She wakes to pain behind the eyes—thin wire strung from temple to temple—and before her feet touch the floor the newsroom starts: headlines, experts, breaking alerts. This is getting worse. I can’t live like this. He never texts back when it matters. The world is unraveling. The body tightens to match the coverage. Jaw against jaw. Breath turned narrow. Shoulders stepping forward as if to intercept a blow.
Her name can be any name. Let’s call her Mara.
In the kitchen, light makes a pale rectangle on the table. The kettle hums its small, faithful promise. The phone is face-down, but it glows through its case like a lighthouse for lost boats. Pain in the face folds into a larger weather system: the message she sent last night and the silence after; a memory of the hospital corridor and the machine’s blue-green numbers; a story about the coastline two continents away and the water rising.
This is how it usually goes: sensation, then story, then the body treating the story like a fact. The sequence is fast; the mind arrives with sirens. She swallows and, just for once, decides to watch the order instead of obeying it.
“Okay,” she tells the empty room, voice soft and steady. “Let’s look.”
She tries something simple, not to fix anything—only to get accurate.
Three contacts. Feet on tile. Spine against the chair. Mug in the right hand, warm at the curve of the fingers.
Two sounds. Kettle settling. A truck far off, a low, moving line.
One light/shadow. The rectangle on the table has a ragged edge where it touches the spoon.
For a few seconds the inner newsroom loses its signal. Breath loosens a notch. The wire across her forehead doesn’t disappear, but it stops reporting as catastrophe and resumes reporting as pressure at the skin.
The phone pings. The story pounces: He doesn’t care. Why do I always choose like this? The body prepares to prosecute—heart up, eyes narrow, shoulders in. She sees the tilt, the gamut of blame readying to run. This time she gives herself twelve seconds of amnesty: no verdicts, only description, like phoning a blind friend.
Vibration at the table. Thought says: danger. Throat tight. Fingers twitch toward the phone. Breath holding.
Twelve seconds pass. She picks up the phone anyway. This is important: she doesn’t pretend not to. The message is nothing—late-night logistics, neutral tone—but a second, older message begins inside: You need to secure love or you’ll lose it.
“Old sentence,” she says aloud, like labeling a jar. She doesn’t argue with it. She sets it beside her and returns to what the body is actually doing: breath releasing, throat warming, a small tremor in the hands that steadies once it’s seen.
Pain in the face climbs back onto the stage. This is the place she usually starts explaining. I slept wrong. I always do. It means today is ruined. Instead, she walks the pain around the room like a guest who doesn’t like people.
Where?
Above the eyebrows, two fingers wide.
What kind?
Dull pressure with bright edges when she bends.
Shape?
Band, not point.
Temperature?
Neutral.
Movement?
Static with a pulse every five or six breaths.
It isn’t mercy so much as honesty. The body responds to the change in language. Adjectives like awful and unbearablehad been recruiting muscles to a shadow-war. The simple map—location, quality, size, motion—lets the nervous system stand down. The pain doesn’t need to announce the end of the world; it’s allowed to be exactly as large as it is and no larger.
Later, news happens—world news, the kind that wears capital letters. Her finger hovers above the scroll like a divining rod. She runs the same experiment she ran with the text: Image or Event?
Image: a mental movie of coastlines and arguments, the body believing them now; breath climbs, shoulders creep, jaw recruits.
Event: her actual room—light on the wall, spoon on wood, air across the skin of the wrist; breath deepens, eyes widen to include more of the scene.
She doesn’t shame the impulse to scroll. She notices whether the mouth of the impulse has a finish line. Sometimes the mind insists on doom while the body, given three clean breaths and one square of open window, finishes on its own.
There are days she still gets pulled under. The old choreography is fast: torso inclines to an imagined authority, eyes dip, breath waits for permission, words assemble to justify a defense. On those days she measures half-life instead of perfection. Did she notice sooner? Did she return faster? Did she repair the conversation with fewer barbs? Did the judgment soften into a description even once?
And she learns to listen for the sentence underneath the scene. Because the scenes repeat—pain, relationships, the world—but the sentence beneath is remarkably consistent:
If I don’t secure this, I’ll be abandoned.
If I stop bracing, the worst will find me.
If I feel this, it will never end.
She doesn’t debate those sentences with better sentences. She pairs them with what is undeniably here. Old: If I stop bracing, collapse. Now: chair under thighs, a rectangle of light, breath moving without instruction. The system gets new evidence. Slowly—weeks, months—the prediction updates. The fan spins a while after power is cut; then it forgets to spin.
There is room, too, for grief—the human kind that no practice ought to erase. On nights when the news is heavy and the face hurts and the message lands wrong, she lets the animal in the chest complete—not the drama, the energy: heat rising, belly shaking, tears as water, not verdict. When the movement ends, she checks the story again. Often the headline rewrites itself:
From everything is broken to this hurts in three places, and the kettle still clicks off when it’s done.
From no one cares to I wanted care just now; I can ask plainly.
From the world is ending to my room contains air, light, spoon; I can act within arm’s reach.
No haloes. No enlightenment fireworks. Just a steadying habit: events first, stories second. Some mornings the wire across her forehead is absent; most mornings it’s faint. Relationships remain human-sized: messy, repairable, sometimes brave. The world remains huge; she learns to make tea and phone her representatives and take a walk—three acts inside one life, none of them a betrayal of concern.
This is what “not-knowing” starts to feel like—not ignorance, but dropping the extra weight of certainty that never helped. Comfort doesn’t come as a grand assurance; it arrives as tiny reallocations of effort: one millimeter of jaw, one breath that doesn’t need a meeting, one hand that sets the phone down before the scroll writes her future for her.
Every day, the same invitation:
Look at what is actually here.
Name three facts before you name one meaning.
Let a wave finish without asking it for a moral.
If a story still insists, ask it to wait on the verandah while the kettle boils.
For more pointers and suggestions, check out this link to vince-bot using the website as its knowledge base.
Vince Schubert YouTube Channel
Free online meetups every Saturday at 9 pm (Sydney Australia time)
and one each Monday 7 am ( Sydney Australia time). This meeting starts at 6am and is only available to paid Substack subscribers.
and each Wednesday at 4 pm (Sydney Australia time)
and every Friday 7 am (Sydney time) - never published. Only available to participants who request it by email.
You can check your local time here:
Or visit the website for countdown timers to each meeting.
Please note that it's always the same time on the same link. Arriving late and leaving early is fine.
Click here to Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86991485768?pwd=WkIvNk9zS1Q0VlVMR3lENW12Um5DQT09
Here is a link to all of the published recordings.
Audio files can be found here:
& 2024 files here; https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_bEDgZlbsVBW4EK9u4hVAFzW9jIVCBwN?usp=share_link
There is also paid 1on1 (& also 2 on 1) guiding here: With vince &/or Marius
Although the website still requires a lot of work, there are resources here; WakingUpWithVince.com
..and more here; WakingUpWithMarius
If any link doesn’t work properly, please let me know. vinceschubert@gmail.com
Given the multitude of small costs (that add up to something significant) required to produce these offerings, please consider donating whatever you can comfortably afford. Moneys over and above running costs are directed to the establishment of Suan Jai Sanctuary.
..and remember - lots of little bits make a big bit. ❤️