Some eight months after moving to Lewes, we have made it home. When people comment “you must have really settled now?”, it is an emphatic “YES!” And yet…within that settlement, there is a degree of something unsettling. As I deeply embed into the town, it is suggesting another aspect. I am leaning into this twofold welcoming yet edgy feel Lewes is serving up. It first revealed this character when my wife and I realised that the distant rumbling we could hear in our basement room was that of the incoming and outgoing London train: the tunnel passing probably no more than 75m from our bedroom. One morning I was meditating in the early hours, lit only by the candles on the shrine. In the twilight hush, the train rumbling entered the space of my meditative mind a bit like a ghost train. It was both unsettling and inviting; I knew I was in one of those transitional spaces encountered in states like the hypnagogia of waking / sleeping, or exiting non-ordinary states whether it be psychedelics, deep meditation, or even after an intense massage.
Just a couple of weeks ago I was arriving at Lewes station after a day at work with clients. I stepped out of the train onto the platform, and this eerie feeling came over me. It built as I walked up to the main exit, over the bridge toward the town. Turning my head, the castle on the hill stood out like a pop-up book, illuminated in the dusk. Just bringing it back to mind, I get tears and chills. Later that evening I messaged my meditation mentor, paralleling the bodily experience with arriving in Camelot; my own Harry Potter moment of entering the train at platform 9 3/4 to arrive at Hogwarts! People reading this who know the town of Lewes might wonder what on earth I am describing here. It’s such a beautiful and popular town for visitors, attracting in tourists with its castle, priory, and association with Virginia Wolfe to name but a few “pulls'”. I’m intrigued by this magnetism. Yes it is old, yes it has history; a history that is as dark as it is beautiful: take the November 5th celebrations, the thousands killed in the Battle of Lewes, or the suicide of Wolfe in the river Ouse. It is an old place, with a sense of layers of time; and arguably a thin place. The concept of a “thin place” itself originates from Celtic folklore, referring to locations where the veil between heaven and earth, or the physical and spiritual worlds, is perceived as being particularly narrow or transparent. I’m not alone in this view. Local artist Peter Messer named a collection of his works A Thin Place in Lewes; Olivia Laing describes some of this quality throughout her book To the River.
And so, when my plans for the solitary retreat I do each autumn changed, I reflected upon how I could explore some of this liminality of both place and mind. My original plan was to immerse myself in the sadhana practice of Vajrayogini that I have been becoming acquainted with since the Spring*. In the Buddhist tradition, such yidams represent the “display” quality of mind: inviting the meditator to see the transparency of the apparent solidity** of an objective world “out there”. Visualising a yidam like Vajrayonini thus “thins” mind; we can think of her like an archetypal figure, helping the meditator straddle a number of apparent dualities – subject / object, in here / out there, body / mind…and her particular specialism, confusion / wisdom.
Practising retreat back home was both what was needed AND brought its own unique challenges. The first duality it brought up was the double-edge sword of relief (to not have to travel) and disappointment (to not go to my beloved Normandy). It was in this moment and experience that everything was pointing to working with liminality: on the cushion with the formalised practice of Vajrayogini, and then taking her out into the world: walking around Lewes, taking her on a tour with the mission of leaning into liminality: thin places, thin moments. An image of a water diviner springs to mind – Vajrayonini being the divining rod, helping me locate the transitional moments when mind slips from wisdom (awareness) into confusion (unhelpful patterns of body, speech and mind).
My morning sadhana sessions, the afternoon walks out and about, in and around
Lewes, and evening extended meditation sessions were both deeply restorative and deeply stirring. I found myself sleeping more, dreaming more – really mining the depths of mind. I was also deeply exploring my new home town; the folds of the various twittens mimicked the folds of mind; each revealing themselves to me over the week. I walked to various sites that might offer transitional energies, keeping the practice mantra and a light touch of the visualisation: the memorial to the 17 martyrs that overlooks the town, the Greenwich Meridian that passes to the West of the town, and the site of the Battle of Lewes on the Downs. I also discovered the Lewes Priory, taking myself there early one morning as the sun rose.
Whilst I deliberately sought out thin places – thinking they would appear in old places – I soon learnt that thin moments were equal in their transporting quality: like running fast into the wall on platform 9 3/4! Moments when the reflections of trees in water disrupted perception, or striking contrasts in light and dark. Everywhere, reminders that all is not what we think it is!
One of the benefits, and hopes, that comes with the practice of practice IN life (and not outside of it, solitary) is the transition back out of retreat and sustaining the realisations one might have having looked so intensely at mind. Retreats are never the idyllic space and moment people might imagine (or indeed hope) for the practitioner. And I did feel the relief to be coming out; and also the excitement to see how I would transition and transfer. It wasn’t long before Vajrayogini showed herself as the Great Vajra Trickster…inviting me to dance with what is and not what I want. A leaky roof, a website crashing, a poorly cat all greeted me in the first 48 hours of the return: a reminder that ordinary is always EXTRA-ordinary. Such stresses ARE the very substance of life; and they are also transparent. To be able to retain an allegiance with mind; to stay connected to the space of mind despite the play, the ocean not the waves. I remain a work in progress.
A factor in the choice to stay home and not travel to Normandy was to keep alive the possibility that I would take the first draft of my book out there with me. Knowing this feat now seems destined for Spring 2026, it was exciting to give myself this on the horizon, allowing me to postpone and retreat here instead. It is exciting to feel in reach now, the final few essays to be crafted in the remaining weeks of this year and the first of the new. Again, I straddle a transition – a reminder we are always in these more liminal spaces and moments – we just need to pay attention.
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*Incidently, about the same time I moved to my new home town
** we might think of the transparency yet appearing as space and luminous aspects of mind respectively