The Day before Findhorn

It’s the day before I set off to Findhorn for the Centres Gathering, and I thought I’d write a post mainly to make sure that the technology works!

We (me and the kids) arrived in England a couple of days ago, and have been ‘adjusting’ ever since. We are staying with my mum in the house I was born and brought up in. Combined with the jetlag it makes for a very strange experience. Everything is so intensely familiar, yet changed at the same time. I spend my first 18 years here and swore I’d never come back to live, and so far I have been as good as my word.

My family home is in a small village to the north of London, handy for commuting and rural at the same time. It really hasn’t changed all that much, except that many of the old village ‘businesses’ – two of the corner shops, two pubs, the blacksmith at the bottom of the road and one farm – have been converted into housing. I realized last night, as I was trying to get to sleep, how much of my imaginative life is still played out in these surroundings. My best friend from elementary school lived in a big house at the bottom of the road and, half asleep, I wandered through all the rooms of that house and remembered that it had become the backdrop for many of the novels I have read. I hadn’t pieced that together before coming back here.

I’ve included a photo of the street where my mum lives. One thing I really appreciate about it, and what makes it very ‘english’ to me is the mixture of different types and ages of housing.

It is also my first visit back since doing ‘The Journey to Self’ with Maria Gomori last summer. Those of you who know me have probably heard me whining about how I become a teenager again around my family (it’s no coincidence that I have chosen to live most of my life on different continents and in different time zones). Last year I figured that it was time to take a look at some of my family of origin stuff, and who better to do that with than Maria Gomori. What I came to understand was that I had been trying to get a different outcome to the reality of my childhood, and meanwhile everyone else had moved on! I realized it was time to ‘grow up’ and establish an adult relationship with my family. Einstein’s definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result – has a familiar ring about it now! That’s not to say that I haven’t had my teenage moments this trip, and I am also trying to do things differently. Anyway, if you haven’t done a program with Maria, I highly recommend you do!

Tomorrow morning I leave early for Findhorn. I had constructed an elaborate fantasy about catching the overnight sleeper (train) up to Inverness, only to discover it’s so much more expensive than flying that it’s no longer an option. Still trying to get my head around how that makes any kind of sense. I’m excited to go to the Centres Gathering and have no idea what to expect, either of the Gathering or of Findhorn. There are certainly a lot of interesting people going – check out the Findhorn web site for the full list of participants. More tomorrow, after I arrive.