An Unmerry Christmas Book.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

Actually, for many, it absolutely ISN’T. I’m not a fan of Christmas; I don’t get starry-eyed and enthusiastic about getting the tree up. I get quite morose about it all. And if life is distinctly unwonderful anyway, the whole Christmas thing is often a way to just rub it in.

Anyway, if you feel anything like I do, you may need an antidote to the sugary, sentimental side to the festive season. I’ve dropped a quid off the price of my own favourite novel, The Bet. Here’s a nicely gloomy extract to whet your appetite.

“In the days after the funerals, Greville worried endlessly about his assistant. The Christmas season seemed indecent with its tinselly colour and insincerity, and the old man’s heart contracted with pity watching the boy decorating the foyer, and to see him arrive every morning on time and go through each day like a man sleepwalking. He watched him working with school children on educational visits, wanted to applaud him for sheer determination when he saw him speaking with a shadow of his old energy. He found him asleep in the midst of the basement chaos, or head pillowed on arms on his desk, or once, sitting on the stairs, resting his head on his knees. Greville touched his shoulder to wake him.

“Sorry,” he said, scrambling to his feet. “I just sat down for a moment because I couldn’t remember what I was going downstairs for.” He stopped a few steps down. “I still can’t.”

“Doesn’t matter, whatever it was. Go and make us some coffee, boy.”

Ashurst turned on the stairs and headed back up to the tiny kitchen, Greville following. He stood behind him while he filled the kettle, washed out the cafetière and mugs.

“Not sleeping, eh?”

“Not much, no. I usually get to sleep around three, if I’m lucky.” He didn’t sound as if he were complaining. “I’m sorry I’ve been dropping off here. I do try not to.”

“Couldn’t sleep for weeks and weeks after my wife died,” Greville said awkwardly. “It does stop in the end, the insomnia.”

The boy didn’t say anything; he’d been very economical with his speech lately, none of the impertinence that Greville had been used to and had grown to enjoy. He made the coffee with almost exaggerated care; Greville had noticed his hands shaking any time he’d actually got him to talk, even a bit. He was stirring the coffee now, slowly, as if he were counting how many times the spoon went round.

“I keep remembering,” he said softly.

“That’s good. That’s important. We all need to remember,” Greville said, putting an awkward arm around him briefly.

“You don’t know what I’m remembering,” Ashurst said, and walked out.

Chloe’s Christmas Presents

I thought I’d entertain you with an excerpt from Square Peg, from the Christmas period.

On New Year’s Day, Cathy’s van pulled up outside their house, and by the time Chloe had got to the door, Cathy was on the doorstep. She looked pinched and blue with cold, her layers of brightly coloured clothes apparently inadequate. She ate a huge bowl of pasta, drank a pint of orange juice, spent an hour and a half in the bath and then went and slept for eighteen hours without stirring once. Chloe was starting to worry that she’d died in there when she finally emerged the following afternoon looking much better but still grey with tiredness.

“I don’t think you’re terribly well,” Chloe said, when her sister’s coughing fit came to an end.

“No, I’m not brilliant. Too much sea air,” Cathy said. “And before you ask, I don’t really smoke. Too expensive. I just have the occasional cig when I can. It’s just been so cold; I haven’t managed to shake this last cold off yet.”

“I got you a Christmas present,” Chloe said.

“Christ, I got you guys presents too,” Cathy said. “I totally forgot yesterday. They’re in the van. I’ll go and get them.”

Cathy was coughing again when she came in again.

“I don’t believe in wrapping paper,” she said, and handed them each a small parcel wrapped in brown paper.

Clifford opened his cautiously; the parcel smelled strongly of seaweed. It was a wooden cross, carved out of driftwood. There was no figure on the cross but there was a beautifully carved crown of thorns where the head of Christ would have been.

“This is beautiful,” he said. “Where on earth did you get it?”

Cathy grinned at him.

“The beach,” she said, and it dawned on him that she had created this cross herself.

“It’s fantastic,” he said.

“Not bad for a few evenings with a pocket knife,” Cathy grudgingly admitted. “Go on Chloe, open yours.”

Chloe unwrapped the paper. Inside was a piece of crystal wound around with silver wire so it could be worn as a pendant. At first she thought the crystal was clear quartz, then she saw that there seemed to be another quartz point inside it. She looked at her sister.

“It’s lovely,” she said. “What is it inside it?”

“Itself,” Cathy said. “It’s what they call phantom quartz. The crystal grows; sometimes it stops growing for thousands of years and then starts again. When it starts again, the original point still shows inside the new point. I think tiny specks of dust show where the first point was. I found it in a gift shop; you know, they often have displays of crystals, lots of them in boxes. If you’re patient enough to go through them all, you can sometimes find unusual ones. I was lucky that time. So then I did the wire myself, so you can wear it as a necklace.”

“It’s fantastic,” Chloe said. “Wait a minute while I get a chain and then I can put it on.”

She ran upstairs to their room and brought down a silver chain and threaded the stone onto that, and fastened the necklace round her throat.

“This is for you,” she said, bringing out a big parcel from behind their rather forlorn Christmas tree.

Cathy undid the paper, smoothing it out as she did so. Chloe had gone to the camping supplies shop and bought the best sleeping bag they had, guaranteed to some unimaginably arctic temperature, and a fleece liner that was easy to wash and quick to dry.

“Cor,” breathed Cathy. “I could go to the Antarctic with this. Ta ever so. You’ve no idea how cold I’ve been lately.”

But Chloe had some idea when she saw Cathy’s existing sleeping bag, the following day when Cathy brought it in to put in the washing machine. It had been an excellent bag once, but that was years ago, and it was probably only any use now as a summer bag. She’d been intrigued by Cathy’s van, when Cathy agreed to show her it. It was very neat and clean, but very sparse. Cathy kept her belongings in a series of boxes that she admitted were actually old army ammunition boxes, which she could stack and fasten down in the back with a network of bungees. Her bed was a rolled up length of foam rubber, tied up during the day with another bungee. There were a number of old army blankets too, folded up and stored in one of the ammo boxes; that was obviously how Cathy hadn’t turned into a human ice lolly one of those freezing nights.

“Brilliant present,” Cathy said, stowing it away. “I get scared during the winter, you know, that one morning I won’t wake up.”

That shook Chloe; she hadn’t thought of such things before.

“I’m better off than many,” Cathy said, seeing Chloe’s look of horror. “I’ve got the van for starters. I’ve slept in the odd doorway in the past, but only once at the dead of winter and I was younger then and not on my own. Being homeless stinks in the winter.”

“You don’t have to be homeless,” Chloe said.

“I’m not. The van is my home,” Cathy said. “And I took you at your word about coming here when I needed to. And you’d even got me the best Christmas present I think I’ve had for more years than I can remember, so I know you did really mean it. But you must know I don’t want to settle down, not when there’s so much I can do. This will make life more comfortable,” and she patted the box with the sleeping bag and liner in it. “And I do appreciate your offer, believe me I do. I thought about you two quite a lot recently. That’s why I made the presents.”

“They’re marvellous,” Chloe said, touching the crystal at her throat. “That cross you did for Clifford, you know you’re really talented. Was it you who painted the van?”

Cathy nodded, and then shut the van door on her tiny home.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“It’s amazing,” Chloe said. “I think it’s lovely. You really are good at art, you know.”

Cathy flushed with pleasure, and then shook her head.

“It’s something I enjoy doing, that’s all,” she said.

“I think you’re brilliant at it,” Chloe said.

There was a brief moment of discomfort between them, until Cathy patted the side of the van, fondly.

“Yeah,” she said. “With this thing, I can never forget where I’ve parked.”

“It’s the first time I’ve ever considered a Transit van as art,” Chloe said. “When we were in Wales in the summer, there was a family turned up at the campsite we were at in two white Transit vans. We called them the White Van Clan, but not where they could hear us. Imagine White Van Man with a family; that was proof positive that the gene pool has a shallow end.”

from Square Peg available in all Amazon stores.

Things of Winter Beauty and Wonder: Advent Day Fifteen

Day Fifteen

Evergreens

On a bright day in winter, a full grown holly tree can seem almost dazzling. Each shiny leaf reflects the light so that the entire tree seems to glitter. It’s no wonder that even without the symbolism, holly and ivy were brought inside during the Christmas festivities during the many centuries before tinsel took the place of more natural decorations. Holly and Ivy were seen as representatives of the two polarities one male, one female.

Mistletoe is a strange thing, a greenly growth amid the sleeping trees. Contrary to popular belief, it grows very rarely on the oak tree (and was therefore much prized by druids if it was found on an oak) but prefers apple trees. As a parasitic plant, it weakens the tree it uses as host, so introduce it to your orchard with caution. Linked to Norse myth, mistletoe was the instrument of death (in the form of a dart) for Baldur the Beautiful, but we associate it now (yawn) with the romantic practice of kissing under it. Traditionally you are meant to remove a single berry for each kiss, but no one ever seems to. The plant is being researched extensively for potential cancer-fighting properties; it has been used in herbal medicine for a long time, though it is actually quite toxic. Like yew (used in medicines for breast cancer) some of these mysterious evergreens contain more than just the symbolism of life and death; they may actually hold the key to them.

Things of Winter Beauty and Wonder: Advent Day Twelve

Day Twelve

Birds in the garden

As winter arrives a variety of migrant birds arrive in Britain; not just the overwintering geese for whom our climate is like a spa holiday compared to their usual honking grounds, but familiar birds like blackbirds, robins and starlings, come from continental Europe and beyond to take advantage of our milder weather and our love of feeding the wild birds. Blackbirds from the continent can be recognised by their brighter yellow beaks. Murmurations of starlings coming to roost make winter evenings spectaculr events. The robins’ song is a challenge to a death match, fighting over good territory.

But it’s a simple and beautiful thing to watch visiting birds feeding on a bird table; after pairing off for breeding, goldfinches and other small birds now group together in flocks. Many will huddle together in great roosts, hidden away in your shrubbery, sharing body heat like minute, temperate penguins.

The robin has featured on British Christmas cards for a long time, but despite folklore linking the robin to Christ on the cross, the reason for their link to Christmas is more prosaic and amusing. Originally the first postal delivery men in this country wore bright red coats, and became known as Robin Redbreasts, and since greetings cards for Christmas were delivered by Robins, it soon became a jokey theme to use the birds on the cards. As a child I remember a book called The Christmas Robin about a little bird who ended up in a house and perched on the top of the tree and sang on Christmas day; the connection has now become so strong that the robin is the quintessential Christmas bird.

Things of Winter Beauty and Wonder: Advent Day Eleven

Day Eleven

Getting greetings from old friends

The traditional Christmas card is a strange thing. I send fewer than I did and often send e-greetings instead, but when ones from old friends pop through the letter box or into my in-box, it gladdens by heart. We made it through another year, more or less. It’s a tiny moment of recognition that our relationship still matters, even though life has been frantic, busy, overwhelming and exhausting.

I see the words on an envelope and my heart lifts when I think, “Oh that’s So-and-so’s handwriting!”. Sometimes there’s a letter, often the round-robin newsletter, but I read with interest. I resolve, next year we’ll try and stay in touch better, and sometimes I do.

Sometimes gifts arrive as well. Because of all sorts of regulations, ones from the USA cannot be fully gift wrapped (in case customs open the parcel) so I am aware of the contents. One much beloved friend has sent me some truly beautiful Christmas ornaments over the years; tree baubles shaped like hedgehogs for example. It brings out the child in me, to open parcels with glee and anticipation. I’ve learned to have a sneaky peek at ones from that friend, because they’re usually items that enhance the home specially at Christmas, so I open those and put them out once the decorations and the tree go up.

There is something magical to realise that someone, somewhere, often continents away, has thought of you, and thought kindly, at this time of year.

Things of Winter Beauty and Wonder: Advent Day Two.

Day Two:

Being safe from the storms.

There’s rain lashing against the windows, pouring in torrents off the roof, and the wind is howling like a banshee, whistling through every crack and crevice. The house is cosy, warm and a haven from the storm. I have sufficient food to last days without needing to go out. I can wrap myself up in a soft blanket and doze quietly, or read, or listen to music or watch television. I am safe from the storms.

Things of Winter Beauty and Wonder: Advent Day One

As a form of gentle preparation for Christmas, I hope to post a short piece daily, either prose, poetry, a picture or possibly a story. They might be deep, they might be light, funny or even shallow (at first glance)

Day One:

Simple things:

Little oranges, easy-peelers, satsumas, clementines, mandarins.

I’ve never been able to peel oranges. Each time I try, it separates nail from nail bed and I end up with sore fingers. But the little citrus fruits that appear in the shops during late November and into December are a boon. Each perfect sphere is filled with zest and juice and I can actually get into them. The spurt of essential oils fills the room with bright, vibrant scent that up lifts and cheers; the taste, tangy and sharp but sweet and refreshing at the same time. Once so expensive they were the fruit only royalty could afford, I can buy them by the box load and eat five or six at a sitting. Once, when we had a wood-burning stove, I would dry the peel on the step of the stove and the fragrance of toasting orange peel filled the house. In a few days it was dry and brittle but still packed with volatile oils, it acted as a natural fire-lighter when I came to get the fire lit of a winter evening. We take them for granted now, but to find one at the end of a Christmas stocking was a joy to many in the past. There’s usually a huge bowl of them in my living room over the festive season, complete with their deep green leaves, the sheen disappearing as they dry out. An orange is used to symbolise the world in the lovely Christingle services: a red satin ribbon around the middle, a candle in the top and the fruit itself studded with small sweets, raisins and sometimes monkey nuts.

The Journey Home Begins With ‘Sorry’ ~ on reconciliation and relationships

The journey home begins with “Sorry” ~ on reconciliation & relationships

I’m a great procrastinator when it comes to Christmas things. I object to anything remotely Christmas themed until at least advent and I’m seldom in the mood for festive frolics till mid month at the very soonest. This means that the majority of my preparations are crammed into seven to ten days. I count myself ahead if I have managed to get the tree up by the 20^th. The thing I procrastinate the most about is the cards and until this year I wasn’t sure why. Usually I finish them and think, why did I put it off so long?

This year, as we moved in the autumn I needed to do a round robin letter (never done one before) to give our new address and a brief resume of the year. I don’t mind other people’s round robins, even though there’s a general loathing of them that gets expressed through the media (and social media) and apart from one that began, brace yourselves I’ve got leukaemia and went downhill from there, they’re usually nice to read. So equipped with a sheaf of printed letters I opened my address book and found my reason for hesitation.

As I leafed slowly through, I realised it was full of people, not merely names and addresses and some of them were no longer in my life.

Some had passed away. Those made me sad, but I had good memories of them.

Some have drifted away. That’s normal. Not all friendships are forever; they have their moments, a shared experience, and they decline. You have good memories, a smile when you think of them and usually a card at Christmas. Sometimes those are rekindled, and it’s as if nothing has ever happened.

And some are sundered from me.

Not many. I’ve been lucky generally that I don’t make enemies. But in most of our lives there are people who hurt us. Those who can hurt us are generally those we let in, and trust, and care about. And in turn, we too hurt others. Either inadvertently, or deliberately.

I’ve seen a good deal of discussion lately via social media about cutting people out of lives, both from those at the hard end of the cut and those wielding the knife. There’s a school of thought that has it that we should remove from our lives anyone who is seen as being negative or not what we need/want. I’ve heard of people recently who have been told they are being ‘let go’ by friends. It’s horrible, frankly, doubly so at the Christmas season of goodwill. We do not really know what another person has been going through, and to judge someone else as negative and needing weeding out of your life is bad enough, but to tell them so in such terms… To me, that is needlessly cruel and desperately selfish. This year I had two people do it to me.

But when it comes to broken relationships, ones where the hurt still smarts, the last words echo in your memory, even years later, what of those? You may think, their loss. Imagine then you find one day they have died. If you find yourself thinking, I wish I’d…., then perhaps there’s unfinished business left.

Some there is no way back with. You have no idea where they are, or how to find them. These are ones you have to leave in the lap of the gods. I have a few of those,and for those I may have hurt or who have hurt me, I can say simply, “I am sorry. I wish you well in your journey. I am here if you want to talk,” and hope that somehow those words may carry on the wings of quiet hope. There is great, unseen power in such prayerful words. Someone hears them, even if we speak them silently.

But others, we look at their names and we think, they must hate us, they’d never let me back in. It doesn’t matter which side of the hurting you were on, there is fear in an approach, a fear that our overtures will be rejected, opening the wounds again. Perhaps this time of year is the safest. One may send a card, knowing that if they tear it up you will never know. But it may pave the way towards a little dialogue later, the proverbial olive branch.

I do not wish to live in conflict with anyone. I would make my peace with all, and offer my ‘Sorry’ as a hand towards any soul with whom I am not in harmony with. Sorry for my part, for every relationship breakdown has two sides(or more) and no party is completely innocent.

May your Christmas be filled with peace and harmony.

A scent of self ~ on why sensuality is vital to identity

A scent of self ~ on why sensuality is vital to identity

I can tell when Christmas is coming not by the increase in advertising on television but rather by the escalation of my shouts of protests at the content of those adverts. Or for that matter by the degeneration of my vocabulary and my reduction to a spluttering rage. I’ll leave much of the fury alone as it’s the same old frustration at blatant consumerism. I’ve said it before and others have said it better, so the overall feeling of exploitation is worth noting but not exploring. Christmas is so much more than an orgy of consumer spending after all. ‘Nuff said.

But the ads that really frustrate and puzzle me are the fragrance ones. They baffle me. How can you sell a perfume via television or the printed page? Very occasionally I buy glossy magazines; I only do so when there is a free gift attached that is worth more than the magazine. Once in a blue moon a full page ad for a perfume comes with a tiny vial or a sachet. That makes some sense to me. Try before you buy.

If you’ve caught any of the ads they tend to follow various themes and memes. Impossibly beautiful men and women, dressed in exclusive, sky-rocket expensive clothes, glaring arrogantly at the camera from eyes enhanced by every cosmetic trick known to mankind, striding confidently around oozing so much sex appeal that one feels instantly so much less of a man/woman. Crashing waves, glittering diamonds, fashion shoots, high heels, messed up satin sheets, fields of flowers under immense stormy skies. When I am in a good mood, I can admire the artistry. But usually all I can think is, “Huh?? So, what does it smell like??”

Perfume advertising is almost totally divorced from the actual sense of smell. It’s all about image, celebrity endorsement, aspirations and a lot of other things that have no smell at all. The ads are simply there to get you to the store and buy. By the time someone has got that far, become seduced by the brand, there’s a very good chance they’ll buy because they’ve subliminally and subconsciously identified with the iconography of the ads. Unless the perfume smells like horse piss, they will probably buy it anyway.

Perfume is something that is seen as an indulgence by many and I can understand that. Good perfume isn’t cheap. It shouldn’t be, if it’s made from hard to produce essences, and blended by trained and highly skilled ‘noses’. Yet so many wear perfumes they don’t (deep down) like and which don’t enhance their personalities. There’s a concept of a signature scent, something by which you are recognised. I’ve heard of women, daggers-drawn at parties on discovering another woman is wearing ‘her’ scent. A single notable perfume is chosen to define the self. It’s this mentality that aids and abets the marketing machine. What does this fragrance say about a woman? Cue the crashing waves, the sculpted cheekbones and the designer dresses.

It’s clear that a person’s own unique fragrance, that is to say, how they smell without perfumed products, is implicated in the process of sexual attraction. Pheromones are present in our skin, our hair and our secretions (sorry!) and they are probably among the first things that people respond to. It’s an unconscious reaction and often instantaneous. It may even be the most vital ingredient in that phenomenon, Love at first sight; it might well be love at first sniff.

Do you know what you smell like? Could you recognise your own scent? Do you actually like it? Perfume is not about covering up one’s natural scent but rather about enhancing and complimenting it, of deepening that vibrant signature of the self. Like a pen and ink line drawing your natural scent is the bare bones of that identity. Adding to it is like taking a preliminary sketch and filling in the colours. The sensual awareness of the self is a very powerful thing, a part of learning to love oneself perhaps. Being aware of the texture of one’s skin, the feeling of the hair, the grace of movement, are deeper ways of knowing the self than that gaze into the mirror that tells us what we look like but not who we are.

To seek a scent of self is perhaps to also find a sense of self, a dimension that we sometimes lack. If you were to seek a perfume, don’t look for the things the advertisers want to sell you, but rather seek blindly, using other senses. First sniff is the start. Instant recoil, step back and see how it makes you feel. Memories maybe long hidden may be at the root of dislike, but also it may simply be anathema to you, incompatible. Try a few, follow your instincts. Ask yourself: is this perfume ‘me’? Does it fit you? Take your time. Try it all day, try it at different times of day. There may be just one or there may be many. You may love one for years, then one day, it’s no longer you. That’s OK, you’ve changed (and it might also have changed too. Manufacturers do change formulas).

But explore. The soul is a magical, evolving being, and knowing and understanding it may be the key to truly loving the self. And it’s vital we love ourselves, because that’s when we can really start to love others. 

The Scent of Christmas ~ an aromatic meditation

The Scent of Christmas ~ an aromatic meditation

 

The sense of smell is closely connected to the area of the brain that processes emotional memories; sometimes memories are very deeply buried and certain scents can awaken those memories. I am also aware that not all buried memories are good ones, which is why for this meditation I am asking you to think deeply about which aroma you best associate with Christmas time.

Spices are a popular smell at this time of year; for some the powerful scent of cloves, and cinnamon and ginger sum up their aromatic memories of Christmas. For others the crisp clean smell of pine or fir cones and needles is instant Christmas. Others love the scent of baking goods, or roasting turkey. For some chocolate is the best scent of the season. Traditionally the resins of frankincense and myrrh are used as incense and their part in the Christmas story is very important.

Take a little while to think about what scents you most associate with Christmas happiness. If it is a scent you can put on an oil burner as essential oil or hold in your hand like cinnamon or cloves, then do that. If it is something less easy to reproduce, then try your best to hold the memory of that fragrance in your mind.

When you are ready and you have let your mind settle and become quiet, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths.

You find yourself in a dark room, which seems to be quite small at first. There is only the light of one candle in a glass lantern on the floor near your feet, shedding a soft golden light around you. The walls of the room are high and the room is long and narrow but most of it is lost in shadows. The air is cool but not cold. Go to the candle and hold the lantern up.

You will see that the walls are lined with row upon row of drawers, each with a neat little label on. There are hundreds of drawers and there is even a rolling stepladder. It’s a little like an old fashioned apothecary’s shop. At one end of the room there is a door which is the way you will return to your ordinary awareness, but near the door there is a low table. On the table there is a small crystal bottle, shaped like a tear drop with a flat bottom. It has something engraved upon it; look closer and you will see it has your name on it. If you hold it up to the candle light, you’ll see that it contains a liquid. The bottle is sealed with a stopper than glitters like a diamond in the flickering light. If you remove the stopper you will discover that the liquid emits the fragrance that you chose as being most closely and best associated with Christmas.

Take the bottle and the lantern stand in the middle of the room and look around. Each of the drawers contains other fragrances that are associated with Christmas. Some of these are ones that you might like to explore.

There’s one marked toffee popcorn. Another marked spiced cider. Another says chocolate. Look around you at all the drawers.

Oranges. Cloves. Cinnamon. Wood-smoke. Fruitcake. The smell of new snow. Granny’s perfume. Cranberries. Fir-cones. Pine needles. Gingerbread. New books. Old Spice. Mulled wine. Roast potatoes. Sherry trifle. Egg-nog. Bubble bath and bath salts. Chestnuts. Candles. Plasticine.

The walls are filled with them, hundreds of them. Some are old, their labels in faded copperplate and contain some surprising things. These are fragrances from older human memories. They’re all good things, but things we don’t have any more as part of our Christmas, like Plum Pudding and a winter drink called Lamb’s Wool.

If you wish to do so, explore the drawers. Each one contains a neatly stoppered bottle like yours, and inside it is the essence of the fragrance. Take your time. If a fragrance appeals to you and brings back good memories, add a drop to your bottle. This is not like blending a perfume but rather a blending of memories. You may find that first the name and then the fragrance may awaken some lost and treasured memories of Christmas past.

If you find a fragrance does not appeal or you dislike it, return it to its drawer and move on.

Give yourself time to explore as many of the drawers as you find interesting. There is no limit to what you can add to your bottle. None of the smells will clash or fight.

When you feel you have collected all your fragrances, go to the door at the end and put your lantern on the table. Hold your bottle up to the light and watch the liquid inside sparkle and glitter. This is your unique Christmas perfume, filled with warm memories. Every ingredient is special and precious. If you smell one, it will bring back those warm feelings and if you smell them all, it will bring a wealth of wonderful memories and emotions.

Before you open the door, take a breath of the scent contained in your bottle. Each note is unique and special and the whole fragrance simply says: Merry Christmas.

Put the bottle back on the table and open the door. Your mind is peaceful and happy and you are ready to return to your daily life. Step through and open your eyes.

(Remember to take time after meditation to allow your mind to adjust to normal; this can be helped by eating or drinking something to help you ground the experience and signal to your mind to return tor normal. If it helps, make notes of what you experienced so you can remember more late)