manipulative and aggressive behaviours towards others.’

    I do not stand for bullying nowadays. Although I wonder whether challenging or confronting a bully is really only a Pyrrhic victory? Or perhaps it’s a way to square the circle of your own trauma. I will leave it the reader to decide. I wrote this piece to confront my own mistakes and bullying behaviours to help build clarity and humility in myself, from now on.

    Feature Image: Mikhail Nilov

  • Teenage Sex for Meth

    Aged sixteen, I started trading sex for meth. There was no discussion about this with the drug dealers. It was understood. To me, this was a natural progression. My stepfather began to gawk at me when my first breast bud appeared, then molested me when I was twelve. Until I left home for college, I suffered his ongoing body comments and threats, which proved him interested in his sexual excitement and not his fatherly duties. Perhaps even worse, the predatory behavior I experienced within my own family created a dangerous foundation that others soon would exploit.

    By thirteen, many adult men would stare and some asked me out. That year, an eighteen-year-old had sex with me on a beach, when I couldn’t find the words to say no. A family friend molested me while I was on the phone with my mother, apparently confident I wouldn’t tell her. He was right as that didn’t occur to me because she never intervened when my stepfather beat me. By sixteen, I’d had sexual encounters with at least six men more than ten years older. They all expressed astonishment at my prowess but otherwise had not referenced the age implications.

    Each traumatic event, including the regular physical attacks at home, propelled me into a search for escape. Within a month of the initial sexual assault, I often consumed alcohol. I added marijuana, then pills, then acid. At sixteen, I found my drug of choice, methamphetamine, and began shooting up at seventeen. I was in full-bore addiction when I graduated high school.

    I had disconnected from my body and emotions long before I used drugs. This strategy helped me endure life in a house of horrors. The chemicals made this technique easier to maintain. As my substance use disorder progressed, so did my promiscuity statistics. I earned the approval of men at the top of the local drug dealer tier because of my sexual skills and attractiveness. If they weren’t available, I’d have sex with almost anyone who filled my spoon with meth, even strangers. With the guys from my hometown, I accommodated them to reinforce the friendship bond or in an unstated exchange for speed. Once a dealer I’d known since childhood suggested I blow him, handed me a half-ounce bag of meth, and told me to take as much as I wanted.

    The “sex and drugs and rock and roll” motto of the day afforded me a bit of cover. But that slogan’s fun aspect didn’t apply. Sometimes these men, even those I categorized as buddies, would become aggressive if I said no to sex. For example, I occasionally slept with the ex-con who first provided me with meth. One afternoon, he tried to convince me to give him oral sex, which I politely refused, since I needed to sleep after a three-day drug run. He pushed my head down repeatedly, trying to force me. I cried and after a while he left. Later, when I ran into him at the bar, he bought me a drink and gave me a speed vial. I interpreted this as an apology. Afterward, I’d hang out with him in a group but never alone.

    This was a rare healthy decision. More typical, I took rides from men I barely knew or went to their apartments to shoot up. The other meth-addicted girls warned me against this. But I didn’t care about the risk, as long as I gained access to the drug I craved. Plus, in addition to the deep drive to consume meth, threatening situations felt familiar and energizing. I often wondered if I’d survive the night but did it anyway.

    And to be pretty provided a rare feeling of power, as short-lived and superficial as it was. At times, my promiscuity caused me to writhe in disappointment with myself. But I shoved aside such thoughts. I wasn’t thrilled when someone mentioned that, behind my back, people said I was a slut, that horrible word society uses to put down women but not their male partners. Still, I didn’t care enough about my reputation to change. In my mind, the greater the number of boys, and especially adults, who desired me, the greater my value. I didn’t appreciate that the validation I sought through promiscuity exacerbated the pain that compelled me to fall even deeper into my addiction.

    So, when I entered recovery for my methamphetamine use disorder, I felt ashamed of my promiscuity. Until, in treatment for post-traumatic stress and anxiety, my counselor pointed out that most of my earliest sexual experiences were crimes against me. This list includes my stepfather’s molestation and sexual threats, the family friend who grabbed my naked breasts, every adult male who had sex with me when I was under the legal age of consent, and each sexual encounter where I complied due to fear.

    Gradually, as a result of hard work in therapy, I came to understand the connection between trauma, addiction, and my actions. I also learned that one-third of abused adolescents develop a substance use disorder by age eighteen. And those, like me, with four childhood traumas or greater, are six times as likely to do so in their lifetime. Similarly, this group is four times more likely to start sexual activity earlier, to become pregnant as a teenager, and to have over fifty sexual partners. While it is true that some women make these choices freely, which is their right, many fall into the behavior for reasons they barely fathom.

    I didn’t have any of this information when I was sleeping around. Gaining this new understanding released the self-condemnation and allowed me to empathize with my younger self. I had made these self-harming and life-threatening choices because all these sexual assaults, and the physical abuse, destroyed any belief that I deserved better or had anything else to offer. Looking back, I even congratulated myself for entering into a monogamous relationship in my early twenties. Because this was long before I began the long slog to heal from my addiction and the emotional scars from my childhood.

    It’s been thirty-one years since I began my recovery journey. During this process, I married my long-term partner, went to law school, and was appointed a federal judge. I also learned to recognize and then address the numerous effects of my trauma history. While I still struggle with anxiety, these episodes are less intense and briefer. Instead of making choices that add to my pain, I now value serenity and contentment.

    Still, I clearly recall how, when I engaged in high-risk activities like sex with strangers, I intermittently would think, “I’ve lost my mind” or “I must not care if I live or die.” This message also came from others, mostly through their horrified expressions when they heard what I’d done.

    What I, and my drug cohorts, should have thought was, “What happened to you that you’re driven to act this way?”

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • The Release of Love

    Todo lo que vemos o nos parece, no es sino un ensueño en un ensueño!
    ‘Everything we see or seem to see is nothing but a dream within a dream’
    – Ruben Dario

    My father was cremated in Dublin, but he belonged to the heat. In Ireland, he carried Nicaragua on his shoulders—low, heavy, as if the land itself rode with him. He spoke in a voice that never lost the edge of elsewhere –somewhere tropical, somewhere distant. He loved it here, but never lost fully his unique Latin American flair, which, as you can imagine, stood out in a place like Dublin. He wasn’t like the other Irish dads. I used to think he sounded like a story half-told. Now I wish I had asked for the remainder of that story. However, when we wish, it is always too late.

    As I stood there, the street, Calle Cuba, was quieter than I remembered it. After many years, I had returned to Central America, my father’s land –  the land of my origins and where half of my blood line lies. I wondered what I was going to do. I was now twenty-five, no longer a child, and no longer accompanied by my mother – or, by my father. Having decided to go back to Nicaragua with a backpack, a grief-stricken heart, and many unanswered questions, I was now present in the liminal space of my father’s past. This was where his roots lie. Where he grew up, worked hard. Where he looked to escape from. This particular neighbourhood in Managua now seemed dusty and desolate, with only the curious eyes of the odd passerby and the noise of distant traffic from the main street. The fragments that remained in my memory from when I saw it last seemed louder– brighter. I had come here when I was twelve years old, too young to know the meaning of what was rooted in this land, or the meaning of what it is to be of mixed nationality. Or the meaning of anything, really. No one at home in Ireland ever talked about this side of my heritage. But dad, he ensured I made the journey with him across the wild Atlantic to see the little house that he was building – for me. He always spoke with a quiet pride about what home was to him, or about relatives that I didn’t know. There were a multitude of them. I knew names and names knew me. But that was about it. Even then I felt like a guest in my own story – always listening intently – yet thinking that the stories seemed too hot, too loud, and too far away.

    Memory plays funnily in soft focus. Sun-drenched and half-formed, Nicaragua, until I returned, lived more in feeling than in reality. Both he and the past were never truly mine to hold. Learning to count to ten in Spanish when I was twelve was the closest I ever got to it. Jumping up the staircase in the family home with a cousin, one step at a time. Uno, dos, tres. The numbers slipped easily off my tongue, like butter. They were always there, but never had the chance to emerge. Little me was so estranged. Happily Irish, but unaware of this other world that ran through my blood. I remembered the mango tree that grew above this unfinished house, and eating the fruit that would drop lazily onto the roof. I would suck the tropical, flesh-like yellow goodness, right down to the seed, and eat it with salt. I recall the noise of the streets and the colourful birds—how alive everything felt. Even the pavement was breathing, or shimmering rather in the hot sun my mother could not handle.

    I remembered the bitter, cacao smell of the coffee plantations we would visit, the sun-lit bamboo, the verdant palm trees and the wild dogs whose bones protruded like knives. I remembered the distant relatives that embraced me with besos and amor. How loved I felt – as the big brown eyed, curly-haired Anita, who had come all the way from Ireland. I felt almost like a prize that my dad had brought to showcase from that far away, capitalistic land in the Western world. And mostly I remembered how, over there, my father was central to it all. The magnet that connected the pieces. His energy was magnetic – too powerful at times – causing friends and family to flock to him. Fast forward sixteen years, and things had changed. He was no longer there to protect me, and the stillness that I felt when I stepped out onto the street reflected exactly that. 

    Rivas, Nicaragua. Image: Fabian Wiktor.

    Perhaps a part of the reason for my going there again amidst a backpacking trip throughout Central America was to gain some sense of closure. I thought that by being in this foreign and mystical land far from home, I would feel a noteworthy connection and something within me would stir. This, I suppose, was ultimately the goal of my trip, having travelled down through Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and finally, five months later, to Nicaragua. When we arrived on a night bus from El Salvador, the air was hot and heavy as everyone unloaded from the van. There were no presents under a tree, no jingle bells, and certainly no partridge in a pear tree. But this is where I chose to spend this Christmas. A year and a half after my father’s funeral, I guessed being there would allow the unresolved within me to resolve itself. Untangle the threads of grief gently full of quiet resolve, like loosening a knot in silk– carefully, slowly, so nothing tears. Perhaps this was all I thought I had left to reach my father again. And when it didn’t, when it wouldn’t budge, I felt the stillness, the nothingness, that comes after death. The quiet whisper in the dark that tells you ‘there are no more chances’. No more years to resolve the distance or work on a relationship that, just maybe, could have been better. I discovered then, that with death comes release. And instead of idealising and imagining the place in my mind from afar, I saw it in its true colours, miles and miles across the rough Atlantic.

     

    I lost him in a physical sense in June of 2023. Though we hadn’t always been close, his absence tore something open in me—something I hadn’t known was holding me together. It felt like I had lost a layer of myself, the kind that only one who has lost a parent can conceive of. Grief quickly arrived as a hole in my heart that I thought could never be filled again. It’s funny how time works, it plays tricks. Now I feel guilty that I am not sad enough. At first, the sadness was all-consuming. Now, it feels insufficient. When I think back to the weeks following his death, the loss seemed unconquerable- almost like an impassable landscape. Tears would come as I drove to work, causing me to pull over. A song would play, and sadness would follow, my mental state undone by a single lyric. I thought then that this hole could never be filled, that this experience, or the dark shadow of it, would shape me forever more. Now I know that, although this hole can never be truly filled, light can filter in. It can come streaming gracefully in hues of gold, through love, people and moments, and slowly allow me to come back together.

     

    I found out he was sick in spring, and he died in summer. The sun was beginning to slip behind the terracotta rooftop of my home in Central Valencia, Spain, when my phone began vibrating. I had finished teaching English for the evening and my feet were outstretched on the terrace, as I took in the honeyed light that makes you forget that the world can be cruel. When the phone rang I picked up right away, delighted to practice my now fluid Spanish with my father.

    He spoke, ‘the doctor says my cancer is terminal, and that I only have months to live’.

    I paused. I questioned. The soft breeze blew.

    ‘What do you mean?’

    ‘The cancer has spread- to my skin, my lungs, all over.’

    I drew in a breath.

    And with that, came the kind of loud silence that hangs, the only kind that follows the word terminal.

    Dublin. Image: Mark Dalton

    Dirty Old Town

    With that I made a return to Ireland, heading straight to my dad’s apartment in a heavy mist, the grey weather cloaking the city like a shroud. It was a stark contrast from sunny Valencia. Dublin was the same as it always was, red brick and grey, the dirty old town I had grown up in. I loved it and hated it at the same time. I sensed that there was a storm coming. The car radio had said so.

    When I arrived at his building, I paused before knocking. He opened the door, and immediately I could see the physical decline. In just a matter of months, the cancer had begun to eat him alive. Inglorious sickness, and soon to be untimely death. Through cigarette smoke, he pulled me into a hug, but the strong and macho man that I knew him to be was fading. He had grown more fragile, and instead of muscle I felt bone. His face had lost some of its colour. It was still my father’s embrace, but it carried the unmistakable weight of what had begun to slip, slip away. The potential to build on our relationship, get closer again – slipping and scattering like sand through open fingers.

    I saw in him, the fading light of a slow dying star.

    In the following weeks, I came to understand that there is no substance to time. Like light or air, it is ever present but cannot be grasped; even if you know it is running out. I also learned that there are limitations to language, and that sometimes more than words are needed to express meaning. Words cannot fill the void which follows such a loss. I did not want to believe that the doctor’s words were real when a fresh afternoon in April brought us to the GP. Sitting in a cold room in the practice in Phibsborough, she repeated the words again: ‘Months, or weeks, to live’. The words were loud, flying off her lips and into my consciousness. My father laughed when she said them, but I saw the pain in his eyes. He didn’t want me to hear them either.

    How can one possibly process this information? Did his life, or what it had been until this moment, flash before his eyes? Did the unfinished house in Managua, far, far away, rise like a mirage in his mind?

    But the doctor didn’t laugh, she was dead serious in fact. She furrowed her brow.

    ‘You’ll need to consider making funeral arrangements’, she said. I didn’t respond, and neither did he.

    Her words hung in the air and we allowed them to sit there for a while.

    Outside, cars whizzed by and people went about their daily lives, chatting about this, that, and the weather.

    The Hospice

    In the months that followed I was consumed by hospice visits, surrounded by illness.

    I was very much alive, and a regular attender in a space filled with dying people. His room was at the back, and had a view over the beautiful garden where flowers were in bloom. Pink hydrangeas, mostly, and potted plants that were scattered all around. On good days, we spent afternoons outside in the sunshine.  I would bring him out in a wheelchair, as by then, walking left him breathless. We sat together in the sunshine and shared cigarettes. It felt like a quiet rebellion on his part. No chemotherapy, no quitting smoking. The killing object between his lips had, perhaps, lost its power to kill. Without saying so, he knew the damage was done. Ordinary instants passed uneventfully as I waited for the world to shift beneath my feet. But the days were normal. We did not speak much about death. In fact, we spoke about everything other than what was actually happening. Denial and avoidance echoed – loud, and strangely comforting. Family came from overseas – Nicaragua and Atlanta – to visit. We took pictures, shared meals, and still, I could not cry. I felt as if I was a character in Dali’s Dreamscape, ever present to witness his melting clock and the unraveling of time. Reality danced and played and all we could do was wait for him to become the photograph on the mantelpiece.

    Salvador Dalí. The Persistence of Memory. 1931.

    They say that people choose their time to die. When it happened I was the only one in the hospice room with him. It was a sunny day in mid June, in St Francis Hospice, Raheny. The head nurse, Anne, an angel complete with white hair and a heart of gold, had called me out of work to say that his condition had grown weaker; he was slipping. I got there as soon as I could, and once I ran into the room, his frail body reached out to me. The flip had officially switched, I was now the strength that my father needed, just as I had, my whole life, needed his. Although he could not speak properly, he saw me. There was still life in his eyes although the rest of him had given up. I think he knew that it was his time. Over the course of an hour or so, nurses came and went from the room. Outside, I could hear the soft clatter of trolleys and the low murmur of them exchanging life updates. They attended to us as they attended to other patients. His condition was notably weaker, but nothing unusual – they still thought he had weeks. Every noise from outside or notification on my phone was a terrifying reminder that time hadn’t stopped. But, to me, it had.

    We were approaching the summer solstice and the clouds outside drifted and resembled white silk on a canvas of deep blue. As the light in the room changed, my dad’s breathing did too—long, deep, and laboured breaths. He was slipping like smoke from a fire no longer burning. My heart racing, I panicked, rang the bell. Anne came to help. I spoke to him, telling him everything would be okay. He looked at me; a helpless look that still haunts me. Anne began to speak, words of comfort and affirmation. Softly she said ‘yes, nice and easy, that’s it, it’s happening’. I just held his hand. He gasped. And gasped again. Looked at me with those shining brown eyes. Fixed his gaze. And suddenly they were glazed. A glazed look that I will never forget. His hand slipped from mine, and went cold. Silence. Anne walked over, gently took his silver bracelet off and placed it on my wrist. The room was still. But of course, it was filled with pain and release. She closed his eyes.

    There is a fine line between life and death, and in that moment I experienced it. I left the room and went into an adjacent one; a reading room overlooking the garden, intended just for visitors. I cried out louder than I ever had before. Everyone around heard me scream. Finally, the emotion had surfaced. The tears had come.

    Or should I say: the release of love.

    There is no proper way to grieve, just as there is no overarching meaning to be found to life. Letting go feels like a betrayal. But perhaps it is essential for the living to stay living, while the dead remain close to our hearts, forever. Just maybe this is how we keep living—carrying our loved ones; not in the past, but in the breath between ordinary moments.

  • The Myth of the Spiritual Contract

    According to Western medical science I suffer from a condition called depression. And from my perspective, I suffer. The conditions of my reality are such that sometimes no matter the environment – with loved ones, by myself, in mediation or not, eating or fasting, sleeping or awake – I feel a sense of dissociation, dread and low energy levels in my body. It comes and it goes and the time it stays can never be predicted. It’s not a comfortable existence.

    Practicing yoga has been a wonderful way to help with depression. Lonely and isolating thoughts can’t intrude when those thoughts have been stilled: yogas chitta vritta nirodha [trans: yoga is the stilling of the movements of the mind].

    When I told a good friend recently that my yoga practice didn’t seem to be helping with the symptoms of my depressions, as it had in the past, she said, “maybe it’s not working? Maybe you should try something else? Like a hobby?”

    My instant reaction was, “how dare you question my practice?” I got defensive. She didn’t understand. She’s not a yogi. These practices are fundamental to my life. Yoga has helped me overcome substance abuse, break ups, a mid-life crisis, and poor work/life balance. What do you mean “it’s not working”?

    Right and Wrong

    As it turns out, she was both right and wrong. She was right: the yoga wasn’t working. She was also wrong: yoga always works.

    My yoga practice wasn’t working because I was expecting it to alleviate my suffering like a drug alleviates the symptoms of disease. I practice and I stop suffering. Like buying a salad at a restaurant. Like purchasing a bicycle. A contract.

    I was offering my dedication and daily practice and expected to receive something (bliss, freedom, insight) in return of equal or greater value. And the harder and longer I practice, the more and more rewards I receive. In this case, I expected to be delivered from my depression in return for my yoga practice: daily meditation, kriya and pranayama, and Japa practices.

    So, my friend was right: yoga wasn’t working because that is not the way yoga works. In a spiritual practice, the investment is the return. The discipline, the devotion, the surrender, these are the practices AND the results. And this includes surrendering any expectation that your suffering will end just because you practice yoga.

    Our daily lives are comprised of contracts or agreements. We aren’t aware of this most of the time. We work to make money. We use money to pay for food and shelter. These are transactional agreements we make many times a day.

    I use money to buy a thing and I expect a thing in return for payment.  The expectation is of something foreseeable with pretty good accuracy: I see an orange, I pay money, I go home with the orange.

    Let’s go further. The dentist says if I brush my teeth, I won’t get cavities. Doctor says If I eat a healthy diet, I’ll avoid heart disease. I shower to keep my body free of germs. I eat to nourish my body. My friend and I agree to meet for lunch at 12:30pm.

    These are what we might call causal agreements: I do one act and expect a certain result or effect in the future in return. The expectation is foreseeable based on past experience and current knowledge with reasonable accuracy: if I brush my teeth, it is reasonable to expect that I will get fewer cavities than if I did not.

    The Wrong Dressing…

    Sometimes the orange you buy isn’t ripe, or the salad you purchase doesn’t have the right dressing. You can bring it back and get a refund or buy another orange or salad. Sometimes no matter how much you brush your teeth, you get a cavity. And sometimes your friend texts you a half hour before lunch to cancels.

    In the manifest world, events are sometimes out of our control and agreements are broken. That’s why we have contracts: to incentivize performance and provide a reasonable expectation of performance in the future. With incentive (cause) the seemingly chaotic world develops a certain stability (effect).

    I was seeing my yoga practice as just another transaction. As with buying an orange, I assume that if I practiced hard and consistently enough, I would see a change in my mood, my health, and my overall happiness would improve. As if there were some sort of Rewards program that grants more freedom and happiness the more we meditate, perform religious rituals, and/or bend ourselves into pretzels.

    This contract is made with our egos, “I” want to avoid suffering so I will practice āsana.  I want to achieve enlightenment so I will meditate every day. If I practice this kriyā long enough I’ll feel refreshed when I am done.

    Spiritual (not religious) work is done internally. By definition, it should always be under our control. So why is there no guarantee that the spiritual work you do today will pay off tomorrow? Because spiritual work is not transactional: if it were, we’d always have a return because we are the only ones that need to perform.

    A refined spiritual practice transcends the ego and the deal-making we engage in with it. Part of that transcendence is letting go of expectations and the ego incentives that feed them. All of the practices and the effects of yoga happen only if I commit totally and let go of “I.” And the practice of letting go of “I” never ends.

    In moments of union or yoga we experience totality. There is no lack. There is no restriction. We are liberated, filled with vast silence. This can last seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months or years depending on the effort involved, if we can let go of the ego and its tendencies.

    And so there is no need for a contract in the first place; there is no lack to be fulfilled. But to do that there must be constant effort and a discipline that becomes devotion. Resistance that arises from conditioning must become love.  So that the act becomes the gift itself in the present instead of something to be had in the future.

    Hunger

    If I am hungry, I need food to satisfy hunger. This is a basic function of the body. As long as the body is alive we must eat to keep it nourished. Hunger will always arise though, and needs to be dealt with (food is but one option, actually). There is no such biological prerequisite for the ego, however.  And yet most of us feel there is, and this is one source of suffering.

    The ego will never be satisfied, no matter how much you feed it. Ego hunger, like actual hunger, will never go away unless we transcend it through practice.

    There is no causal/transactional link between the practice and the state of union or state of “no lack”.  The practice is the state, and the state is the practice.

    Transcendence as a result of practice involves moving past the perceived separation between cause and effect, between past and present, and present and future. A strong spiritual practice never ceases, there is no past and now and future. There is only now. And now. And now. And now.

    We are humans and it is human nature to suffer, to make mistakes, to lie, to steal, to cheat, to hurt others just as it is human nature to tell the truth, give to others, to love and to forgive.

    We have a great capacity for growth as well as destruction. That will never change. The gift of a spiritual practice is not the removal of depression, lying, cheating or suffering from your experience but the transcendence of how you perceive them.

    As long as I perceive my yoga practice as something to be bartered with it will forever be one half of a transaction with my ego, and my suffering will only increase.

    Image: Daniele Idini

    Separateness

    One need not be a Hindu or even a yogi to have a spiritual practice. Many faiths lead to a transcendence of the ego and cause and effect in the material world. Prayer, service, devotion and keen insight require total commitment of your being and isn’t just an intellectual exercise.

    Much of the modern world is based on an intellectual concept – the presumed individuality of existence.  Each of our bodies are a thing with a brain that controls it and heart that sustains it.

    One aspect of this view is actually the contract: by definition, there must be two parties to a contract. So, we view each other as separate and separate ourselves on a daily basis, many times a day. This point of view will always lead to internal and external conflict because conflict requires two parties as well.

    Separateness is one of the great illusions of the modern world. It is a belief that is reinforced again and again. A belief is an intellectual understanding based on assumptions. You see this everywhere. People “believe” in lots of “things.”

    Again, two parties must exist: me and the concept. This is totally different to Faith. Faith is a knowingness, a surrender to what is: that there is no separation.

    In a state of Oneness there is no contract. There is no conflict. It takes discipline to overcome the feeling of separateness created by our conditioning and our ego. That constant discipline is devotion. In that state of constant effort, we are free from the suffering of separateness.

    And so my friend was also wrong. It was the practice which led me to these insights about my condition. All the benefits of a spiritual practice happen now, not sometime in the future as a return on the investment of your practice.

    The promise of yoga IS the sustained practice: be that pranayama, meditation, yamas and niyamas, āsana or puja.  Yes, you may reach an enlightened state sometime in your life.

    Yes, it may happen in the future. Yes, daily practice can make enlightenment more likely to happen. Yes, sometimes your friend cancels and you are disappointed. Yes, sometimes you will feel like you want a spiritual refund. But that’s not the point. A spiritual practice, once started, never ends. It is action, not passively waiting for suffering to end.

  • The Barrington Disconnect

    Winifred Barrington, only daughter of Sir Charles Barrington, led a charmed life – far removed from the political and economic struggles of the general population in the 1920s.

    The Barrington family, who lived in what was then known as Glenstal Castle, were landed gentry and enjoyed the associated trappings. However, they were well respected as decent landlords, good employers and were not blind to the needs of the community.  

    For example, they founded Barrington’s Hospital in Limerick City – with the proviso that it be situated in the working area of the community.

    The inscription on the foundation plaque reads: This hospital was founded and erected by Joseph Barrington and his sons, Matthew, Daniel, Croker and Samuel, for the relief of the poor of their native city A.D. 1829.

    They funded many other community projects, Church of Ireland and Catholic, and in a noble gesture, supplied the site and the building stone for the erection of a new Catholic Church in the nearby village of Murroe.

    On a May afternoon in 1921, Winifred, or Winnie as she was known locally, saddled her favourite white pony and rode across the Limerick border to Newport in Co. Tipperary – accompanied, on bicycle, by Miss Coverdale – who was a house guest at Glenstal.

    On arrival in Newport, Winnie and Miss Coverdale parked their respective modes of transport and climbed aboard a military vehicle for the final leg of their fishing trip to the Mulcair River at Cimalta House, near Killascully – a few miles from Newport. They were joined in the vehicle by Major Gabbett, who was a friend of the Barrington family, Lieutenant Trengrouse and District Inspector Harry Biggs.

    Winifred (Winnie) Barrington.

    D.I. Biggs, who was stationed in Newport, was ruthless in the pursuit of his duties and employed some bizarre tactics in hunting down the Volunteers. On one occasion, after morning Mass in the village of Silvermines, he rounded up the congregation and insisted they sing ‘God Save the King’ while shots were fired over their heads. As a result of all this, he was a marked man and a prime target for the Volunteers.

    Following the fishing, and after some tea and pleasantries, the party decided to make their way back to Newport. However, their journey came to a sudden and sad finale when their vehicle was ambushed at Coolboreen. When the dust settled and the firing ceased, D.I. Biggs lay dead on the road and Winnie Barrington, who had been a front seat passenger, lay fatally wounded in the ditch.

    There were few tears shed for D.I. Biggs, but there was an enormous outpouring of grief for Winnie. Her warmth and friendliness had endeared her to the local community, and she was not averse to dancing at the crossroads in Abington.

    Her body was laid out in the castle, surrounded by flowers of the fairest and she was buried in the Church of Ireland Cemetery, Abington on Wednesday, May 16, 1921. The inscription on her headstone reads:  “Here lies all that could die of Winifred Frances Barrington, loved and only daughter of Sir Charles Barrington.”

    The tragedy cast an air of sadness over the village of Murroe. Every door remained closed with the blinds firmly shut. The bells of the Catholic Church tolled mournfully until the funeral procession passed out of sight.

    My maternal grandmother would probably have tolled the bells for Winnie’s funeral as she was clerk of the Catholic Church in Murroe – a task that would later pass to my mother. My paternal grandfather and granduncles were members of the North Tipperary IRA unit. To date, I’ve been unable to ascertain if any of them were involved in the ambush.

    The IRA Volunteers in North Tipperary regretted the tragic event, and the condolences of the ambush party were accepted, with quiet dignity, by Winnie’s parents.

    After the truce, the parish priest of Murroe refused to re-inter the bodies of two volunteers who had been killed in action and had been interred elsewhere. On hearing of the impasse, Sir Charles Barrington offered his own grave for the burial, at which point, the priest relented, and the request was granted. When the graves were opened in the church grounds they were decorated with mosses and flowers provided by the gardeners of Glenstal – on the instructions of Sir Charles.

    In 1925, he offered Glenstal Castle to the Irish Free State as an official residence for any future head of state. He was finally saying good-bye to Ireland and his splendid castle. The proposal was given serious consideration, but the Viceregal lodge at Phoenix Park was chosen instead. The Benedictine order of monks later acquired the castle – where it still remains in their good care and is now known as Glenstal Abbey.