Physiotherapy, formal exercises as well as the myriad of day-to-day activities required to maintain a physical body, is prescribed as the way forward for people like me who have experienced a stroke.

Quite right too. Exercises and activities to build and strengthen muscle to help recover mobility; to repair broken – and develop new – brain pathways to help recover dexterity and increase both micro and macro motor functioning.

But what of psychotherapy? Not the talking, talking and more talking kind that aims to uncover past traumas, root out the cause of current psychological and emotional issues in an attempt to ‘fix’ you. While talking can be hugely helpful, (I mean it. Talking to a trusted friend, relative or professional, provides not only emotional support, but can give you new perspectives and fresh insights into even the most intractable issues).

What I’m getting at here is more about therapy for the complete psyche: the emotions and the mind and including the spirit or soul.

It is about the rebuilding of confidence – the ‘I am able’ attitude – and it is about filling the void to evolve a meaningful life.

The refuge that each day I commit to take in the divine will of the universe is where this care of the psyche -the inner me, if you like – begins.

Pause for reflection #1: If I take refuge in the will of that which is on the face of it ‘a higher power’ than my own, then why the big efforts at ‘filling the void’. Sounds like I’m resisting that divine will, or somehow refusing to acknowledge the reality of my life as it is.

Of course the ‘making of effort’ and doing our bit is absolutely vital and necessary. So I pray, I meditate, I read, I sit quietly, I create what and when I can. And I make blog notes like this and they also count.

But it doesn’t feel enough. It’s like I’m trying too hard to get to some point I’ve actually acknowledged I’m already at: in the shelter of the will of the universe.

I don’t like to say it, but I’m bored, and I think it is the constant ‘trying’ that is the big obstacle to having a more rounded and holistic approach and attitude to living here and now with life as it actually is for me at this moment.

‘Trying’ suggests the going outside of the present. Making huge straining efforts to make things other than they are. Hardly living in the moment is it?

There are long periods when I find myself sitting with ‘nothing to do’ (I cant read, write, create and pray all the time as in 24/7 can I?)

Pause for reflection #2: Why not? You may very well be asking, as indeed I am asking myself right now. Perhaps these spaces and times are the will of the Divine specifically designed for me to learn to sit in silence and to simply be.
Maybe they offer spaces and times for me to be quiet; opportunities to simply be open to receive, lessons in presence.

Not only that, perhaps they are healing times when all the fragments of my psyche can settle back into their rightful place.

So, the problem is the solution, is what I seem to be saying here. The times I am describing here and which I often face and experience with dread, are precisely gifts of grace granted to me to help me heal, and teach me to sit in silence learning to listen.

Yes, keeping silent except when and how it is the divine will of the universe might be quite nice.