The Speaker

It's the sort of day that anybody, having the choice, would wish to spend out of doors; a beautiful Saturday in early May and one of the first really warm days of the year. All the trees in the town are lush and full, like huge green garlands lining the parks and streets. The blue sky is pom-pommed with cushion-soft clouds.
Andrew parks his car in a pay and display space and rummages in his pocket for some change for the machine: three hours worth. The building where the meeting will be held is up ahead. Andrew can see it from the meter. He gets a ticket and goes and sticks it to the car’s windscreen. As he walks the hundred yards or so to the venue looking at the beautiful sky, he has no regrets about leaving the day behind. 
The meeting is being held in a room above a pub in a once-grand building that stands on its own before the bridge. Andrew can see white sheets of paper stuck to the front and side doors as he approaches. Corners of the sheets flutter in the breeze. He gets nearer and reads: Marcia Woods. Talk Here Today. That's all it says. The posters are just A4 sheets with the brief details run up on a home computer. No colour, no picture; only the stark black letters.
He walks into the pub. It’s still early and there aren’t many people about. A couple are at the bar ordering drinks and a woman is pulling a pint from a beer tap. For a moment Andrew doesn’t know which way to go but then spots another piece of paper stuck haphazardly to the wall: an arrow pointing through a doorway. Marcia Woods. Meeting Upstairs. He follows the arrows up to a function room where, at a table just inside the doorway, a man sits with a tin of cash. Andrew greets him, pays his entrance fee and goes to sit down. 
The walls of the room have been painted dark green, giving it an intimate, hushed feeling despite its size. Armchairs and sofas have been pushed into a vaguely crescent-shaped arrangement. Andrew’s armchair is in the second of just two rows. It has frayed upholstery at the ends of the arm rests where previous fingers have played about with the threads. In front of the crescent of seats is a single chair. 
Men and women are quietly getting teas and coffees at a nearby table and starting to take their places. There are twenty or so people at the most; many of the same old faces. A man Andrew knows smiles over at him and waves. It’s a good feeling; being part of this crowd. As he sits, he feels excited. He knows something unusual is going to happen. 
When more-or-less everybody has found a seat, a woman who's been chatting towards the rear of the room, steps up to the front and sits in the chair before the audience. Rising from his place by the door, the man – the organizer - introduces Marcia Woods and asks for a round of applause. Marcia Woods looks to be about fifty years old. She's attractive in a quiet way, a way that doesn't draw attention. She wears brown trousers and a loose blouse. She’s nicely ordinary. Like anybody else. The only really noteworthy thing about her is her long, dark grey, slightly wild-looking hair. The audience watches her closely, highly curious, studying her like she's a rare plant in their botanists’ lab. She tucks her hair behind her ear and clears her throat.
She begins simply by describing things. She describes things that can be perceived in and around the room, bringing the audience’s attention to sounds – a dishwasher sloshing away in the nearby kitchen, a car purring by on the road, somebody calling to their dog, the leaves of the big tree rustling about in the breeze outside the open window. An older man on the other side of the room turns his good ear towards the speaker; Marcia Woods is softly spoken. She goes on to describe bodily sensations; the feeling of support from the chair, the rise and fall of air moving in and out of lungs, the impression of thoughts passing through the mind. 
She says, 'There are all these things occurring now. But if you let yourself sink down into the moment, away from the thoughts about what you’re perceiving, you realise that there’s just this awareness that’s noticing all the things that can be seen and heard and felt and sensed. And it’s not my or your awareness, it’s not anybody’s. It’s just awareness.’ 
Andrew knows the lingo now. He’s been coming to these talks for a while and he’s glad that the words no longer confuse him. They’re starting to make sense.
She says, “ ‘Marcia Woods’ is just an idea in my mind sustained by one thought after another. So is the thought that Marcia Woods lives in Penrith and has a husband and two children. Right now, they’re just ideas and this awareness perceives those ideas, but at the same time, is beyond them.’ ”
Over the time Andrew’s been coming to the talks, there have been several different speakers. Often they’ve travelled a long way to be there. One man even flew over from Cyprus. The speakers all emphasize how inadequate their words are at describing ‘it’ – the thing they come to talk about. They say that words can only point in its direction but the words aren’t it – it’s beyond words. But still, Andrew loves hearing them spoken. 
‘Beneath the thoughts and the perceptions, is the awareness; an awareness that’s constant, never changes and never goes away. Everything that can be perceived, arises and disappears again, back into awareness…’ Marcia Woods rubs the tips of her fingers and thumb together, emphasizing the word ‘awareness’. ‘…just as the forms around us gradually disappear back onto the space that enables them to exist.’
This is the first time Marcia Woods has spoken there. The group hasn’t heard her talk before. She attempts to describe the apparently indescribable, seeming to make a very good job of it. She says, ‘When thoughts stop so does the idea of there being a separate person or separate people. Ultimately there’s no separate ‘me’ and ‘you’. There’s no ‘us’ or ‘them’ in reality. It’s just our thoughts about ourselves, who we think we are, that make us appear so separate. In reality, it’s all the same oneness. And this doesn’t have to be believed in. This isn’t just another belief system. It can be experienced at any time simply by stopping and sinking away from your thoughts.’
Andrew sits listening, drinking it in like a parched animal. As he listens, a half-buried longing floats to the surface. It’s hard to put a name to the longing. It feels like the desire to dissolve, to merge into everything else so that his edges aren’t so sharp, so that his own edges don’t hurt him so much. But anyhow, as he experiences it, the feeling has an urgency to it. 
Marcia goes on to describe her own experience ‘…Obviously thoughts and feelings still come and go but not as much as they used to and I no longer keep identifying myself with any of the feelings or thoughts. Instead the identification is with what doesn't change, with the awareness that underpins all of that, that which isn’t touched by upset, or anxiousness, or confusion, or whatever. What underpins it all is deeply at peace…’ 
For as long as he can remember, Andrew couldn’t understand ordinary life. He wasn’t able to get on with things like it seemed a normal person should. He’d see people going about their daily business. They went to work, came home, raised families, cooked meals, grew old. What for? Andrew had no urge to get a job or have children. There seemed to be no point; he couldn’t see how they’d fulfil him. Now he was thirty-five and he was tired of having to try and make his life work out, tired of having to be somebody. The losses and gains, the successes and failures – they all seemed to cancel each other out in the end. He wanted something that was beyond the ups and downs of his life. 
As Andrew had got older, and as the feelings had got stronger, they’d created a gulf between his life and other people’s. He felt strange: maybe there was something wrong with him? But then he stumbled upon the talks – just a little advert in a shop window – and he discovered other people who felt like he did. He realised that his feelings had a purpose, that they might actually be leading him somewhere. Without consciously being able to say it to himself, what he wanted, what he yearned for until it’d become an actual physical ache, until pretty much all other desires had been displaced, was to pierce through the top layers of life to get to the core, to put his fingers right on the hub, to touch the centre. 
All the speakers who have come to the town to give talks have been people who have worked themselves loose somehow. There are any number of words for what’s happened to them, the dozen or so men and women who have come to speak: they’ve become liberated; self-realised; awakened; enlightened; found oneness; entered an egoless state; become free of the self... That's why Andrew is there. He wants what they’ve got; or not got.
Andrew watches Marcia Woods as she talks. She’s gazing round at people as she tries to explain herself. Her brown eyes seem steady and sincere as she looks about the audience. Marcia Woods seems just like anybody else but Andrew feels that maybe there’s something different about her. He tries to put his finger on what it is. There’s something very undefensive about her manner, he thinks. It seems that even if nobody there cared a jot about what she was saying, she wouldn’t be concerned. And it would be hard to have an argument with her about something; she seems too peaceful. But, for all that, Andrew can’t say exactly what the difference in her really is.  

Half-way through the talk there’s a break. Biscuits are brought out and fresh pots of tea and coffee are put on the table. Andrew gets up and wanders out of the room. He finds the toilets. He goes and sits in a cubicle and gazes at the wall. He doesn’t think he can manage a conversation right now. His thoughts have slowed down and he feels too empty and clear to be able to speak. It’s as if he’s gleaned a bit of Marcia’s experience from just listening to it being described. How good it feels…He thinks about Marcia. He’s a bit in awe of her. She seems lovely. Not physically particularly, but in another way entirely. 

In the second half, Marcia Woods asks for questions.  Everybody wants to know about her life. The questions are either about what it feels like to be her, or how to become like her. She tells the audience that fundamentally there's no difference between her and them, only a difference of identification, but it’s hard for them to grasp what she means. 
People take different tacks and angles, attempting different ways of coming at the same basic two questions. Marcia listens to each person, pausing every time to think how best to answer, and then looking closely at them as she replies. Andrew wonders if she really could be somebody who’s fine with whatever’s happening, too peaceful to bother wanting things to be different. He wonders if it could be possible.
Somebody asks, 'What about when we’re asleep? Where’s awareness then?' 
‘It’s still there when you’re dreaming. You’re just aware of your dream instead. And in dreamless sleep there’s nothing to be aware of and so you simply don’t remember it but awareness is always there.’
The questions don’t last. Gradually the audience falls silent. There’s a marked peacefulness in the room. It’s the kind of silence that makes further questions seem unnecessary. At first Andrew’s inclined to think the peacefulness is coming from Marcia Woods but then it occurs to him that maybe it’s been there, overlooked, all along; that it’s just more obvious now that the talking and thinking have stopped. 
A light feeling comes over him. It strikes him, “Here I am!” and it’s almost funny. There’s nothing I need to do because here I already am! he thinks. He feels a remarkable sense of effortlessness: no need to get to the next moment, no need to do anything. It’s already fine. It makes him want to laugh. He wants to laugh out loud at his previous efforts. His past strivings suddenly seem very daft. Everything feels much looser. He starts to cry with relief. Quiet tears trickle down his face. They edge nearer his jaw and he realises he’s not bothered that people may notice. As the tears fall they somehow don’t seem like his tears particularly, they're just some falling tears and so there’s no embarrassment. 
His mind has started to feel oddly smooth. It’s as though there are no craggy ledges left in his mind for passing thoughts to get a foothold; thoughts seem to slide off his brain like liquid. The peace deepens further or at least he falls deeper into it. He closes his eyes. He’s not 'him' anymore. He can still feel himself; he’s still there - like a little nut, like a tiny hard shell with nothing inside it. But that's not what he is. Instead of merely the nut, he’s also the space, the great vast space that holds the nut within it. Maybe this is what Marcia meant - a shift in identification from the object to the space. The experience lasts only a few moments. It’s soon gone and he’s back to being just the hard, little nut. But something has happened; the question of how to get what Marcia has got seems irrelevant. There it is. It's always there in the background. It’s never not there.
Somebody asks a question and the silence comes to an end. The person wants to know, ‘How big is awareness?’ There’s a snort from the back of the room at what seems like a foolish thing to ask. But Marcia Woods, unfazed, explains that awareness is dimensionless, that our minds can only think in terms of space and time. Awareness is beyond these things. 
A few more questions come. Somebody wants to know how Marcia's family feel about her having undergone this change. Marcia says most them are intrigued. Only her dad can’t bring himself to talk about it. Andrew drifts in and out of the comments and questions until the man on the door stands up again and says that unfortunately he has to call the meeting to a close. It's five o'clock and the landlord needs the room back. 
The audience applauds appreciatively and people start to get up from their seats. A few go over to Marcia Woods, wanting to talk to her personally. Others gather in little groups to discuss what they've heard or just to speak briefly before they leave. Some people, Andrew included, stay in their seats looking gone-out. Andrew sits there, his mind still feeling too smooth to think of much, wishing he could keep his brain like this forever, empty and even and clear. He wants to make the most of it while it lasts. 
Nearby someone whispers, ‘It’s like seeing a saint or something…’
Slowly, Andrew rises from his seat. On the way out, he waves goodbye to some people chatting by the refreshment area, and thanks the man on the door for organising the talk. He walks back downstairs and passes through the bar. The punters look relaxed and happy. Somebody’s laughing heartily with their head thrown back. Outside people are sitting at benches in the early evening sunshine drinking their pints and halves. The light is deeper and richer now, more golden with the slowly setting sun. The day seems even more beautiful than it did before. Then it occurs to Andrew that perhaps it's partly him; his vision’s different.
He walks along the road to his car. The pavement doesn’t seem the same. He passes a litter bin. That looks different too. The grass growing up between the pavement slabs. A dog turd; even that looks different. Everything thing looks new. Not as in brand new; things still appear old and shabby. The paint is still peeling off the bench that he passes. But it’s as though everything has just sprung into being, just as it is, and it’s completely fresh. This morning the world looked the lovely way it always looks on a gorgeous sunny day. But now it’s like he’s never seen any of it before, and all of it’s miraculous.

Word Count: 2, 840