Image of a homeless man receiving help – by Jon Tyson – Courtesy of Unsplash.com.
As the nose of a hunter dog trails a scent for miles and miles. We trail crumbs of relaxation along the human alleyway.
Years of Frozen Tears.
They crashed through the door shouting, Armed police, armed police, put your hands where I can see them, and get down on the floor.
Pinning the three occupants down under gunpoint, they strapped their hands behind their backs and shuffled them into police vans, while still in their bedclothes.
Despite being innocent of all allegations, the young men endured days of interrogation, culminating in charges of murder, attempted murder, and aggravated robberies. Fly-tipped into a prison, within a prison, as dangerous, high-risk prisoners and sentenced to life behind bars.
But Raphael Rowe wasn’t having any of it. The prospect of spending a lifetime in prison as an innocent man consumed him with anger and disdain for authority. Suspicious and defensive towards every moving thing, he offloaded his tension on the immediate authority and fellow prisoners alike. Only to be physically beaten and confined in extreme temperatures.
Freezing his anger to such a degree, he couldn’t even cry.
After several years of futile rebellion, he accepted wise advice on how to protest his innocence. This change of tactics commenced a long, hard, and frustrating yet successful campaign, culminating in the trio serving twelve long years behind bars before being exonerated. Yet, when the court overturned their convictions, Raphael remained internally tense and unmoved until he walked out of the court to meet his family and supporters. Where he fell into his sister’s arms and “cried for the first time.”
“In that moment,” he tells an interviewer, “the anger, the bitterness, and the volatility in me, and everything that got me through those twelve years, almost fell off me onto the floor in those tears.
It was also the first time he’d relaxed in twelve years.
Devotees on the path of self-discovery experience a similar meltdown when they peer through a well-earned crack in the rigid mask of personality. A mere glimpse of their position in life’s undivided wholeness renders decades of trying to do it all, being in control, feeling unworthy, needy, lonely, doubtful, anxious, and other fears — delusional.
This experiential understanding of life’s unification blesses the devotee with an unknown depth of relaxation. A state of relief similar to that experienced by a mother reuniting with her lost child in a crowded market.
During the long journey on a short path — from head to heart — the devotee’s body accommodates this gradual shift by releasing years of accumulated tension through spates of yawning and tears of joy. Nonetheless, the bliss of relaxation isn’t exclusive to the innocent.
When Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to the heartless murders of forty-eight women, their grief-stricken relatives took the stand one by one, to hail a barrage of curses and death wishes at him. Despite the shower of verbal bullets, Ridgway remained unmoved, stoned-faced and cold, until one of the relatives said, “You make it hard to fulfil God’s will, but you are forgiven.” Only then did the killer’s stone face crack and shiver while his hand went up with a handkerchief to address the emotion.
- So, could tension be our fundamental dis-ease and relaxation be our sacred remedy?
- Are humans naturally loving and forgiving at the core, but preserve these humane sensitivities behind a tense wall?
- Only to spend a lifetime trying to ease the dis-ease through distracting activities and relaxing substances?
Although we’re forever in pursuit of relaxation, its significance is undermined until the release of a burdensome load during a call of nature reintroduces its power.
The pursuit of relaxation takes many forms:
It may come in the form of a romantic partner pressing that tension-relieving button; a cup of caffeine; a stick of nicotine; a glass of wine; or just letting go of it all after a day’s work, a long journey, a competition or a public speech. Essentially, all we want to do is relax.
Image of feet-up beside a cup of caffeine – by Jill Wellington – Courtesy of Pixabay.com
Unconscious Self-Medication.
As youngsters, we’re not equipped to decipher and articulate the ping-pong flow of tension — and its polar twin, relaxation. But the swing is in full operation regardless of age. For example, the first substance I unwittingly used to medicate tension was nicotine. The second was a combination of cannabis and alcohol. When all I wanted to do was relax. A group of us administered this self-medication at pseudo-clinics held in local alleys and out-of-hours school grounds.
Alleyways served multiple purposes. We hid various types of contraband in them, accessed forbidden territories through them, and used them to escape from those who sought to apprehend us for exerting tension in the only way we knew how.
Despite discarded furniture, clothes, condoms, needles, and other drug paraphernalia dispersed throughout alleys, drug users and dealers insist on doing their thing amidst a lingering stench of urine and faeces.
Image of urban alleyways – created by author using Canva software
Despite innocent people being attacked in alleys, it’s not unusual to find someone crashed out on drugs or alcohol in these spaces. Still, Gregory Porter sings —‘Take Me To The Alley.’
The song attributes this request to a King, who the public expects to parade through their streets and greet them warmly. Thus, they gild their houses and line the sidewalks with every sort of shiny thing, but the King surprises them with — “Take Me To The Alley. Take Me To The Afflicted Ones; The Ones That Have Somehow Lost Their Way.”
Why the alley?
Why would His Majesty exchange a warm and rich reception from the general public for a visit to the scene of drug dependency, alcoholism, sexual misconduct, crime and despair, marinated in a cesspool of human urine and faeces?
Well, Gregory explained it this way,
As a child, his mother stopped the car to assist an intoxicated man who lay in the hot sun, on the hot pavement, soaked in urine. She helped the man into the car, drove him back to the family home, fed, clothed, and sheltered him.
Gregory Porter and the band, performing – Take Me To The Alley – at the Melodic Caring Concert. Courtesy of YouTube.
At the melodic caring concert, Gregory again paid tribute to his mother’s concern for the afflicted ones. He dedicated the song to a few children held up in the healthcare system with physical afflictions, however, afflictions come in many forms. The King refers to the afflicted ones of the alley as those who have somehow lost their way, yet:
- How many of us have not lost our way on this spinning planet?
- How many of us are not compulsive and tense?
- Have never hurt someone or taken something that didn’t belong to us?
- How many of us are not in hot pursuit of relaxation?
‘Let Him Who Is Without Affliction Cast First Judgement‘
Hierarchy of Fixes.
During the break on an overnight coach trip, passengers rushed to inhale a stick of nicotine, gulp down an alcoholic beverage, sip a cup of caffeine, or digest a gram or two of sugar, to ease the dis-ease of an average day. Yet, no one was prepared for the human cats foraging in and around the coach station.
A skinny woman with sunken cheeks toggled around begging people for money.
Another roughly dressed man, clearly under the influence of alcohol, hurled death threats at security guards as they ushered him out of the station. Meanwhile, a clean, well-kept man evaded security to politely and genuinely ask waiting passengers for financial assistance with his homelessness.
Yet, the star of the night was a young lady sitting beside the entrance. She dragged her feet there on a sole of material with flattened sides that made way for a barrage of erected calluses, while her shattered nerves kept dropping a worn-out plastic bag of snacks.
Dressed in clean and orderly clothing, she had no front teeth, and when she stared up at passers-by, uttering a script like a hungry cat, we looked down upon the remaining teeth blackened with decay. Still, behind the obvious deterioration lay an otherwise attractive girl suffering years of affliction.
“Hello”, she said, “I don’t mean to offend you, but can you help me with any change, please?
At first glance, her approach resembled the common hustle for — ‘any change, please? Yet under close analysis, it became quite interesting and rather appealing.
Although most passers-by didn’t part with the desired cash, when she fixed her water-filled eyes on you, and the croaky, husky wheeze of a voice, trembling with sincerity, forced each word through a jaw-clenched in psychological strain and withdrawal symptoms, it was difficult to walk by without handing over at least a cigarette or a snack.
I stood out of sight to look and listen for the slightest crack in her approach. There were none. The only crack she dealt with that night was the crack cocaine she begged money to buy. No, she didn’t declare this, of course, but neither did she concoct any other purpose for the money she begged.
There was no pretence. She didn’t attribute her need to food, shelter, this or that. The young lady simply asked for help to soothe an immediate pain in the only way she knew how, and amid the torment, she held onto what integrity she could. Her approach translated as,
I know I’m a nuisance, but I wouldn’t be doing this if I could avoid it. I’m sick, please help me.
Her desperation may not compare to the desperate gasp for nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, or sugar. But is this a place for comparative judgment? Or is a fix simply a fix? ……Or…. have we succumbed to a hierarchy of fixes?
“Everyone suffering from addiction is another human being, with a story of their own, which many of us don’t understand or see.” HRH The Princess of Wales.
When the Patient is Ready, the Doctor Appears.
In conversations with two long-term sufferers of schizophrenia, I realised how much the fear of psychotic symptoms secures their compliance with taking medication. However, it doesn’t, and shouldn’t be expected to resolve all of their symptoms.
The female supplements her anti-psychotic medicine with the regular use of street heroin. The male, although an adamant opposer of cannabis, finds solace in crack cocaine and justifies this through the notion, “it purifies my mind.”
Because all they want to do is relax.
Maybe, as a former drug user and a friend of two young men who lost their lives to crack cocaine, I’m somewhat biased. As I’ll never forget how envious I was of sober people going about their normal lives, while I came crashing down from an intoxicated high, clucking for a fix. I’ll surely never forget the last time I saw Steven alive. He was drug-free, looking healthy and buff. Staying clean held a prominent place in our short conversation. Then, sometime later, I heard that crack cocaine killed him.
Who would choose such hellish conditions?
We don’t choose to be abused by substances any more than a cobra snake decides to deploy its precious venom. The snake glides along peacefully in the perfect balance of tension and relaxation until the slightest agitation triggers its self-defence mechanism.
Humans also glide along happily and content until the notion of separation erects psychological defences and triggers the onset of self-medication in a myriad of forms. Whether it’s caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, cannabis, food, money, sex, music, retail therapy or others, all we want to do is relax.
When You Pardon Me, You Pardon We.
Instead of judging fellow humans for their choice of fix, the King accepts us all as invaluable human beings and extends a hand of genuine friendship. Rather than agitating himself with suspicions and assumptions, such as — ‘they’ll use the money gained from begging to buy drink and drugs’ — he invites us in for dinner and provides a place to relax an imbalanced head.
Not only does he acknowledge the invaluableness of afflicted ones, but the King also pardons us. He forgives us unconditionally. Ironically, forgiveness remains a rare commodity among the one human family, who live varying shades of the same experience.
Abdul-Munim Sombat Jitmoud is one of the few humans who transmit this fragrance. When he entered the witness stand to face his son’s murderer. The culprit, Tray Relford, braced himself for a barrage of verbal bullets. The whole courtroom sat in tense anticipation of Sombat’s revengeful sermon. Yet, when he pardoned Tray, the power of relaxation made a surprise appearance and brought the court to its knees.
Tray’s defensive demeanour gave way to the loving essence of all human beings. Wiping away the tears that washed his face, the convicted murderer apologised “for what happened that day.” He also commendably thanked Sombat, his victim’s father, for his forgiveness. They then embraced, as father and son, summoning tears from every corner of the courtroom, including the judges, who called for a recess before imposing the lesser sentence Sombat had negotiated for Tray. In a later interview, Sombat told the actor, Morgan Freeman, “It wasn’t easy, but only through bearing witness to the oneness of God.”
Inner relaxation and neutral forgiveness ooze from the oneness of life. A mere flicker from the hem of relaxation is enough to melt tough men down into a puddle of tears. Still, tension isn’t exclusive to tough-nuts or ‘those of the alley.’ Tension and judgment walk hand-in-hand along the human alleyway.
The relationship between tension and relaxation equates to the relationship between alkaline and acid levels in the body: too much or too little of either side results in an imbalance and, thus, the onset of disease.
On a deeper layer of the onion, the slightest straying from equanimity clenches one’s being in a quest to regain it, to return home. While clenched as a persona away from home, we’re prone to various forms of homesickness, such as boredom, loneliness and anxiety.
Self-discovery teacher Rupert Spira refers to this as the pain of separation.
An award-winning speech by Farzana Begam highlights the consequences of this tension we drag around daily.
Renown Therapist, John Bradshaw, equates this niggling torment to a relentless toothache, gnawing away at the fibres of relaxation.
Joseph Pearce and Michael Mendizza’s research points to the toddler phase of human development — the terrible twos — as the origin of a tense and defensive stance. Hence, the lifelong quest for inner relaxation becomes our raison d’etre.
Image quote – by Samuel Regan Asante – Courtesy of Unsplash.com
As the nose of a hunter dog trails a scent for miles and miles. We trail crumbs of relaxation along the human alleyway. One’s trail may well contain sprinkles of heroin, crack, or cocaine. Some human trails lead to the pub, bar, or gambling house. Others are drawn to religious adherence.
A cup of caffeine, a stick of nicotine, a glass of wine, food, retail therapy, sexual expression, career ambitions, financial gain and other distractions equate to mere doggy biscuits that come and go. Still, despite this fundamental similarity, the notion of separation upholds the illusion of a them and us.
As long as this stench of ignorance lingers as a backdrop in the human alleyway, the incising jaws of judgment continue to support the notion of separation and perpetuate domestic and global conflicts that would otherwise struggle to exist.
‘A Judgmental Mind is a Tense and Restless Mind’
The Less We Judge, The More We Love.
The song “Take Me to the Alley” engulfs people from all walks of life and religious faiths, because from pauper to prince, none are exempt from losing their way. One listener said,
“This song touches the crevice and depth of the soul, a place only known by God.”
Inspired by a selfless mother, the lyrics scour the walls of our narrow alleyways to bring forth the smothered humaneness, while the presence of a selfish, absent father begs our understanding of blame and judgment.
“I’ve come to a place of understanding, says Gregory, “I learnt at his funeral he was a great singer. There is some of him in me, and I have to thank him for that. The very thing that I’m living off right now is from him. This voice.”
When listening for mere entertainment, the essential message may float on. But if the baritone voice doesn’t amend your choice, the drum and bass communes with the heart space, and piano keys may bend one’s knees, while a myriad of sounds from brass horns burrow deep into the core, leaving no place to flee.
But if somehow…….somehow, you still happen to lose your way, loosen your grip on every sort of shiny thing, and reality will guide you, as it did for our honourable King, who understands how deep-setted, bezel-rounded diamonds and precious pearls form through layers of adversity and misery. He, therefore, exchanged the love of shiny things for the quintessential merging of humanity.
Smart managers, trainers, producers, and directors also understand this and thus recruit uncut talent from the alley. Life often directs great achievers back to the alley for a second helping of fertile manure. A refuel for the rest of their human quest. Still, those of the alley are shunned and ridiculed by intellectuals, who, although blessed with two relevant sides of life, have labelled one as bad.
But our honourable King is led by the whole and complete heart-space: a space unaffected by the notion of separation and perceives life beyond appearance, scent, demeanour, her, and his story. It’s this space, one occupies when exonerated from internal and external chains of blame and judgment. Here, relaxation dissolves rigid perspectives and flushes toxic debris out through tears. The breaking of these waters gives birth to a panoramic view of life. Raphael Rowe exemplifies this. He further explained that when those tears fell onto the floor, “it changed me almost instantly.”
Evidently so. For after being judged in such a treacherous manner, fly-tipped into the alley and left to diminish under a heap of manure, he blossomed like a lotus flower. The pressure of adversity and misery rounded off the uncut stone to reveal a precious journalist who now provides a non-judgmental space for those who have somehow lost their way. Yet, it began with an adjustment on the scales of tension and relaxation. Test it for yourself.
The next time you feel tense, check what person, place, or thing you’ve cast judgment upon. Or….. when you realise you’ve cast judgment, check to see how tense you are inside. It’s subtle, but you’ll soon recognise blame and judgment as a divisive approach that perpetuates problems instead of healing them.
It takes an impartial approach to heal the deep incision of judgment and, thus, make way for holistic wellness. In the absence of blame and judgment, the light of unadulterated love is automatically rekindled.
In other words, the less we judge, the more we love.
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With and through love.
Kensu Fetsani.
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