It’s about time… by Phil Ralph

This year, in September, my partner Fern and I will be teaching a week-long residential course at the Centre for Alternative Technology. Entitled ‘Practicing the Art of Living’, the course will lead up to 12 participants through a cycle of change and transformation, exploring how they might live, work and create differently in this rapidly changing time.

Simply the mere act of writing that paragraph has given me the shivers… of anticipation, of delight, of shock and, above all, of fear. My mind and my ego are now bouncing around inside my head like two competing pinballs, utterly terrified at the prospect of what I am proposing to do. Rising above the cacophony of these two clacking balls is a repeating refrain. A single question, repeated over and over and over and over again –

Who do I think I am?

I never expected to be doing this. To be clear, I never even imagined I would be doing this. I have spent my life assuring myself and anyone who will listen to me that “I’m not a teacher, could never be a teacher, don’t know enough to teach anyone, am superstitious about the whole notion of teaching and what kind of an egotist would I need to be to presume that I had any knowledge that would be valuable enough to others for me to teach it?”

And yet here I am. The course runs from Monday 24th to Saturday 29th September at CAT near Machynlleth in mid-Wales. Bookings are now open.

So, the questions I find myself asking are: why now? And what has changed?

And the answers are: It’s about time. And – everything.

Fern and I have now been together as partners for twenty years. In that time, my life has changed beyond all recognition. When we met in 1998, I was living in London and I was an actor. Today, we are living in the wilds of Wales (well, Llandeilo…) and I am a writer, performer, producer, facilitator and – yes – teacher. How the hell did that happen?

The full answer to that question would undoubtedly exhaust your generous attention span (thank you for reading this, by the way…) so let me give you a brief, two-word precis:

Breakdown. Breakthrough.

There you go. That’s 20 years of change in a nutshell. Simples…

Yeah, you guessed it -  it wasn’t really that easy. I mean, it was that pattern but… it didn’t happen just the once. Nor twice. Nor three times. It happened again. And again. And again. And again. And that was just in the last two minutes.

My (extremely belaboured) point is that change is not easy, it is not painless, and it isn’t simply a one-time thing. It is a seemingly endless process of challenge, loss, grief, depression, disassociation, denial, bargaining and ultimately acceptance that goes on throughout life, day in, day out. It’s a process of reimagining who and what I can be in this lifetime – and then doing it again, and again, and…

Wherever you look in the world, you can find aphorisms and sayings that encourage us to accept that life IS change. And that’s easy to accept when it’s just words. But living it – truly going through the process of having your dreams and expectations churned and chopped and discarded and rejected time and time again – is so much harder to do. In fact, it’s a lifetime’s practice… it’s an art…

One of the key things that enabled me to follow the path of change I have been living through in the past 20 years – apart from sharing my life with the most joyously questing human being it has ever been my privilege to know – has been a gradually burgeoning spiritual practice.

(****** SPIRITUALITY KLAXON ******** HE’S JUST MENTIONED THE ‘S’ WORD!!! EVERYBODY HEAD FOR THE EXITS!!!! WOOP!!! WOOP!!!!)

As you can tell, I’m something of a recovering cynic – as well as being a recovering actor and addict – and my take on spirituality from the cradle was pretty much encapsulated with a sneery shrug and some combination of the words – what, load, a, of, and knackers. But I discovered to my eternal gratitude that cynicism and a closed mind will only get you so far in life and in my case, it got me just as far as a nervous breakdown, physical illness and severe depression. Opening myself up to the notion that there might be “more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” has brought me endless riches – as well as endless challenges and opportunities to learn and grow.

One of the first things I did that began to open my mind was go on a silent meditation retreat at Gaia House in Devon. When I say I went “on a silent meditation retreat” what that actually looked like in practice was booking a place to go on a retreat FOR THREE YEARS RUNNING AND BOTTLING OUT EVERY SINGLE TIME BECAUSE I WAS ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED before finally managing to pluck up the courage to spend a week in silence with other human beings, sitting on a cushion and letting my mind shout at me day and night. And once I finally got there, how was it? Well… 

When you see images of people meditating, they always look so blissful and calm, don’t they? And that is part of it, sure. For maybe one minute every five hours, if you’re lucky… The rest of the time the images should arguably look like the people are in a war zone, assailed from every side by thought after thought after thought… 

But, eventually, after time had slowed to a crawl and my senses had become refined and retuned and I began to watch my thoughts as one might watch the clouds passing across the sky – eventually, by the end of the week I had discovered something truly revolutionary. Ready?

I am not my mind.

God, what a relief, eh? From that point on there was no stopping me. Change and transformation here I come!!! Toot toot!!!

No, not really… At every stage of change, when I could possibly have resisted, you can be damn sure I resisted. I fought and kicked and screamed against letting go of any of the assumptions and desires I had in place for what I thought my life should be. I insisted that I would change no more. But life, as it so often does, had other plans. And, like it or lump it, change I would and change I must.

Now, some seven years after my first retreat, the list of things I do and have done that I could never possibly have imagined seems endless: I have a daily practice of sitting meditation; I have sat in more circles of total strangers undergoing profound spiritual and psychological distress than I could ever have imagined; I have undertaken a vision quest where I went alone into the wilds of north wales with nothing but minimal shelter and water to sustain me;  I have assisted others who have undertaken the same process; I have facilitated transformative gatherings, workshops, and walks; I have co-produced and directed with Fern a documentary series about the unique and wonderful spiritual activist, Satish Kumar; and I have trained as a Warrior for the Human Spirit with my teacher, Margaret Wheatley, and this year I will be stepping up to assist her in training others.

So, as you can see, when I say that everything has changed, I’m not even vaguely exaggerating.

So, why now? Why is it ‘about time’?

I’m 46 years old as I write this at the end of January 2018. I will be 47 in about eight weeks. On a personal level, I’m running out of time. Now, I know that the voice in your head that insists that you won’t ever die has balked at what I just wrote, but the absolute, ineluctable truth of it is I have less time ahead of me than there is behind me. Someday soon – terrifyingly soon – I will die. And I am absolutely certain that I want to be of service while I’m still here and offer some of the hard-won wisdom I have learnt to others.

I could spend the rest of my life asking the question ‘who do I think I am?’ I suspect we all could. Who do I think I am to teach, to guide, to speak, to stand up, to lead, to be generous, to think I have something to offer, to imagine I am talented, valuable, can be of service….? And the only answer to that I can offer is simple –

Who do I think I am? No-one. Just a human being. Alive for now, able and willing to serve for now. Curious, passionate, questing, failing, falling, laughing, crying. A human being. 

Time to get past that question then… That’s the personal level. So, why is it ‘about time’ on the global level?

I don’t really need to tell you, do I? You’re alive too. You know what’s going on, even if you do everything you can to protect yourself from it. None of us know what the future holds – for our species or the planet – but based on where we are right now, today, it doesn’t look good. At all. In fact, it looks really, really bad. And I could bed deep into my old friend, cynicism, and say that I’m alright and screw everyone else and the sky isn’t falling and why do I need to change and grow and share and love… I could do that. But I refer you to the paragraph above where I talked about the fact that I’m running out of time. We all are. Fast. Time to put up or shut up.

So, inspired and nurtured as I have been for the last 20 years by the love and awesome curiosity of my partner Fern, I’ve decided that it’s about time… It’s about time I offer whatever talents and learning I have in the service of others. It’s about time I set aside my fragile ego and my fear of failure and share my life’s learnings for the betterment of all. It’s about time that I accepted that being a teacher doesn’t mean I have to know everything or be everything. Quite the reverse. As I look around the world right now, the scariest, most dangerous people I see are the ones who claim they do know everything… And the most profound and valuable teachers are their opposites. The ones who have walked the path ahead of us and with deep humility and a sense of their own unimportance, share what they know in the hope it will be of service.

What I now know to be true to my very bones is that change is life and life is change. Nothing about that sentence is simple or easy (or grammatically correct…) but it is profoundly and undeniably true. I embrace life and change in all its complexity, beauty and harshness. For however long I have left, I commit to serving life. 

 

It’s about time...

Fern and I hope you will join us at CAT in September.

I will also be teaching a couple of days on 'Changing the Frame: the Science and Art of Communicating for Transition' at Schumacher College in April. The course runs from Monday 19th March to Friday 6th April. Full details available here. 

The Comfort of Community by Philip Ralph

Fern and I have two small dogs. They are called Jaffa and Betty.

We’ve been away for the past five days at various events and workshops and had to find somewhere for the dogs to live since, annoyingly, the world isn’t terribly dog friendly and we can’t take them with us wherever we go. All of our usual dog minding options were full or unavailable and we were beginning to panic when we remembered Canine Comforts near Rhossilli on the Gower near Swansea.

You see, the problem with our dogs is ... (do bear with me, this isn’t all going to be about the dogs, I promise. You might even begin to discern that I’m using them as something of a metaphor later on cause I fancy myself as a bit of a writer) ... that they are a feisty couple of so-and-sos. Both of them are some form of Jack Russell terrier cross and they can be a real handful. Jaffa in particular – and I’m sure she won’t mind me saying this – can find it very trying meeting new dogs. She always has to get right in their face or up their bum, the fur on her back standing to attention, indicating clearly that if the new dog doesn’t back down pronto then things could get a bit growly and bitey. Canine Comforts, unlike most dog kennels, houses dogs together in one big pack – they sleep together at night and run about together during the day. So, it was with a due sense of trepidation that I delivered the two dogs there last Wednesday night...

How did they get on? That’s where the metaphor bit comes in and also the dramatic suspense. Now, don’t just skip to the end to find out if they survived or managed not to rip their pack mates limb from tiny limb. There’s method in my madness. Read on to find out more...

While the dogs were enjoying Canine Comforts, I headed to London to meet up with Fern at the launch of our friend Lucy Neal’s new book, Playing for Time. 

Lucy, former director of the LIFT Festival, co-creator of Case For Optimism and stalwart of Transition Tooting, has been a lynchpin for us here at Emergence over the last five years. She spoke at the second Emergence conference in Swansea; was at the heart of the planning and delivery of the first Land Journey and Summit at CAT nearMachynlleth in 2012; and facilitated and walked the Gower Way as part of the Walk That Reconnects last September. She’s been working on Playing for Time for the past two years. I won’t say too much about it here since Fern is going to blog all about it next week but, suffice it to say, if you’ve found your way to this blog and are even a tiny bit interested in the arts and sustainability, then you need to read this book.

The launch event was held on Thursday night at the beautiful Free Word centre in Clerkenwell. The many collaborators and artists who had co-created the book alongside Lucy had been there all day together, celebrating and marking their achievement, before a larger launch event in the evening to which I was invited.

Here’s the thing though – I was really terrified about going...

I’m 44 years old. I look like an all-in wrestler. People scare me.

To be more specific, large groups of people gathered together at social events scare me...

And small groups, to be honest...

In fact, ANY group of people, no matter what size, gathered together socially gives me the almighty collywobbles. The jitters. The heebie jeebies. You get the idea...

This is a bit of a bind since I’m really committed to the idea of community and recognise it to be crucial to the whole movement surrounding the changes we need to make to create a liveable planet for future generations. It’s the separation we feel from each other, the suspicion we feel about each other, the doubt and fear, that leads us to attack each other and to jealously guard – and waste – valuable resources. We literally need each other to survive.

But, as I said in my last blog, I don’t like change. I like staying firmly in my comfort zone and what that means to me usually revolves around being on the other side of a closed door from most of the people in the world (and eating a pastry based food item whilst watching a DVD boxset...).  But, recognising that my need to stay in my comfort zone has lead me to a much smaller, sadder life in the past, I know that I have to bite the bullet, put down the pasty, and get out there and be with people. And, of course, whenever I do, I discover that people are, by and large, bloody lovely. And indeed so they proved to be at the launch of Lucy’s book.

In fact, I’d go further and say that it was a room chock full of some of the bloody loveliest people one could ever hope to meet. Passionate people. Engaged people. Committed, dedicated, creative, funny, enlightened and inspirational people. Everywhere I looked. 

And therein lay another problem for me...

“What the hell” – I couldn’t stop myself from asking in a slightly Sex & The City type way – “am I doing here?” Because I may do some work with Emergence and I may feel passionate about these issues but I’ve never walked the walk and talked the talk like the people around me that night. These people aren’t waiting for a politician to tell them it’s okay to go and make connected, relational, valuable, useful art that connects and inspires their communities. They’re just doing it. And as the evening went on, my feelings of inadequacy faded away to be replaced by something much more useful. I realised that these people around me – the ones I was so afraid of – were my community. I stopped feeling inadequate and felt inspired instead. If they can do it, then so can I. I came away feeling fired up and engaged and ready to tackle change head on. And I drew that strength from being with people who don’t whinge and moan about the world and do nothing. They act. They do. They make. They create. I want to be in their gang. I want to be part of their community. And, slowly but surely, I think I am.

If that weren’t enough, Fern and I then traveled to Cambridge where we were part of a wonderful weekend called Way of Council and Community, lead by the force of nature that is Pip Bondy. 

Pip has made teaching and sharing Council her life’s work and it shows. Small of stature but huge of heart, her strength, compassion and wisdom are remarkable. Like Lucy’s book, I recommend her and her work to those of you with questing souls and fearless hearts. 

Way of Council is a ceremonial form of deep communication and listening that derives from tribal cultures stretching back thousands of years. It is intuitive, open, heartfelt, passionate, and – you guessed it – utterly terrifying. Pip teaches the practice of sitting together in circle with our fellow humans and really truly speaking and listening from the heart to what serves in that moment. It might sound a bit woolly, yoghurt-weavy and new-agey but, believe me, it’s anything but. It’s primal. It’s grounded. It’s pant-wettingly scary. There’s nowhere to hide, nowhere to run and, try as I might to be funny and frivolous so everyone in the circle would think I was a great guy, the reality of the experience is that I had to tell the truth. And the truth hurts.

The content of the weekend – what we all shared with each other – is confidential, quite rightly. But I can tell you this: I went into a room in Cambridgeshire and met strangers. I was scared, terrified even, and way way WAY out of my comfort zone. And I walked out of that same room two and a half days later – you guessed it  – part of a community. We had spoken from the heart and listened from the heart, we had laughed and we had cried and we had come to know each other not as strangers but as fellow travellers. We had broken down the barriers between us and come to recognise that we are all scared, all lost, all searching, all grieving, all joyful, playful, delighted and thrilled to be human animals in this time and place.

(Okay, park your materialist, First World cynicism and go with it. Believe me, no-one is more surprised than me to be on this journey but I am so very glad that I am. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, my friends...)

After the weekend was over, dazed and not a little confused, Fern and I travelled home and went to collect the dogs. And what did we find? (METAPHOR KLAXON!!!) Our two dogs – and yes, even fiery Jaffa – had, after initial fear and doubt, fallen into deep and warm community with their fellow species mates. They had played together, they had slept together, they had eaten, chased, barked, scrapped and cuddled together. They had broken out of their comfort zones and were a community.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere...

Coda

In recent years I have become fascinated by the etymological derivation of words. The true meanings behind the words we use in everyday life carry great hidden messages for us if we only care to look a bit deeper. Most recently I have been thinking a lot about the words community and comfort. 

As I said above, comfort for me is a solitary experience and I wonder if it may be the same for many people in our solipsistic, materialist culture. But once we push through our comfort zones and fears around other people we are, more often than not, rewarded with a real sense of belonging and warmth. And that’s not surprising since the etymological derivation of ‘Community’ boils down to ‘Together we are one’.

But here’s the kicker and the real life lesson for me from the last few days. The comfort zone I am so scared to leave... the solipsistic, solitary experience of closing my door and sprawling on the sofa with a pasty... the desire to remove myself from the company of others because I feel inadequate or lost or threatened by their company... I think I may have got it all wrong...

Because you see, the etymological derivation of ‘Comfort’ boils down to a really fascinating notion –

'Together we are strong'.

Like my dogs, I’m going to remember that the next time I face meeting strangers. I think it may well make me see things in a new light. I think it might offer me real comfort to continue doing things that scare me in this particularly scary time in human history. I think it might make me feel less alone. And I hope it does for you too.