Jonathan Allday

Spoken in English. Their words, as they said them.

Last four years have been quite a roller coaster for me. It's been a complete change in many ways of who I am and where I am. A lot of my life has been spent very much in the academic world of physics, albeit in teaching. But, I've had a kind of lifelong background interest in these sorts of things, but never really given myself the permission to accept. I've given myself the permission to believe that things that have happened to me throughout my life life are actually real rather than illusory. And that, journey has brought me to to here. It's also brought me to a mindset, which is take on things which are outside your comfort zone. And it's funny, even in, you know, as a teacher, even sitting here in the silence beforehand, I find myself slightly scripting what it is I'm about about to say, trying it out on myself, but I'm just letting whatever happens, happens now, and it very much reminds me of another experience I had, earlier this year, where I was part of a small group who were doing something called a Boehmian dialogue, And it was just a group of people who said something when moved to say it. And I found myself suddenly saying something that I hadn't in any way prescripted, and it came from a very genuine, deep, and actually slightly cathartic place. And I'd go, oh, who said that? It was and it was me. And that, was a very, very important step for me to allow that to come through. So What actually came out of it was a realization that in many ways, I've always doubted who I am and what worth I am, my own personal worth. But in many ways, I'd just rather let go of all of that and just be, rather than, looking for affirmation or being pleased when affirmation just comes across my path, I'd rather just accept and become someone who's just is.

For a lot of my life, I kind of measured myself in terms of academic achievement.

But, that's not been a healthy it's been a stimulation. It's been a a drive, but ultimately not a healthy thing.

It's learning to let go, not just of that measure of worth, but learning to let go of any measure of worth and just be. It's very hard for me. Mistication is universe gives me a whack across the head.

It's allowing things to be simple. I look for great complexity in things and just let them be simple. I've been picked up a meditation practice four years ago, four or five years ago. I've been doing it daily ever since, and tiptoed into it, thinking that there was great technique that you had to learn, or great complexity you had to develop, techniques of meditation. Really and truly, if I progressed, if progress is a weird word to use here, I don't measure, academic measure again coming in. It's just letting go. Just sitting and being. Nothing more. It's very hard for me.

Used to say that my brain hated me. It was just one of those things that I've got a cartoon, which I enjoy, which is like a black room with two speech bubbles, and one of them is good night brain, and the other one is, psst, what disease do you think I have? That's kind of my relationship with my brain. I just always empathize with what Sherlock Holmes said about giving me problems. If you don't have problems, my brain goes wild. That was the way I very much used to be. It's just me. Just me.

I saw a little clip of a film on the Internet the other day. The actress was saying people get married because they want someone to be a witness to their lives.

Otherwise, they go into the dark unnoticed, and I thought there's a profound truth in that. We just want to be witnesses to each other. That you're here, and you're a story You're a story that won't get remembered much beyond another generation or so, but someone was here next to you, a universe witnessing itself.

Someone's something's just said to me the question you want asking is are you happy?

That's a very interesting question.

Hey. Where did that come from? I've learned to trust things like that that drop into your head.

And the the trite answer, you know, you want it to be straight away, yes, of course. There are moments of great happiness, moments of great happiness, which seem to just come unbidden. And there are moments where I just wish there were more moments like that.

Maybe that's just ordinary.

I think it's a complex question that tends to get oversimplified, but that I think that's the question I would wish to be asked, I guess. That's the question I should keep asking myself to allow myself to experience those moments more. Just stop, and are you happy right now? What are you surrounded by? Who are you with? How's the light coming through those trees?

But I think there's a difference between being unhappy and not being happy. I would never say I was unhappy.

But I it's those moments of clarity, joy, connection, being that are so fitful.

The one does not equate to the queen.

Purpose.

Family, exploration, moving forward, following my path, which I never knew was there, but now look back on my life and see there had been a path that's not been a straightforward one, and I sometimes wish it could have been a lot more straightforward than it was, particularly in terms of things like chronic anxiety and that sort of thing, which has punctuated aspects of my life.

Without being trite about it as I look back now and say that those were regrettably necessary steps along the way to where you are now.

So I guess the exploration of where I'm I'm going next is the purpose.

And meaning, the personal meaning comes from that. And I trust and I hope that the universe meaning will come through as a result of that. Maybe.

I'm not sure you'd have heard those words coming out of my last ten years ago.

I'm a symptom of something deeper Try not to procure, try not to address the symptom, look to the the deeper.

It felt at times like a very personal cross to bear, isn't it?

I hope it's gone. I hope, I feel, I believe that it's gone. It feels a little bit like, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous. You're never not.

But it feels like, again, it was a moment of connection with somebody, in a therapeutic context as it happened. But purely by chance, I was led to seek therapeutic help from someone who turned out to be a shaman. And as he put it later to me, one of their roles is to, whenever they see a flame, fan it. And he was racing waiting for the right moment to move on from the purely therapeutic to the more of a spiritual guide role, I guess. And when I presented him with that moment, it was an opportunity for him to give me permission to believe that some of the things that had happened to me earlier in my life, which had been great triggers and causes of anxiety, were actually not illusions, not delusions, not phantoms created out of the anxiety, but were actually deeply meaningful. Mystical events that had happened to me. And maybe the anxiety was, the universe gave me another slap around thinking you haven't dealt with this yet. You haven't dealt with this yet. So, yeah, who knows? There may be be certain aspects that still I haven't dealt with, so I'm not discounting the possibility it will come back, but at the moment it feels like a very long runway.