Holding no bough

Source

2012-01-28T13:21:00.000Z

There is some thing (or no-thing if you want to get in to the semantics of it) at the very core of our existence together in the world which is beyond all description and is the most profound. It is seen in the fact that we are tiny and apparently insignificant against the scale of the universe and yet at the same time each of us is priceless, of unlimited value. Some times the immensity of that just hits me smack in the face. What can you say but homage to the divine.

Time

2012-01-21T17:29:00.001Z

Strolling through Jesmond Dene yesterday I came across St Mary's Chapel. I'd not known the history of this twelfth century chapel until I read the information board at the site. This in turn prompted me to look it up on the internet. Well worth it for the interesting history. In fact there are quite a few interesting pages on the net about Jesmond. Of course there are all sorts of interesting stories of which we are not aware all about us. Later I heard Nimrod from Elgar's Enigma Variations on TV. This prompted me to buy a copy for my MP3 player and this afternoon after a walk with DC through the Dene we both listened to Nimrod. Such a beautiful piece. 'What is it that is so moving?' I as asked DC. His answer pointed to various technical ways in which Elgar has created the music. 'Yes, but what is 'it'? Not how has he pointed to 'it' but what is 'it'?' I asked. We mused on this for a while each expressing the 'it' for us. Each noting how the piece brings about an awareness of Being and all that might be, all that is; temporal and eternal. I find the Lark Ascending takes me to some similar awareness. How changed our world from those days of pilgrimage in the twelfth century and yet how similar our quests seem to be.

Out walking

2012-01-15T18:46:00.001Z

Lovely stroll along Derwent walk in the winter sun today with friends. Cold and frosty but bright. I took some photos with my smart phone (click on the images to enlarge) :

Viaduct parapet - ice crystals - frozen moss I think

Low sun

Ice crystals - more frozen moss on the parapet

Sunny tree top

Sun set

Viaduct parapet - ice on grass

Sun streaming through

More frozen grass on the parapet

The Iron Lady

2012-01-10T13:14:00.004Z

DC and I saw 'The Iron Lady' at cinema over the weekend. I felt it was like watching a train crash in slow motion. I could feel revulsion and anger at the whole 1980's Thatcherite project. The film shows a version of Thatcher's rise to power through flash backs against the back drop of her present state of health as a person with dementia. It was not clear exactly what the film makers were trying to get across. The question of compassion arises since she is shown suffering due to her struggle with dementia but much more could have been shown about the huge social and political issues raised by her time in power and the pain and suffering consumerism generates (or if your politics are to the right, attempts to ease). For me it was interesting to note how angry I am that the whole political scene is now basically Thatcherite; the very word socialist is now almost regarded as dirty. So, if I am angry I need to look at what is behind the anger. Everyone is doing their best. I note my response to the scenes shown in the film and remember that Thatcher was reacting like everyone else out of her conditioning to ease her pain. I don't need to see her with dementia to remember that we all need to be held in compassion. I do however, find it a real challenge to hold the likes of her and the latest batch of Tory spawn in compassion. Thatcher changed UK politics and to my way of thinking the economic and social mess we are now in is in no small measure due to the way subsequent politicians have continued her project. It seems to me that we have lost almost all sight of the reason for having an economy, ie the welfare of people. People should not be there for the welfare of the economy. Money becomes a tyrant when it is the ends rather than the means. Listening to Start The Week on Radio 4 yesterday morning I was filled with joy to hear Anna Coote of The New Economics Foundation talk about a 21 hour working week. There is much wisdom in what she had to say. The LSE are holding a talk on Wed. 11 Jan. 2011. Demented or not I can't imagine the Thatcherites could get their heads around it!

Parents

2012-01-05T20:36:00.000Z

I have the most wonderful parents. They have had some very, very tough times and they did not always cope well, but cope they did. I started writing about specifics of recent events but I see that the details take away from the bare facts; when the chips are down they are wise and big hearted.

Exposure

2011-12-23T21:57:00.000Z

Some months ago in a (heart circle) sharing I noticed that I had some resistance to sharing 'what was up for me'. Ah, so why would I not want this known? If I accept myself and my intention is to work for the highest motive then what am I trying to hide? Why am I ashamed to still be struggling with aspect of my experience. And if others judge me then are they holding me in compassion? And if not then why should I fear what they think? Because if they can't hold me in compassion then what basis to the sharing? How much of this feeling of shame is my projection on to others? Which is to acknowledge that they may not have the thoughts and feelings about what I might share that I imagine they will; that I am judging that they will judge me. This of course is the great thing about sharing in a heart circle; we come in to authenticity, or as close to it as we feel we can. And we have a chance to see our stuck points. And what better to do with this resistance than to share it! The opening which comes from this is in my experience very nourishing, very cathartic and collectively humbling and of beauty. And the more we share the more we see that we all have a fried egg on our head, and that's all right. And gradually things come into perspective, growth is made and I move on; more open, in deeper communion with others, my self and with life. So it has been illuminating for me to see my response to people who have rejected open communication in favour of 'keeping up appearances'; anger. And that's an other opportunity for me to grow, to acknowledge my response, soften in to it, try to remain mindful, humble and compassionate. Even when my response is to judge and condemn. For that it to miss the opportunity to grow.

Love And Will 3

2011-12-06T22:41:00.004Z

Just finished reading Love and Will. Well, what a book! And searching for Rollo May's details on the net I see that this book is referred to as influential. I am not surprised, I suspect it pulls together a lot of man's thinking from diverse cultures, times and locations in pursuit of an explanation of May's approach to psychology. And whilst the word 'spiritual' is used in the book (as I recall) only once or twice, this is clearly the implication. And perhaps the word was avoided since it defies definition.

The later chapters prompted me to make the following jottings for this post:

We re-enact the (original) fall - however much we might work towards and attain union we must return back to our individual experience of life. We move in and out of the garden (of Eden).

(recalled WOODSTOCK
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
by Joni Mitchel-

We are stardust, we are golden
We are 2 billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden)

We attempt this getting back to the garden when we (re)connect with our self and when we connect with others. At a deep level beyond the psychological is the direct realisation of our true nature.

May on care notes 'Heidegger quotes the ancient parable of care, which Goethe also used at the end of Faust:' Care crossing a river fashioned some clay into a form, Jupiter came by and she asked him to give it spirit, which he did but he would not let her name be bestowed upon it. Earth arose and desired her name be conferred upon the creature since it was part of her body. They asked Saturn to arbitrate and his decision was as follows: 'Since you, Jupiter gave it spirit, you shall receive that spirit at its death; and since you Earth have given its body, you shall receive its body. But since 'Care' first shaped this creature, she shall posses it as long as it lives. And because there is now a dispute among you as to its name, let it be called 'homo', for it is made out of humus (earth)'

Nice parable, I'd not come across it before. And May goes on to make the point that care is so often missing in our day. Even more true I suspect in 2011 than 1969. He also notes the protests of young people who demonstrate that they do care. Again we should take note in 2011! And care is important with respect to love for it sets apart ongoing relationship from that 'Hippie love' referred to in the previous post.

May touches on the Hellenistic period and refers to the Stoics, Epicureans, Hedonists etc. and I note from his descriptions that the search for meaning at the realisation in one way or an other of the void has indeed been going on within various cultural ways of seeing for a very long time over the globe. The danger of nihilism in the appreciation of emptiness being wrestled with I guess.

I can't recall what prompted me to note this section and what I wanted to expand but I guess it is that this territory, for me is nicely navigated in the Buddhist and Taoist way. May continues: we only ever have some myth, never truth. And also notes that we don't (as often believed by so many) have fully rational thoughts and decisions. Indeed! A bit of anxious depression can make that all too clear in my own experience. We make tiny little turns of thought and decisions all day long assuming we have assessed the facts. In my experience it is a feeling that is being juggled.

In the closing pages of the his book May returns to love between man and woman.

I find his assumption that the flow of yin and yang energies in sex requires a heterosexual couple tedious. But I guess his writing reflects the date of the book. His point about care and active receiving is however, well made. Giving is to receive and receiving (actively) is giving. This is so evident in sexual acts. It is fitting I think that at the end of the book having come to talk of giving and receiving that 'Communion of Conciousness' is the title of the final chapter. In this chapter May talks of climax in sexual intercourse and notes union with nature when 'the awareness of separateness lost, blotted out'. Interestingly though he does not expand on this. And the point he might have made is that we loose not just our separateness but our lover and the connection as we disappear into our own orgasm. From my post Everything and Love:

'But in love as apposed to lust, we see the desire for unity, to return to the void. In lust the head long chase for the abandonment to be found in the little death of orgasm. In making love the partial death of self as each flows into the other, heart to heart and only then the temporary slip in to the almost selfless abandonment of orgasm. Yet we do not die, we pull back from our connection with our lover and into our own experience of orgasm, however much we desire to unite. Then gradually we return to the world.'

May goes on to remind us that Cezanne and Van Gogh have left works which indicate that they saw the world in what seems to be a very direct way. And I guess that this is Tennyson seeing the wild flower in the crannied wall and that these are ways of seeing I do not directly know but that they may well be those spiritual awakenings referred to by others in other terms.

However we see the world (and there are as many as there are beings) we are left with daily reality. 'Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water.' It seems to me that May drawing from the ancients asks us to engage in authentic communion with life, with each other. But I am rolling a few ideas up together here... It's late and I am tired!

Love And Will 2

2011-12-04T20:06:00.005Z

It was in reading the chapters from part I of Rollo May's Love And Will titled as follows;

Paradoxes of Sex and Love,
Eros in Conflict with Sex,
Love and Death,
Love and the Daimonic,

that I recalled my post Everything and Love, in which in my own way I was trying to express some of the themes which I feel come through in those chapters. And I had intended to explore those themes in greater detail here. However, as the days have gone past I find the matrix of thoughts and feelings which held the vestige of a post has slipped by, passed into that which was. Perhaps in holding the chapter titles in mind and reading the post referred to readers might glimpse something of their own truth.

In part II of the book May looks at the will and explores wish, will and intentionality. For me his thesis brings to mind interdependent origination, the question of to what extent we ever choose and exercise 'free will' and aspects of desire; that leading to growth (Eros) and that leading to enslavement (lust in all its forms). And out of that little pot; vitality. And when I look around I see a great number of people who seem to be asleep; their vitality gone. May seems to be saying something similar and as ever the root of it goes back to fear.

Discussing intentionality in therapy, May under the heading From Wish to Will makes the point that the raw experience of a beautiful day and the fact that one can increase the pleasure by sharing it with a friend 'has profound implications for life, love, death and the ultimate problem of human existence'. He refers to Tennyson looking at the flower in the crannied wall; '...I could understand what God and man is.' I can't claim to have had that experience of God (Buddha nature, the Source...) although I have experienced beauty and the feeling that it is but only half a thing when not shared. But I do feel this need for the awake vital raw experience of authentic living. Might it be stated as Eros the divine life force seeing its own expression?

May goes on to make a point about indiscriminate love or 'Hippie love' as he terms it. It is important here I think to remember the date of the book; 1969. And I would agree with him that a here today gone tomorrow in the moment love lacks commitment and begs the question just how deep such feelings run. I think it important to hold in mind non-attachment, acceptance and that an enlightened being loves all. But this love is outside the scope of everyone I know. Aspects of it are present but we are human and preference always creeps in; the resonance when like parts of the unity come close. Something bigger comes out of giving over time and choosing to keep giving requires selection of who to give to and accept from.

Opening the third part of the book is a chapter titled The Relation of Love and Will and it opens with a quote from Schopenhauer;

'Sexual passion is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious, and the aim of the jest, the inexhaustible source of wit, the key to all allusions, and the meaning of all mysterious hints... just because the profoundest seriousness lies at its foundation.... But all this agrees with the fact that the sexual passion is the kernal of the will to live, and consequently the concentration of all desire; therefore in the text I have called the genital organs the focus of will.'

Yep, 'The Red thread koan'! And how often we talk of people having guts and/or balls. Having, being had, making and bonding; the desire to create and the desire to merge. I'll post later on subsequent chapters.

Love And Will 1

2011-11-29T12:28:00.002Z

I have been reading Love And Will by the psychoanalyst Rollo May. It was published in 1969 although I have a 1989 edition. In some parts it is dated and rather heterocentric but generally I find it rather 'good stuff' and along the lines of my own thoughts about the nature of the human condition. I have been thinking of writing about some of the ideas in this book related to Eros, the life force which drives everything on to express ever new and changing forms and in so doing shows the void's pregnant possibility. And also the whole question of apparent separateness and the desire for unity. Many of the concepts in the first few chapters of the book are explored with the aid of classical mythology and I think that it is fair to say that what are being perceived are Jungian Archetypes. Anyway, when I feel so inclined, for whilst the excitement of juggling ideas and seeing connections and possible 'truths' might stir the muse, the distillation of the flavours in my mind into some coherent blog post requires her full charm, I will post on all that. But for now, what stirred me to post as well as just getting going with the ideas to be posted, was a paragraph of William James' on getting out of bed! I laughed at this and in so doing had the thought 'ah yes, what is the tension between which incompatible elements (in the mind) which gives rise to the need for its release through the shuddering in the body and the attendant light in the bodymind?' Although the words in my head weren't quite so articulated as that when the basic idea first popped in. James describes lying in bed on a cold morning knowing that one must get up and get on with 'the duties of the day' yet being disinclined due to the contrast between the warmth and comfort of bed and the cold of the room and goes on;

'Now how do we ever get up under such circumstances? If I may generalise from my own experience, we more often than not get up without any struggle or decision at all. We suddenly find that we have got up. A fortunate lapse of consciousness occurs; we forget both the warmth and the cold and; we fall into some revery connected with the day's life, in the course of which the idea flashes across us, 'Hollo! I must lie here no longer'- an idea which at that lucky instant awakens no contradictory or paralyzing suggestions, and consequently produces immediately its appropriate motor effects.

I am sure we have all been there.

Digital

2011-10-03T15:58:00.000+01:00

An unexpected sequence of events led to me being offered a job last Friday. And by the end of the day I'd bought a used car! Today I spent the morning on the phone sorting insurance. After getting through the automated answering systems (if you want to .... press.... if you want ...), arhhhhh, my ears glaze over... I drifted off and have to go around again... Then when eventually speaking to a real person they start giving me all the standard buff; fine print in verbal, arhhhh, my ears are glazing over. Eventually it is sorted. Improved communications systems and competition in 'the market' seem to have combined to result in a kind of non-communication where one feels cast adrift in a sea of confusion created by the very system which should be helping. Then I read on Jade Mountains in the comments to a post a link to an article about Google. I sort of knew all this was going on but it's both amazing and a bit frighting when one stops to consider it. At least Google seem to be getting the information to us, which is more than might be said of many telephone calls these days!

I am feeling ambivalent about my smartphone - I almost ended up with it by mistake and it is confirming in many ways my prejudice against them. I wonder where all this is going. The world has changed so much.

Newcastle Civic Centre

2011-09-28T13:50:00.000+01:00

I walked down to the station today to pick up some rail tickets. It is a bright autumn day with not a cloud in the sky, hazy and calm; full of 'mellow fruitfulness'. I decided to see if a friend was in on the way back and taking that route decided to cut through Newcastle Civic Centre. My earliest memory of this building and its grounds dates back to childhood when I was struck by the way the quadrangle made me feel. I still get the same feeling when I pass that way now. (Or so it seems at least.) The quadrangle is a modernist rectilinear design with a reflecting pool, grass lawn and a sculpture of swans in flight. The enclosed yet open space is filled with calm yet holds the promise of something exciting; it is some how pregnant with the future. I now have sufficient visual literacy to see that this space is a reasonably successful example of the modern architectural movement of the 1960's and that the form has been designed to elicit this calm yet exciting feeling. To me it is a spiritually informed space and it is possible to trace a line back to the aesthetic of Japanese temples and gardens. Or as people casually say; zen. As a child I just liked it. The route from the quadrangle passes across a glazed link corridor; in one door across the link and out the other side. The feel in this link corridor with its limestone and glass is one of soft gravitas, again the place holds a spiritual ambiance. All this not in a church but a civic building for the administration of such matters as the rates and taxes. How joyous to have such architecture. I was tempted to try to capture all this photographically, but I knew that I'd not quite get it. It probably takes a skilled photographer and the right lens to do that.

Considering matters of the aesthetic I have just changed the look of this blog. It was not my plan, I just followed the option which came up when I signed in. Before I knew it I could not work out how to get back the old look! Ah well, no attachment there and it's probably worth refreshing the look and maybe my interest in posting. There is a quite a range of templates and colours to choose from. I was quite excited by some of the looks but somehow they didn't feel right. Colour Blue, straight forward, no undue extraneous elements but a bit of a background image to lift it, yer, that's about right. Interesting to see how the different styles affect the way each post might be perceived and thus written.

Silence

2011-08-30T15:15:00.001+01:00

I like the radio but I am also quite happy with a room in silence and more often than not I'll leave it that way - radio off. But today making bread in the kitchen I decided to put on Radio 4. The news of events in Libya came to a close and a program called Soul Music commenced. The programme is described as 'Exploring the impact that Estonian composer Arvo Pärt's piece for piano and violin Spiegel im Spiegel has had on people's lives'. As the program began I was almost immediately moved, not just by the story being told but by the triggering of my own stories by the music, I began to wonder about a whole different set of feelings which the piece might trigger. But this soon passed as the meditative quality of the piece expanded. Dave C came in and I asked him for a comment on the music. Yes, he liked it. I offered that 'for me it evokeds unfolding stillness, and that is the paradox'. How is it that stillness unfolds? Dave C then explained that Spiegel im Spiegel means mirror in the mirror. I did not know this and was taken to my own experience sitting zazen, which I have described as 'like two mirrors facing each other'. Yet some thing else is present in the piece; a sense of loss or of a gap between where we seem to be and where we might like to be. For me this can capture the losses I've experienced in life but also a sort of yearning to return home. The same yearning evoked for me by Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending. And I do see this as a spiritual yearning to return home, to the source. And yet at the same time there is this wanting to be in form, in the world, and this seems part of a paradox; a kind of gap. My friend and 'spiritual yardstick' RM Mugo has told me 'there are no gaps'. I am sure she is right but at my level of experience it seems that there are, but they get filled by the falling into them. This falling, for everything is to some extent falling or changing, seems to be the world, experience unfolding; life. Listening to the comments and stories of people in the program it seemed that a common spiritual understanding was somehow held by all who spoke.

Last night an acquittance said in passing that he loved silence. I thought 'yes, and however much noise there is, it is always silent'. I seem to recall a post on RM Mugo's blog Jade Mountains, pointing for me, to the way everything is cut through with silence. Searching for the post I find, as might be expected many references to silence. Arvo Pärt's piece for piano and violin Spiegel im Spiegel, seems to take people beyond the stories and into the unfolding silence holding the stories, and in that holding to compassion.

Community

2011-08-26T11:33:00.006+01:00

For some time now my simple mobile phone as been 'dying'; the navigator key is almost worn out and the other keys are probably going the same way. I have been reluctant to change it as it does everything I need from a mobile - keeps me in touch by a relatively small number of calls and texts. If it has one failing it is that it only has a low resolution camera. More than once I've thought 'if the camera on my phone were better I take a photo of that. Ah well..'. So, on Wednesday morning I started to do some internet research about replacing the handset to use a rather quaint term. Needles to say hours go by and I come no nearer to knowing what to get. All I wanted was the same again but with a better camera. And thereby is the rub; getting a phone with a good camera moves one in to territory I've ranted on against; the dreaded smartphone!

Now these things are very impressive bits of kit, a phone is the least of it. They do that and email and internet and sat. nav. / GPS and goodness knows what else and on and on with more 'apps' than you can shake a stick at. And they have a camera. So a thing like that, which is basically a palm held computer has the potential to be very addictive. And they do seem to be so; everywhere I see people solipsistically fiddling with them. They are the perfect commodity fetish item- shiny and with untold promise of who knows what; a veritable Aladdin's cave of delight. And my objection to all this is that a device which is nominally about communication causes fragmentation. Users aimlessly chasing they do not know what, internally and externally disconnected. It's a kind of pornography. The other side of the coin is of course the connection. Sociability by sharing pass times that others share (when they do share), the communication by all types of digital social network and the acquisition of useful information. Umm. So, when I come across the information that I could upgrade to this 'bright new world' and get effectively cheaper calls I was hooked! Ah how the mighty have fallen. I txted my friend - 'I have gone over to the dark side my new smartphone arrives tomo' Reply - 'I will pray for you brother'. The phone provider sent me an e-mail advising that I could track the delivery of my 'shiny new phone' (their words not mine!) on line. And I could- picked, loaded to truck, various depots, etc... And within about 24 hours of having taken the bait and placed the order it was in my hand! It took a lot of yesterday setting it up and getting used to it. And the addictive qualities soon came out; it seemed to hold such power over me. I knew it! I was right; they are dangerous! Fortunately I can see the funny side and hopefully I'll move into greater connection without the less helpful side of it all.

Last night's TV had us watching 'The Great Estate: The Rise & Fall of the Council House'. The salient point for me in this was the importance of community and how we have failed to put that at the heart of so many political and financial decisions. An interview with some residents made it so clear - people so want to build local community and take a wholesome pride (not an avaricious pride) in their environment. And yet policy is so often against them. As my partner DC said 'ah, these people could teach this government a thing or two'. Quite so. And the move to make council tenants re-apply for their tenancy, making all contracts short term is bound to undermine community.

And in the community linked by RM Mugo's blog we are reminded how fleeting it all is.

In gassho,

And when?!

2011-08-13T11:31:00.003+01:00

I don't write here now. I think about it from time to time - thoughts pass through the old monkey mind and some times it's less monkey and more rational- but on balance I doubt anyone is reading and since it is all too easy to just bleat and with no real benefit, silence seems to be as well. HOWEVER, after an exasperating time this last few days listening to the sheer garbage spewed out of our appalling government in the light of the riots (they have now arrested over eleven hundred people) and with a sense of frustration that those who patiently try to explain that the problem is due to the fragmentation caused by commercialism, throwing everything to 'the market' and the full out working of late capitalism, simply will not be listened to, I am now, hopefully without ranting, throwing in my (predictable) two peneth worth. The problem is thirty odd years of what has come to be known as Thatcherism! Major and Blair just followed the same path. Now the full scale loony right are in full swing, the world economic system is in a complete mess, bankers are a protected elite - we don't see them rounded up and the justice system running overtime to bring them to book- we are facing huge environmental issues and still we are told we need to grow the economy! It's the economy stupid. Yes, but it needs managed contraction and humanity not money put at the centre. Money has become the end and not the means. Purpose, connection, validation through being part of something bigger than ones self and stability have all been swept away in an crazy chase for economic growth. A growth based upon debt. And a debt not just financial but more importantly environmental, psychological and spiritual. Bored, alienated, disenfranchised groups with no experience of what it is to be a part of something and put in creative effort to build something of real value ie use not monetary value have once again flared up. It is no surprise.

Reading the connections and inspiration page from the Findhorn foundation website today I see this:

Eileen Caddy's Daily Guidance

Guidance for 13 August

Learn to think and feel for others, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Learn to understand and enter fully into their lives and hearts, pouring out love and understanding to them, thereby banishing all criticism, judgement and condemnation. Realise that love transforms and transmutes all bitterness and hatred and that understanding opens up hearts that have been closed and have remained cold and unresponsive. Put into practice in your life those words, "Resist not evil but overcome evil with good." It is easier said than done, but until it is done and lived, there cannot be peace and goodwill to all humanity. These words have been heard, read and preached down the ages, but they have not been lived; that is why there are wars, destruction, evil and hatred in the world. It will go on until humanity learns to live a life and not just talk about it, learns to make these wonderful words live and vibrate in everyday life.

It's not easy to be expansive enough to hold Cameron et al in my heart. And just as the most compassionate response to someone trying to beat you up is often a self defensive strike back, it's time we all took time to reflect upon just who is beating up whom.

Good night, sleep well.

2011-05-25T23:14:00.003+01:00

I've well got out of the blog habit but the following seemed worth a post.

I've been back at Cluny as well as Iona, Newcastle, Cambridge and back here at Cluny again. Tonight I found out that the last thing the night porter does is to meditate for a short time in the sanctuary; a blessing on the house. H0w lovely, a bit like being tucked up in bed by a parent, prays said.

Good TV

2011-02-03T21:33:00.003Z

I've got completely out of the habit of blogging, but after watching Human Planet I was inspired to post - such spirit in the peoples shown in this program. Then I watched Outnumbered; once again such spirit and great humour! TV at its best.

In gassho.

Night out

2010-09-23T11:03:00.003+01:00

I've not felt like posting of late. But last night I went out for a drink with some ex work colleagues and then joined them (unexpectedly) for a meal. There was a lot of warmth there, partly on the surface but more at a deeper unspoken level. At the surface some of the interaction was typical of a 'night out' and through all that shone and at times I could see a bright light.

Kindness

2010-08-15T22:34:00.003+01:00

I was just telling my mother about seeing Joanna to return the Ladybird book (see last posting). Joanna had expressed to me how kind she had always found my mother, all those years ago when we lived close by. My mother tonight expressed further warm memories regarding Joanna and told how Joanna had dug up four rose bushes from her garden and brought them down to us one Christmas morning as a gift; one each. I recall them planted in the small front garden in front of the bay window of our rented ground floor flat. In the telling came over a warmth and humanity I have failed to convey above.

Throwing stuff out

2010-08-12T16:53:00.008+01:00

Yesterday I did some serious 'life laundry' going through loads of financial paper work stuff; tax, pensions and 'investments'. I say 'investments', note the quotation marks; at the moment it all seems worth slightly less than it cost to buy! I've been putting off a proper sort through a heap of pension statement stuff for years; just shoving each incomprehensible piece of correspondence to the end of a pile in a carrier bag. I hate all that stuff. They all say the same; '...this is what you might get [but it's any ones guess if you will]... markets... up... down...' Basically this correspondence is not worth the paper it's written on except it is required to comply with the rules to 'protect' the industry... Ugh. Eventually I reduced it all down to the latest statements etc and after throwing out all the original bumf the pile comes down to a few sheets. Quite satisfying! Moving on with this in to other papers; redundant instruction manuals, school certificates, old training course notes etc., etc., I have the thought, particularly when looking through stuff that the inland revenue might ask me to reproduce, that a self, a history is at least as real as all this! One can't just bin it all; the tax man will have his way, I do need to keep P11D and P60 forms, he may yet send an other tax return! But also a sense of the redundant; past financial projections, forgotten manuals for equipment which has been thrown away... Life now moved on from then. A mix then between junk, and the 'reality' of earning a living and keeping the tax man happy.

Then on a more human level an old school photo and and old Ladybird book about electricity. I recall how things seemed for me when that photo was taken and I don't think it's just projection that I can see it in the eyes of the little kid; uncertainty. I looked in the book, it used to be my favorite, I loved anything to do with electricity, inside is written 'To David, love from Joanna. 1973' I would have been six years old. Joanna is the mother of a school class mate and she is still alive; I decided to return the book to her so she could reconnect with giving it.

Today I looked at the book, the school picture and the now tidied financial stuff and I could feel little David having traveled that journey from six to forty three; clear inner child connection. What a lovely light in the world and all of us have such light. And I recall this post and having returned once more from Cluny I again find that I miss it or rather the the rhythms of life and the people there.

What to do?

2010-08-11T12:52:00.004+01:00

I've been back in Newcastle for over a week now and I am still missing Cluny. A few potential work leads come up but very little. How do I feel about work? I need to be involved and doing but when I look at the job descriptions and think of what it is likely to be like... my heart sinks. I am seriously drawn to a long term commitment to the Findhorn community. Am I really thinking this? Me!? Can I find a job and build a life here that feels fulfilling? Going to live in community throws away a lot. Separating out fantasy, desire and deep longing is not easy.

Despite all this I am ok. I'll give the work thing here a bit longer and if nothing resolves then the time may yet come to go and live in community for awhile.

Reviewing posts I see a certain flavor over the past year or so coming through. I am not sure if this reflects the full story of my life over that time, more the parts that seemed 'blogable' and even then often the posts are highly condensed, telegraphic in nature. It's often just using the post to see if the words feel true; true enough to stand for the whole web to see.

Wounding

2010-07-25T13:24:00.003+01:00

Just what was it last night that took me to such a dark angry space. One person in the assembled company became the focus of several 'button pressing' areas, a constellation of sore spots, deep wounds. I sat with it able to watch, to acknowledge but all too soon I was becoming; the limit of my containment at that time reached. Going to bed that vile pain of fresh anger scabbing over old wounds, fear lashing out, tender heart fled to perceived safety. And this morning biter the grief. Last night in bed searching for the wounds which are the root of all this and again today staring at the scaring; layers, as the scab gets torn time and again. Pain body feeding. Familiar themes of (perceived?) rejection and isolation.

I'll need to spend time opening out the patterns and looking for the lessons; the wisdom to heal the sore places. What will I need to let go, what will I need to accept?

Stories, stories, mind spun stories...

Acceptance

2010-07-15T17:35:00.003+01:00

After a full and somewhat surprising day yesterday I listened to Mahler V before going to sleep. With soft sweet tears of who knows what I felt that same gentle longing to 'go home' in the spiritual sense that The lark ascending also gives rise to in me. I listened to The lark and again the feeling was there. No bitterness or depressive desperation, just a sense of the source, home yet not home. And then I thought of life and all that it affords... It had been a strange day... We come out of the void to be, to know... and it is good.

It rained heavily during the night and this morning the maintenance shed roof was leaking. We adjusted ourselves around the puddles and drips to share and tune-in before work. The bucket was always in the wrong place. I recalled a zen koan and told it;

'As the roof was leaking the master asked two monks to fetch something. One returned with a bucket the other a basket. The first was reprimanded the second praised.'

Klass who has been here for years said 'Yes, just accept it.'

I note my angel for today is acceptance. And today it seems almost easy. I seem to be in the middle of life again, which even if challenging feels so much better than when it or I seemed stuck.

Missing Dave

2010-07-06T13:43:00.003+01:00

I am missing Dave! He was here last week and it was great. A bit difficult (to balance all the different aspects of being here) but great.

I am keeping busy, which is also great and tiring. It seems like much longer than five weeks since I left Newcastle to come up here. I am feeling ready for the peace of my own space that home is all about. But I also know that I need to have useful meaningful work...

I've not been posting much and that's because I have not felt the need to do so. That's probably because of the sharing we all do here at the start of each morning and afternoon.

Time to dash - afternoon shift is just about to start...

Great doing

2010-06-16T18:49:00.004+01:00

Well, it's a while since my last post. It is just over two weeks since I traveled up here to Cluny. I was here for four nights and as well as preparing for the next week I helped out in maintenance dept. before traveling (starting at 4-30AM!) to Traigh Bhan the Findhorn Foundation retreat house on Iona. I had a great week on Iona, working with Niels (the custodian of Traigh Bhan) during 'working week', replacing double glazing units and doing other joinery and misc. work. What joy to be in such a wonderful place doing useful work I enjoy with great people! Erica (one of the Iona group) was cooking for us and it was great to get to know her; the three of us were a great team and we all enjoyed a joyous grace filled week together putting back into the beautiful Traigh Bhan. Some of the glazing units are just short of 6 foot by 2 foot and quite a challenge to handle but Niels and I were in a wonderful harmony with each other and so even managed a bit of humorous exchange which naturally eased the tension of working with large, heavy, fragile items in difficult access conditions on a remote island. There were many wonderful times during that week and much was done. The joyous connection we all shared is truly special and extended out to include Dave and Ian (Neils' partner).

I returned here last Saturday and I am now once more with maintenance dept. using my skills and being useful, which is a joy. Dave is due to come up here a week Sunday and will stay for a week at Erica's, which is great. I still have no idea how long to stay here for, but that will become more clear I guess over the next couple of weeks.

Since coming here I've had so much opportunity to express my talents and skills and to connect, which has really made me feel alive again, which is a good way to feel on the eve of my 43rd birthday. A day without work is indeed a day without food.

Flowing on

2010-05-03T11:23:00.003+01:00

I've not been doing very much at all lately and it's no good for me! I am just not cut out for being idle. And there is no spiritual 'progress' in it for me at present either. Oh, that's not true, the time has been teaching, what I meant was that I've not been able to get in to deep states of inner peace! No, too much uncertainty about where I am headed and too much need to use my talents for that.

Anyway, have a look at this on Jade Mountains. Much teaching in that I think.

As there seems to be no work coming my way I plan to spend the summer working at Findhorn, if I can get things to work out that way. We are not without some power to direct the flow of our life and I can't think of any more favorable way to flow than spending the time working in an environment I like. No need to be clever here about flow, time and all that, just need to be engaging with it; 'a day without work is a day without food' and all that.

Rose

2010-04-21T10:05:00.004+01:00

I've not posted much of late; I've felt stuck and without much to say.

But the rose plant featured in this post is looking quite splendid now and the other day when Dave came into my study (where I've moved the rose so as to be by a sunny window) I noted his intake of breath. Then I got the following in an e-mail from him:

'My love - thank you for bringing our rose back to life. It took my breath away, and triggered a memory of these words, which - coincidentally? - also echo with my memories of traigh bhan and the song that Niels loves to dance to. The rose is what pulls it all together. D xxx

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always –
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

T.S. Eliot
Little Gidding'

I went to see Tim Pickles in Keswick on Monday. I am till resisting not knowing what to do, but again, like in February, a shift into accepting that things are as they need to be is sort of there. Spring seems to be here and I need to play!

Life force

2010-03-20T12:43:00.003Z

As part of the volunteer work I've been doing I helped someone get a tenancy on a flat and thus get out of emergency accommodation. Looking around the flat I recalled similar local authority properties that my grandparents and other relatives lived in. I recalled the 'propellant' for my parents to buy their own house and my 'propellant' to shift from working to middle class life, although I still feel very connected to my roots. Apparently this flat had been occupied by an elderly woman who had lived there since it was built (I think in the 1950's or 60's). Later I looked at the keys; three sets one with a tag attached. On the tag was written 'Mam'. In to my focus came the loss for someone of their mother, clearing her home and returning the keys. I pictured for some reason a daughter and her loss... But I've no idea of the 'real' stories behind that key tag. And now new tenants will soon move into the flat; endings and beginnings...

My brother Mike (Michael) rang this morning; could I help with Ed's home work. Ed(ward) is my nephew, he is about twelve years old and I am one of his godparents, although I have little opportunity to influence his development as we live in separate cities and whilst my brother and I get on, we aren't the closest. The homework turned out to be be about force, levers and turning moments, I was able over the phone to explain the theory and how to workout the figures. Mike said that 'to Ed, force is Star Wars and all that'. The opportunities for learning exploded in my mind... Different concepts of force, power, connection, communication, the meaning of words, myth, science, all sorts. I chuckled and said 'well, you could go the extra mile and explain to him that some times the same word has different meanings...'. I went on to suggest that they got a broom shank and made some simple scales, playing about with the pivot point and the weights needed to get them to balance so Ed could see and feel what all this Moment = Force X Distance stuff is about.

I see Ed has no experience of the environs of his great grand parents, those local authority estates that came to my mind as I looked around that flat, he is separated from and connected to his great grandparents in ways he can't see. I hope that one day he will hold some understanding not just of the mathematical and scientific concepts he is learning now but also of the wisdom teachings which are partly hinted at by the movie he enjoys so much, that one day he will have a rich answer to 'what is force?' and enjoy the chuckle his uncle had on hearing his 'confusion' this morning...

Awareness

2010-03-14T18:02:00.005Z

I am feeling a lot brighter, a lot lighter. The life passing through is more agreeable, or there is more agreeableness. It's part the longer, lighter days and part connections with people. And it feels like the balance of Being and doing might become more comfortable; the next crop (see previous postings) might be soon.

Being and doing, awareness and 'who is it that does?' True Self and the various aspects of self are what I take Rev Master Mugo to be pointing to in this post on Jade Mountains. The whole question of what to do with ones life seems to me to remain which ever way one does. Life is expressing, Being is, doing unfolds. Responding to what is creatively and authentically without adding or neglecting. Sounds simple, but I rarely find it that way.

It all passes, how will it be later, how will I feel? What actually changes? Is it actually much different when I feel different? Sun faced Buddha, moon faced Buddha.

Returning?

2010-03-09T11:10:00.004Z

I've just had to re-format my CV and re-send it off to the agency that I am using to find a bit of work. I have always had and still have, a dislike of preparing my CV. The whole thing gives me that wanting it done before I start feeling; I do not want to be doing it. What is all that about? At bottom I guess it's the pulling together from any number of stories and the general pool of information some kind of engrossing, wow look at this synopsis of my working life. This inevitably is not right for every potential employer and in any case I've never been much good at the embroidering seemingly so popular in these things. Ach, I don't want to think about it...

And do I want to be returning to the construction industry? I've mixed views. I love the getting things done, the creativity, but the masks, the games, they are not always worn and played so well. The very worst of capitalism and the Western yang approach seem to be most at home in the construction industry that I've known. That said, I've also known some real care and camaraderie with those I've worked along side.

Well, we'll see what comes long. The break I've had from the industry over the last five months or so has been quite a challenge forcing me to look within. Any return to the industry will be from this place. It's not the first time I've withdrawn, a step back. I notice this on Jade Mountains and I would say:

Going away
returning makes the old new

But I don't think it's just a case of a fresh pair of eyes on old ground that I should pursue work wise. The ground probably should have a tweak too.

We'll see.

In the head

2010-02-24T15:30:00.007Z

I get too stuck in my head. I've known this for ages of course and there is no Zen in it! But then the head does have its place. Anyway, I've just come back from a very renewing time in Keswick.

I read on Jade Mountains : 'Why is life special?'. I left a comment and remember this response from DC to my question 'what's that line of Adorno's about the colour amidst the grey?':

As discussed (the second one always
brings a lump to my
throat!)

‘Grayness could not fill us with despair if our minds did not harbor the concept of different colors, scattered traces of which are not absent from the negative whole.’
(Adorno, Negative
Dialectics,
377–8.)

‘Peace is the state of distinctness without domination, with the distinct participating in each other.’
(Adorno,
‘Subject and object’, in The
Essential Frankfurt School
Reader, ed.
Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1978),
497–511 (p.
500).)

D xx

But staying in the head is no good. I've been feeling like a fallow field, desperate to grow some new crop. And I've just pushed it round and round in my head, that and other stuff. I've tried to just sit with it. But there has been resistance. I've been struggling rather than sitting. There is change and growth in this period though. And I've known all along (in the heart) that it is ok.

How it is

2010-02-16T23:46:00.004Z

What do I have to say? Nothing much more than in this post.

I feel better than last week, less depressed. I think it helps to accept that I am doing something; I am sitting with what it is I am feeling, what it is that I want, fear etc. And I've booked for DC and I to return to Traigh Bhan at Easter. And I've a day or two in Keswick next week.

I did some citizen advocacy volunteer 'work' today. I have so much to be thankful for and so much to offer. I really do need to find a new creative outlet; some great project.

Shift

2010-02-13T11:49:00.004Z

I feel something has shifted. Don't know what. I've sort of stopped struggling to find what to do, I am being more patient. I was resisting.

The small potted rose which DC bought for me as a valentine gift some years ago has put out some new leaves. Tenacious little thing; it often looks like it might be at the end, then it has an other go. It probably needs more sun as it is next to a North facing window on the sideboard. I know I need more sun! Roll on spring!

What do I do?

2010-02-03T18:17:00.004Z

I feel dreadful. I am skirting around the rim of depression. I don't want to write about this and thereby make it more real, but on the other hand it's no good resiting it, denying it.

I have lost my purpose. After the mega stress at work and that awful day in 2003 when I realised I'd got way out of my depth and with potentially deadly consequences and the build up / spiral down to depression in 2004 followed by the saving transition to acceptance gained at Findhorn in 2006, I moved the self work I started to get well again in 2004 in to Buddhism and no-self. And I was doing well but by 2007 it was obvious that work was not nourishing me and I wanted more time to study what might be called Eastern philosophy/spirituality. In practice I found the time and have probably come to a natural plateau in study. But the work situation became less and less satisfactory with the winding-up of core business and the move to schools projects. I felt desperately the need to do something else; a something I still can't find despite leaving work to really sit with what I could do. And there have been other more private issues. And it is so painful, the feeling of isolation is like a huge weight on my chest. In fact it seems like a weight in every cell. I've got to shed this, got to feel each cell whole and happy.

I need to be part of something I feel is of use and uses my talents; something which gives me joy.

Poem

2010-01-23T11:55:00.004Z

I read Jade Mountains, and liked the poem in this post. Together with the Eckhart Tolle I've been listening to, it reminds me of the distinction between I and me; the experiencer and the experienced.

I (or rather me, my ego self) is trying to find what I want to do with my life these days. What do I enjoy, what work should I look for, how do I find a group to connect with in some shared purpose? I feel a strong need to be creative. I can't just sit and watch.

I am about to start some volunteer work. That should help.

Mandelbrot set

2010-01-15T23:23:00.003Z

DC and I watched a program about chaos and fractals last night. Self similar properties and feedback based upon recursion are to be seen everywhere in the natural world; simple feedback generating complex (chaotic) results. The Mandelbrot set, which has apparently been described as the thumbprint of God is a famous fractal. This theory seems to show how land, cells, plants etc evolve into the forms we see. And as I was reading about how we send out signals to life about what we want and so attract the same, or to put it an other way I suppose you could say we find that for which we look, it occurred to me that our world view and life are a feedback loop. Nothing new in that; angry people get in to fights and thus get more angry for example. But consider chaos theory and we see how the feedback loop generates much more complex situations... And is this not our state of consciousness, our life, self similar recursion? The Mandelbrot set might not just be a way of looking at forms in the natural world, it might show how the seeds of our karma generate the world we call our life... Now that puts an even more interesting spin on the thumbprint of God. I suppose I am musing on the expansion of forms out of the void. Not just from a material world view but maybe from a mind only school view.

I am a bit too tried to expand on this, but you get the gist.

Wild Love

2010-01-13T22:41:00.005Z

DC and I saw the movie 'Sex and drugs and rock and roll' about Ian Dury, last weekend. Fantastic! Dury's 'I am not here to be f***ing remembered I am here to live!' a shout to us all!
Dury did not have an 'easy' life. Rediscovering the music I bought a few tracks over the net for my MP3 player. Such energy.

Walking over the town moor the other day, I noticed a sucking sound and turned to see a whirl pool vortex sucking in air where the lake formed by snow melt water was being drained through a pipe under the path to the other side of the path. This drainage arrangement was put in a few years ago and makes the path much more usable. Anyway, I rolled a snowball and threw it into the vortex. Good shot. The sucking stopped then as the ball rolled out started again. The ball circled the vortex before being sucked in and down... Like Alice in wonderland I thought and looked to the other end of the pipe... would it come out? Pop, there it was. Were we now in wonderland, samsara transformed?... Buurr, too cold for this... enough poetic day dreaming, time to walk on, a warm home beckoned.

Just finished reading Wild Love by Gill Edwards. I enjoyed it. Some parts I found not quite in tune with my thinking/feeling but much of it is. I particularly like her exploration of the difference as she sees it between co-dependant merging v connection with Oneness and separation v individuation. Much along the lines of my own thoughts all that.

And on the subject of merging into the collective verses individuation and the path to awakening, I note the writers of Star Trek Voyager explore this with the Borg. In a repeat episode we watched recently, Seven of Nine is severed from the Borg collective and her human body starts to regenerate but she still thinks as Borg and can't bear the pain of separation and longs to be reconnected. She can only hear her own mind and longs to hear the others again. The Borg assimilate; no room for individuation, no harmony of difference in unity. This is co-dependant merging, but Seven of Nine is 'liberated' and must face the illusion of her isolation. She must take up the challenge of discovering her identity and connection to not just the Borg but to the universe. Quite a challenge that! Time passes, as it appears to, and she settles down to become to use those school report terms, a useful member of the team... Which is to say, assimilated into the American way...

Dealing with our pains and accepting what is while remaining open to the joy of life is no simple challenge. It is unconditional love for each and every aspect of our experience not a stoic knuckling down. It requires an infinite expansion of consciousness, there is always more 'work' to do to see that we are perfect as we are. No wonder it sometimes feels like Alice in Wonderland! Hit me with your rhythm stick!

Which is NOT to say party on without a care but care to and as we party on.

Joy

2010-01-06T23:11:00.004Z

Frosty the snowman still stands and now wears a new snow coat! This is like proper winter. It is not a 'big freeze' as some would have it; I recall when this was just winter weather.

Although I am still sitting with what the next stage in my life should be, what it is that might make me feel enthused, purposeful and joyful, it is nice to be free to enjoy the weather without the battle to and from work. Yesterday I went to see friends who live 'in the country' and had a lovely time walking in the snow enjoying good company. There was a bit of adventure with the car as well; it nearly got stranded in a ford and then almost had to be abandoned in the snow! But faint heart... and all that... and so car and I did get safely back home.

Just seen a documentary about dogs on TV; it seems they think more like us than chimps. The program asked; what is the special bond between man and dog? And although not described in the following terms, the answer might be said to be that we seem to be able to see into each others Buddha nature; unconditional love. I think it's when two beings have an enough shared form, ie similarities or understanding, that a window opens to make it easier to connect with our (true) nature. Form's need to hold both separation and unity at once drives us to connect, to hold lightly our manifestation of Source. Not separation but individuation. And this holds I think in all our relationships... Interestingly, dogs seem to have been bred by taking from the less aggressive wolves in a pack; those exhibiting more juvenile tendencies. Might this be seen as those with less ego? Most spiritual traditions regard the innocence of childhood as close to Source.

And tomorrow I must go shopping, I forgot get salt, crackers and cheese today. Oh, and I notice a should statement above; that inner critic eh?

Snow

2010-01-01T14:22:00.002Z

We made a snowman today!

Patting him...

Oops, I look a bit strange in this one!

Drying out after...

Thankfully we are a bit more permanent than frosty the snowman, even though all passes!

May the new year bring peace and joy!

Best wishes for the season

2009-12-24T19:45:00.003Z

I am reading 'You have to say something' by Dainin Katagiri. A line in this moved me tonight;

Dharma- Oneness, Totality, Wholeness- needs you, whoever you are.

Quite so.

May peace prevail on earth.

Best wishes for the season. May the new year be good for us all.

Beautiful Movie

2009-12-18T23:35:00.004Z

DC and I have just returned from the cinema. We saw Departures. A very beautiful movie. Very moving. Life shown; immanent and transcendent.

In gassho.

The Ridiculous

2009-12-17T22:05:00.006Z

After an other training session to be a citizen advocate I had lunch with Ian B today. Ian and I talked about being, the unknowable nature of 'reality', the things we can know, the way the universe presents its self in our experience, psychology, individuation, ones 'stuff' / psychological baggage, meaning, purpose, all that stuff. And it came around to me saying that I feel responsible for choosing to choose AND making my life as meaningful and happy as possible. And Ian pointed out to me that there is no reason I should feel responsible for that. At which point I saw just how my inner critic never misses a chance. That said no one can eat for us; we each must do our own 'work'. But Ian has a point and as he said, not very many people really take a good look at the meaning of (their) life AND try to live authentically as a result, so I might go easy with myself for finding it tough at times. Which is much what my friend Graeme was saying yesterday to me after we finished installing the last of his new windows.

We covered quite a bit of ground in short time pulling various bits of philosophy, psychology and spirituality into the mix and I felt the need to bring it back to two points; we need to DO and we need to SHARE. And I talked a little about creating sacred space in a sharing circle and how there is almost no space where this happens in Western society at this time and how I think that people are afraid of such sharing as it involves moving to look inward and to dismantle defenses. This prompted Ian to say that in flamenco the coming together of people is recognised and given a name, I can't recall the details, but the recognition is I feel, important.

After lunch I did a few odd jobs and found myself in B&Q warehouse to get some screws etc. where I saw for sale electric fires that include an LCD display screen showing a recording of a real fire! It was not obvious where the heat came out; the screen was the main part of the fire AND it had sound, the sound of a crackling fire! Price; just under £700. Talk about from the sublime to the ridiculous! This is no way for human beings to live, people have got to wake up!

Rant, rant... Ah well... I seem to be keeping occupied...

It has been good sharing these past few days.

And in closing I recall that even though the mirror has no stand, no place for dust to settle, we still need to wipe the dust away.

Samadhi

2009-12-13T17:02:00.004Z

Yesterday my friend Graeme and I replaced the window and backdoor to the kitchen of his home. His partner made cake and helped a bit too. Later I picked up DC and the four of us had dinner at theirs. I really enjoyed the work and the company; purpose and connection and being in my body, my mind on the work. Removing frames from rubble walls and replacing with new needs care and a bit of strength together with skill. The dance of working with someone on a physical project like that is something I've not done for a while and it made me remember just how much is involved and how good it is to share that way. Graeme and I worked well together and we mixed in some banter and theatre too! The theatre playing in the construction of masculinities area; two middle aged middle class gay men playing with straight working class lad masks; 'ahll reet pet, well wiv got the old one oot so will be off, see ya tha mora, ah no, wa gannin tu tony's will seeya Thursda... And she was all upset coz wid left the winda oot...'

I have recently had three sessions of psychotherapy. I sort of stumbled into this after a bit of a freebie chat with my old CBT therapist and to be honest I am not sure about how much time and money to spend on it. Things have been tough lately (with relationship and work issues) and I am in a bit of an existential crisis but I can see that crisis as coming out of and giving rise to opportunity and really I feel fairly ok about me. So what issue might seem salient? Well, the thing that always comes up for me whenever I look at my psychological baggage is my relation to my past. To be specific, accepting that I was twenty four before I came out. And I have this tendency to let my inner critic beat me up about this and tell me that I must have just been 'asleep' and wasting my life. And when I see creative lively young people my inner critic beats me up saying that they are doing so much yet when I was their age I was just shut down and wasting life. And then there is the thing about feeling a bit of a misfit / being on the outside of things. That said I am often right in the middle!

So, my therapist was putting forward last time that my childhood may have lacked rough and tumble and that this led to my being isolated from the other boys. Well, I really don't think that I wanted it and that wasn't the reason for the isolation. Anyway, yesterday made me remember that throughout a lot of my teens I was involved in some quite sizeable DIY projects; plumbing, tiling, heating, woodwork, windows, electrics etc. And I learned all this fairly much on my own. I was the driving force behind a lot of projects at a young age. Ok, so I have this grief for not spending that time enjoying exploring sex with other boys of my age but I was not wasting the time. And all of those projects were in a way a continuation from the childhood years spent taking things to bits and not paying rough and tumble etc with the other boys. And I joked about this with Graeme yesterday and said something to the effect of '...and just how capable is my therapist when it comes to this sort of practical work... rough and tumble... machismo... sensitive to the needs of this sort of job etc...?' In other words, happiness, constructions of self (including masculinities), purpose and connection, past and present form a complex and varied mix and I am ok. And the pain and the suffering and the developmental path is a result of complex karma and it's important not to see things just in classical psycho therapeutic terms. Even if those terms do push a few buttons and leave me wondering... Which brings me round to other things that came out of the session not the last of which is, as DC pointed out, that I don't like incomplete gestalt! And my next session is not until the end of January!

And practice, where does all this sit with practice? No enlightenment outside of daily life. Variety is the spice of life, and I think we need it; the void desires to be and to know, to experience in a human life a full and rich aliveness. I agree with those that recommend a spiritual path that expands one's life in the dualistic realm as well as the non-dual realm. In other words take a bit of individuation with your meditation. Expand and explore as many aspects of being as seems viable, share in lots of ways. I sort of brought the conversation around to this point last night and the fact that in the West at this time we have so few areas where we come together to share deeply in open acceptance. I talked about creating sacred space and sharing in the way which is so easy in the Findhorn community and Graeme talked of his experience in circle sharings but somehow I felt it was falling on stony ground. Why is this? I think our society lacks meaningful ritual in this regard and we fear creating such space for two reasons; first because we often live defended and anaesthetised lives and the idea of going to a place of authenticity is thus a challenge and secondly because we also recognise the dangers of self indulgence, that sharing might move us not away from ego but further into it. This second fear is I think a misconception based upon a the idea that in sharing one keeps to a fixed notion of self. Yet my experience is that forming sacred space by sharing helps in moving from I to me; it helps in owning shadow and disidentification. And key to all this is what I suspect I don't write much or well of but sometimes hint at in this blog; emotion. I often talk and write 'I think...' but all the time I am feeling. I do feel that I am in touch with my feelings I don't think that I am particularly repressing them but I am also analysing. And in expressing 'where I (or in a more wholesome sense me) is at' it is my habit to analyse probably too much. Whereas, replacing windows and doors like yesterday I was fairly much just being doing; as close as I probably get to positive samadhi. Working with others I felt with not separate. Thanks Graeme.

Rainbows

2009-12-10T22:21:00.003Z

It has not been an easy year for me and thus not for those who love me. But I've much to be thankful for.

I recall:

‘Grayness could not fill us with despair if our minds did not harbor the concept of different colors, scattered traces of which are not absent from the negative whole.’
(Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 377–8.)

Thanks to DC for giving me access to the language.

Watching

2009-11-22T22:25:00.005Z

To follow on from the last posting (Flight), the other side of the coin so to speak is the stillness of home, for we are already home in the spiritual sense, the journey to see that, to return to where we never left. Recent postings on Jade Mountains and thinkBuddha.org got me to thinking about the stream of consciousness, the river of life. Becoming the watcher, the stillness, acceptance.

The river analogy can be pushed a bit too before the imagery fails. As we age, like the river, we broaden, run slower but deeper. The journey down river valley from mountain spring to the ocean does seem to resonate with the shape of the ageing our lives to some extent. But the watcher stands still in the stream and the stream ages.

The day to day practice of the journey home is I suppose, at the intersection of watching and action. The Jade Mountains post pointing for me to deep connection with what one is doing. Deeper than one might be aware. Knowing at some level that this or that action is an honest expression of life. The thinkingBuddha post looking at the nature of perception is a reminder that we don't in ordinary awareness get the whole picture. We move the center and size of our awareness and in the process co-create ourselves and the world. I am thinking here of my experience in zazen. And then there is time to consider and the gap between where my awareness seems to have just been and now, except now always seems to have just moved on ahead of me... This gap (and) the interplay between watcher and watched, stillness and movement.

(Is it that) somehow as we 'watch' the lark's flight and feel a gap (the gap?) we become aware of both this side of the the gap and the other, for we are already home and yet not(?) Who watches and from where?

Flight

2009-11-16T22:40:00.004Z

When I hear the lark ascend in Vaughan Williams' The lark ascending I feel a just out of reachness, like the lark can't quite get there, like we (or should I say I) can't quite get there. Where ever there is. Does the music point to that feeling of wanting to go home in the spiritual sense? Am I just confusing this with some existential feeling of being out of kilter? And in (an adult's) crying this same out of reachness, like the tears try to fill the gap. Such crying could be over any loss and not closely connected to spiritual home sickness. Yet there is I suppose, at the root of all pain, a gap between where we feel we want or need to be and where the universe appears to have placed us. A gap born of our illusion of separation, our incarnation in the physical body in the material world.

(Setting aside yet sparing a thought for those with terrible physical pain and) thinking of emotional suffering, the pain of impeded heart connection can't be so far from our spiritual home sickness. The desire for unity flavored by attachments, form desiring form. This way of taking an interest, that way of reacting to events etc. mirrored and projected in each individual's awareness as personalities interact. And in the mirroring and projections how much authenticity? How close the less adapted selves? And how close the path of adaption of each self? What is the complexity of our interactions with each other? How big the gap in each exchange? What is it that draws one into various forms of intimacy with others? How many aspects of ourselves can we connect with in an other? Such complex chemistry, each preference moving us from unconditional love to romantic attachment. Our aloneness reaching out.

Intellectualising it doesn't take away the feelings. Fly high dear lark.

Evolution

2009-11-14T22:13:00.006Z

What is the relationship of the evolutionary biology model of life on earth to the perennial philosophy? No, I am not thinking about why Richard Dawkins is wrong, or rather why is it that he misses the key to the whole does God exist argument? Namely that there is no Archimedian point, it's all interdependently originated and he doesn't seem to get the point about the definition of God. If you want to debate first define your terms and all that. But let's not get into that argument, Voltaire is attributed with 'God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.

Evolutionary biology sits comfortably for me within interdependent origination. There seems to be in the void a desire to be, to give rise to as many forms as we see, and there are lots of forms, lots of creatures and lots of things. None of this sheds much light on the ground of being, the nature of the void, the unanswerable question 'is it divine?' It's not just about the mechanism by which forms emerge, the nature of the observer needs to be considered.

Anyway, the question I was thinking about is the relationship between desire and enlightenment. Now, as I understand it, most spiritual traditions can be summed up by the perennial philosophy, which broadly speaking, tels us to practice non-attachment, see the emptiness in things and aim to stop being dragged around by desire. With this approach acceptance or compassion arises and we become an expression of the source, charitable love. Bingo, enlightenment. Would that it were that quick and simple! But, to return to the question, 'what's this got to do with desire, and what's that got to do with evolutionary biology?'. Well, desire to survive is the basis of evolution and evolution seems to have given the universe human beings, the most aware creatures in the material world. You see that I acknowledge the problem of not having an Archimedian point; reality is bounded by our experience, so we can't limit it just to the material, so we can't rule out more aware beings. Indeed, from a spiritual point of view we assume that there are more aware beings, but at this point we move out of the limits of the material world away from form is form. Yet it is in a human life that we have the chance to practice a spiritual tradition, to seek enlightenment. And so the void in generating forms, in generating evolution (including desire) gives rise to the opportunity for enlightenment. Desire being an interesting link, an interesting way to look at things, a frame (which I think of as a device by which we might understand the way the void forms by folding forms over each other), is the driving force behind all this including the opportunity for enlightenment. Unless I've got something very wrong in my thinking. But then I recall, from my post in January on Vitality;

...that in his book 'Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist' DT Suzuki writes about trisna (tanha) as:...more deeply rooted than we imagine, as it grows straight out of the root of karuna.

So I've had this sort of thought running around in my head for a bit it would seem. And why is it of interest? Because, I think it points to a very important question; what is it that one should desire? What is a life well lived?

Lions

2009-11-11T22:15:00.004Z

I've just watched BBC4's Timeshift program about the Clyde shipyards and the men who worked there. The series has been looking at the great ocean liners and hence this program about the yards. It's the same old British industrial story; men like lions working in appalling conditions demonstrating some of the very best of human nature who were let down by under investment. There were some very moving moments in the program when determination, inventiveness, skill, comradeship and fantastic good will shone through. Most British heavy industry has gone now. No one wants to see the appalling conditions revisited but that we have not reshaped those industries into their modern equivalents forming part of a 'sustainable' future is I think, regrettable.

A thought for those who suffered in those yards.

Grieving

2009-11-06T15:18:00.004Z

I was going to do the introductory retreat at Throsell this weekend but have just cancelled. This is the second time I have planned to go and then cancelled. This time it became apparent that I am at present in no fit state to do it. I am distraught. And that is no way to be at the start of a potentially fairly demanding retreat.

Why am I distraught? Can't say in public. But the big life shaping items are under pressure. And practice, is it the foundation of my copping? To be honest, it helps but it is clear to me that I am nowhere near the type for whom non-attachment and a relaxed view of life comes naturally. But then who is? To care, to really care in the widest way available to me, to try to be true to what I sense is before me, is f***ing hard. And I, like others have many attachments and when time takes things away I need to grieve. And that is painful, too painful I feel to cope with in retreat, I'd rather be in my usual surroundings with my usual degree of notional control; home. May the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas help me see the right way home, because the way has been unclear for me, let alone The Way. And I point here to one more loss; I will always let mySelf down because I am (only?) a self and that self can't at this point commit wholeheartedly to Self. At times I can't even separate out the conflicting demands of my head, heart and intuition. And I feel that I've not done well in recent years finding joy and purpose and integrating those in a playful way with practice.

But not all is maelstrom, no, a stillness is present.

Everything and Love

2009-10-30T17:24:00.010Z

I want to write about everything. So I have labeled this post Form. And that is where we start; form. In outline, all forms are interconnected and thus not knowable in themselves. For example, the mug to my left on the desk came from clay and is glazed. There will be a hole where the clay was removed, ditto the glaze. The energy used in transporting and making the mug will have resulted in CO2 in the atmosphere etc. etc. And I can only see it with my vision and only then in the way that I look at it. I don't get all the details,even if I look closely at it. And the colours are not the same to me as for a bee. And I can't help but see a mug, which a bee would not see. The world that a bee or a dog knows is not the world that I know. And we as humans don't have the last word on what is, we just think we do, that's just a habit we have. Every thing is connected including our perception of things. What is, is the unknowable void, empty and folded upon its self to give rise to form and in so doing making manifest its desire to be, to know. And some unknowable aspect of this desires an amazing variety of forms. Just think how many types of grass there are, let alone all the other forms, chairs, trees etc. And then the sentient beings including human beings with our amazing minds. And at mind we see that all we have is our own experience. Sit in meditation and see thoughts and sensations come and go. But who sits? Where to focus attention, inside or out, is there a difference, who is focusing, what is the will? Thinking, thinking, just sit with open awareness. Deep inside, in the body-mind a sense of stillness embracing all, refusing not a thing. Only our thoughts judge. Being accepts and is, all there is in any moment.

Each contains the other, yin and yang, no dark without light. And everywhere is change, yang flowing to yin which gives birth to yang. Without change there would be no life. The breath would not enter and leave, the oxygen would not flow in the blood. And in meditation this is seen, the constant flow of change. And my awareness always just behind time, just behind where the universe is. I hear a noise, I think bird and picture it in the tree outside. But I have not seen this it is just imagination. And beside, the sound is gone, when did I hear it? We live in the gap between what was and what is, always just behind. The void's desire to be, present in us, we attach to things we like. Yet change tends to take them away and so we suffer. Yet deep within us the stillness remains unmoved, accepting all. At this point I could move to talk of compassion and reducing the ego's demands so as to be more free, to accept more of life and be more there for others. But it is other that I want to explore.

Our situation is a paradox; we are all connected yet separate. We can't survive alone, the mug does not exist without the hole in the ground and the CO2 and is not a mug without human culture to so define it. I am defined by my relation to other. Yet I must face my own death. The void seeks to know by coming into form and in human being we derive the existence of the void. It is my understanding though not experience that some apprehend this not just by intellect but by direct perception. But it is my direct perception that I seek unity. In love in all its complex forms I seek to be one with other. And it seems that the desire to generate more form and more unity is without end. Is this the point about which spirituality turns; samsara, nirvana, desire, acceptance, form, void, meaning and purpose, meaningless and purposeless? I am no Bodhidharma. I need meaning. And I need to be needed. And to return to love, I have with my partner of almost eighteen years achieved a sort of selfless unity. Each of us through a process of sharing, giving and taking, has woven the three cloths I have spoken of elsewhere; his (self), my (self) our relationship, all three one as all is one. Family, friends, our society, animals, desks, chairs, the air, all one. Yet perceived as joined and separate at different levels. It is the closeness, the proximity, the intimacy of the connection that we crave. And having reached high levels of intimacy with an other human being, desire for more connection arises, and so in form the desire for unity returns. At the 'lower' levels, in erotic desire the mind seeks the new, the constant chase for excitement. This not what I am writing about. There is the desire for unity in it, but the emphasis is more in the expansion of form, the desire to know more forms. But in love as apposed to lust, we see the desire for unity, to return to the void. In lust the head long chase for the abandonment to be found in the little death of orgasm. In making love the partial death of self as each flows into the other, heart to heart and only then the temporary slip in to the almost selfless abandonment of orgasm. Yet we do not die, we pull back from our connection with our lover and into our own experience of orgasm, however much we desire to unite. Then gradually we return to the world.

Is it possible for me to live in the world with an aliveness of deep connection as my experience? My aloneness healed, forms all changing but the stillness of the void present, is this the place to be? Part of me can remain at the eye of the storm, watching. But I am not playful, I am attached to things, I feel the gap between the way the universe appears and what I want. The void generates both of course. And where am I? I am not alive with deep connection, not as I write. This is generally taken to be the spiritual work, to be present and playful without attachment. How far down that road can I make it? I am not a monastic, meaning and complex love are deep in my needs, not desires, needs, it seems. And the desire expressed above for more unity is moving me to a polyamory I can see is just not practical. Here we see the juxtaposition of form's desire for unity and the incompatibility of forms. Or is there a way? And would it be in harmony with The Way? This question, which has arisen out of the unfolding of things, together with my desperate need to feel useful, and the two are not unrelated, is burning in me. I've written about vitality and meaning before and included a reference to Pan. (Please follow this link now, before returning.) But not just Pan, the post also looks at the relation of desire and compassion. I feel now that there is some deep wisdom in the need for us to be united in form; the void knowing its own oneness. Is there more than one type of spiritual experience pointed at here? Or am I just too attached, and if so to what? Love and attachment; loving someone and wanting something from the situation. How can we love and how can we be with?

The 'Red thread' koan it would seem, has come right up in front of me. Here I am having tried to go for Gold, to be like Bodhidharma, without attachment to meaning, responding to life as it comes, holding and letting go of the boughs, and this comes up; I need to be needed and I need closeness with more than one man. It might well only be my mind's projection, issues of co-dependency and the different forms of love are there but the feelings remain. We relate to each other through our feelings, by being in the body part of the body-mind. Thoughts and feelings are not separate and it is possible to get great feelings of joy by talking about ideas, but about is not the thing its self. Again I am not just talking about the erotic, in fact that's the least of it.

In passing I would add that DC and I saw 'The imaginarium of doctor parnassus' at the cinema last night. I enjoyed it. To me it plays with ideas from the mind only school of reality and the battle of good and evil. Interestingly, or so I thought, the devil doesn't want to win, he just wants to keep playing the game, what would be the point in wining, there would be no more game, no more fun for him. Where does this sit with form and void? This is complex, why must the devil take his fun at the expense of others? Is this because he represents a separatist, selfish view of being? Where is the desire for unity, the pain of separation? I've not thought too much about this. It's so unrewarding to view the world from the view point of a tormentor. Anyway, good triumphs and love flowers. It's a good movie, I was touched by parts of it. On leaving the cinema and walking to the car park DC pointed out that 'the great thing about art is how it shows up the madeness of things'. After the fantasy world of the movie, the almost pantomime of punters queuing to get into night clubs in town seemed very made.

And I think back to last week at Cluny, the joy of connection with caring and interesting people. The journey people make from head to heart as they say in the Findhorn community. And I recall the way the community seems in part to be about 'probing the field' again to use the language of the community. It can be challenging, there are some ideas that I find interesting but I also hear my alarm bell ringing; take care, not all views of reality lead to enlightenment. And it all comes back to this; rub along together, take care of your self AND each other. The pots need washed, the people fed and sheltered, in all of this love each other. And they have many ways to help people start to take off the armour of their adapted self, to move towards authenticity, self and other acceptance. The Findhorn community is complex. It is a shame that I was not in a more relaxed space, when at Cluny, my body-mind too full of emotions. I did however, find periods of joy living in community. But it is in the world that I need to find a place to be. I have always been a bit of misfit and probably never quite sure where to place my power. In the past, career wise there was a sort of path though, but now I just don't know.

I have no idea what I am going to do. But in me is a sense of still strength, my power. And I do my best to be good.

Home

2009-10-25T12:42:00.003Z

I plan to return home tomorrow. There are questions that seem only to have their answer there now. Being here seems to have raised the possibility of the their answer there.

I'll miss the sharing here and the sometimes strange and the sometimes wonderful people here but what I need to do now is reconnect with the truth of what is at the place I call home. The time here (which has been intense) seems to have clarified the questions. Which is good.

It's not time to be clever about 'home'. Spiritually it is about being 'at home' wherever. But few of us are wandering mendicants and so the question of rooted-ness comes up. And when they come under question it is very hard.

Still Hot

2009-10-22T16:10:00.003+01:00

I am still in this hot place. It's scary. And it's be about more than just the next couple of weeks here. Wanting to escape is be about the thoughts I have brought with me not what is here. This feeling of isolation is terrible. I know it's not rooted in anything other than my thoughts, but I still feel it.

And part of me watches and knows the deep, deep connection and love, not just deep in the philosophical sense, but the direct practical every day; those who are thinking of me and love me.

I need to get out in the world and do something of use. Something I can believe in and that will help with fruitful connection.

Moving meditation

2009-10-21T13:22:00.003+01:00

After breakfast and zazen I went to the ballroom and spent just under an hour dancing to T-Rex as a moving meditation; feeling into the emotions, the tight spaces, the needs and pains, the softening and the opening. I must remember to do this more as I find it a very grounding, very rounding, emptying and warming activity.

Lying on the floor, still wriggling a bit to the music, fingers dancing, arms and legs slowing, torso softening to the floor, head wondering if this is the end of the energy for now or would an other wave come through, and then remembering a conversation about the sort of things that Findhorn et al has one doing; 'what would people make of it?' What looks strange on the outside, makes more sense on the inside.

Barking

2009-10-20T14:07:00.003+01:00

I was just signing into my e-mail account and had a spontaneous bark; ruff. Most cathartic, not done that for quite some time. Is it my inner dog? It was prompted by some of the more 'challenging' fliers on the notice board. Or so it seemed.

Hot place

2009-10-19T19:56:00.005+01:00

I am in a 'hot place'. I need to remember Manjusri Bodhisattva. I can't post the details; it's not fair to those involved, but it isn't an easy time for me now. I knew this would come. But it is finding the way that is hard, let alone the Way. Pain and fear with the associated grasping. There are limits to any non-attachment I might practice; big limits. And even with acceptance, non-attachment, how to then have meaning? For some such a position might open one up to the raw vitality of life and be in tune with the Way. (Riding the Ox home playing ones flute?) But how to avoid slipping into boredom and thus depression? I guess that risk comes when one still has attachments to comfort. Comforts which keep one from living. And I am not that advanced on the path; I have many needs, many attachments too strong it seems for me to let go. And sifting it all out, working out what might be the best action, the action which looks to give the maximum happiness for the maximum number of people, or the minimum suffering, that is the challenge. Truly opening to life with a compassionate heart is one heck of a challenge.

And here in Cluny, helping out and connecting and people seeing each other and their suffering and hugging, the open hearts, the listening as well as the being alone, it all comes up.

Freedom

2009-10-17T14:55:00.003+01:00

I've got some resistance to staying on for an other three weeks. I was fine this morning and paid the invoice for the LCG. I've done the attunement, got my shift rota, etc. So what changed and when? Well, I went out with a friend 'into the world' for a walk. It's so fresh. It's a beautiful day today. And the contrast with the slightly claustrophobic nature of community was quite stark. This is a good thing; I like being out and about. Nothing like a bit of contrast to help stop things turning invisible. Returning here I had quite a longing just to go home. It will settle. I've put my laundry in (I am not being metaphorical) and there will be new people around starting programmes today. It's such a mix here. One can feel exhausted by the contact and isolated at the same time. Which was one of my fears traveling up on the train last week, which seems a like month ago!

Warmth

2009-10-14T18:44:00.003+01:00

I am starting to feel a growing sense of opportunity and with that a gratitude for it. How good to be able to take time out and take stock. And the warmth and connection here in the Findhorn Community is such a blessing. It is a complex environment and that yields the rich opportunity for connections and thus discovery.

I remain open about what to 'do' after LCG and no doubt I'll be ready for the freshness of my own space by the end of four weeks here, but I feel it needs to be something creative.

Thought for the day

2009-10-13T11:25:00.004+01:00

I was half heartedly thinking whilst bathing after exercise this morning, which is to say that my monkey mind was babbling away to its self as it does, that one can hear lots of ideas around the Findhorn Community about the way reality is. And, musing on some of my own fantasies I had a brief thought about how the interconnectivity of everything might make for all sorts of possibilities. Yes I thought, but you can't make the toaster work by trying to connect it to the hot tap. Which is a nice way of reminding one's self about relative and absolute truths.

Sex is an interesting area when it comes to connection and creativity. We are all connected but not in all ways. The universe's desire to be, to create, seems to be evident in the drive to connect sexually with, in the case of heterosexuality or birds, bees and flowers, the concomitant procreative function.

So it's the different types and levels of connection that, as form folds over form, creates reality as we experience it in everyday life, i.e. at the relative level. Relative; from Wiktionary:

'Preposition: relative. Relating to, being relevant towards. Adjective - : not absolute ; connected to or depending on something else ...'

After that sojourn in a warm bath I headed off to the ball room and did some Tai Chi. Too fast, too fast, not enough meditation in it. So I went and got my MP3 player and used a bit of new age type music to help me slow it down a bit, which was helpful. Then a bit of free form dancing before tea. Which all goes to show inter dependant arising.

Attunement

2009-10-12T17:06:00.005+01:00

I arrived at Cluny on Friday and took the bus to Park where I stayed B&B for the night. Saturday I returned ready for Exploring Community Life (ECL). Only three sleeps (as kids say) and it has had time to feel like a month. So many connections and so many emotions to process. But today thankfully, I 'landed' sufficiently to be in a reasonably comfortable space for my Living in Community as a Guest (LCG) attunement which took place at 2-30PM today. I attuned to three weeks of LCG post ECL and to Cluny kitchen work dept. (which is where my ELC work dept. attunement placed me). So, feeling lighter for having the 'will I stay or will I go' over with I returned to the kitchen to continue my shift.

Separating 60 eggs, the whites into a bowl large enough to have a deep ring when struck with an egg, the gong perfect to help recall mindfulness. So, 'Instructions for Zen Cook'?

I'd like to past a link to an other site so those not familiar with Dogens work would understand the reference to 'Instructions for Zen Cook' but this iMac thing is too clunky, so google it if you want.

Getting it right / wrong

2009-10-05T21:37:00.005+01:00

It seems that my writing is too telegraphic, too condensed. I am not completely unaware of this and on Sunday at Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey, in conversation it came up. But in a short while it was understood why; I try to look at things on lots of different levels and remain mindful that to even attempt to say anything on some of the stuff I am writing about is to risk getting it all wrong. Here we go... getting it all wrong. At the deep level there is the whole non-dual, not right not wrong; important, but none the less a smack in the face is painful. At the more relative levels... oh, well look, you either know all that stuff or not. This sort of links up with an other conversation about everyone doing their best. That works at different levels too. No, I am not being clear here am I? Forget it. I am probably being far too presumptuous anyway.

Tuesday now. Spent the morning tidying the wood shed and raking leaves at Harnham Buddist Monastery before having lunch there. Helped with the post lunch tidying then used their hall to sit in meditation. The monks are happy for the public to use the hall to meditate. I'd checked that they were ok about forms of meditation related to traditions 'other' than theirs.

Just started reading Tao Te Ching / Lao Tzu; translated by David Hinton. The introduction to this is, I think, marvelous. Wu-wei: Nothing's own doing, etc. (from the author's list of key terms). To live in harmony with the depth of this philosophy, well, for me it's an aspiration (when I remember) that could be one way to put it. To write of the day to day reality as it seems to me of the unfolding, well I am not being clear am I?

In each moment, choices, nominally right, nominally wrong.

Robin

2009-10-03T16:10:00.005+01:00

DC and I had a lovely simple dinner last night with our friends Ann and John at their home.

Ann had bought herself a nifty new notebook computer for work and a lovely new paper notebook as a present for me to take to Findhorn. The gift came with a card:

I wonder if Ann was aware of the symbolism of the Robin; new beginnings, growth, joy, warmth etc. What a lovely start to this period of exploration.

The conversation at table was as ever, fast, wide ranging and generally dynamic. Such fun.

Thank you Ann and John and to DC for an other joy filled evening.

Connecting

2009-10-01T22:53:00.007+01:00

Just returned from the Star and Shadow cinema where we saw 'Ramchand Pakastani', well worth going to see. It tells the tale of a father and son held prisoner in India for crossing (inadvertently) the border from Pakistan. As ever, the charm of the Star is the fact of it being amateur. It took a bit of getting the film running due to technical problems with the aspect ratio, subtitles and sound. They were all set to give us our money back as the subtitles were not present and so they thought they had the wrong print. But I'd seen some subtitles at the beginning and something told me this was a technical problem. 'Are you sure it's not something to do with how it's set up' I ventured. The projectionist was consulted and sure enough, with a bit of time he should be able to get it to work. So, after a false start and a bit of a delay we were able to see and hear all. Well done the projectionist and such fun to be closer to the technology behind the experience. It came to me that since so much technology just invisibly does its stuff now, we take it for granted and end up with a strange disconnect from the world. Anyway, I was prompted to check up on the marvel that is Wikipedia just how the sound recording is done. I'd an idea it was by light modulation on the edge of the film and yes this is how it is done. In that link following way so fostered by the web I came across the Optigan. What? And so I did a quick google search and found this on Youtube. What a wacky world.

A much better night than last night when I felt really rather down and disconnected, wondering where I am going. I've sort of thrown quite bit bit of my life up in the air recently in an attempt to be authentic, to strive for what might be called individuation, to take spirit seriously, to try to see just what the rice is that's there to be eaten; acceptance. And at times it is hard. Which sort of reminds me of this which points to purpose and connection as well as other things. And last night I was far from accepting. I'll not go into details but I was lost in the middle of too much emotion. And it is all too easy to compound the situation by developing attachments to being in a state of wisdom and equanimity at all times. That old chestnut about keeping on trying and not letting ones failings get one down. But enough, that was then, this is now.

Through the course of the evening I returned again to that thought of just how ingenious human beings are and yet also so mixed up. Purpose, connection, creativity, belonging, love, how come we keep falling into chaos and confusion? I recall 'The Way is wide and straight yet men love the byways'. Which I sort of feel brings us back in a rambling way to this. It's past bed time now so that will have to do for now, but I guess that the quote I left on Jade Mountains sums it up;

'I think all this points to some very deep spiritual 'truths'. Practice for me is about acceptance, acceptance of what is and thus compassion. And for this I need equanimity. Meditation helps develop that spacious mind which is essential in all this. But the challenge has come for me with meaning and purpose. Just to see what it is that is calling to be accepted, ie what is it that is calling to be done and thus to have purpose in the exquisite gift of life, that seems to require much wisdom, even if what has to be done is just to be.'

Harmony

2009-09-30T09:28:00.004+01:00

The real challenge I think is getting a balance between things. Yin and Yang in harmony in ones life. And upon reflection the most salient for me recently is the balance between acceptance and goal. Of course given sufficient wisdom one would see and accept what needs to be done and the goals would form and dissolve as part of the flow. But I've not seen them clearly for quite some time now and the desire to be involved in something which both takes and thus gives me energy is pressing. Hence the plan to spend time exploring community life.

The universe desires to be, to express multiple forms all shifting. The ultimate of its being, beyond knowing, the formless, might be deduced by reason and even glimpsed by the very few but 'life as we know it Jim' is in the interaction of forms. Chop wood carry water.

I wonder just what it is I should be doing. Ouch, there's the S word; should.

Monday

2009-09-28T13:35:00.005+01:00

Well, first day of 'not working' today. And it feels quite good. Gym, meditation, bread making, off to take part in a rehearsal for an installation this evening and I realise that I do indeed need to 'come down' before going up to Scotland. As my dad said at the weekend, 'Just the start of an other phase'.

I've still got a head full of stuff, but that's to be expected.

Started writing this Monday, and now it's Tuesday. Time passes.

Last day and all that

2009-09-27T11:12:00.006+01:00

Friday 25th was my last day at Carillion. I'd enjoyed a fun and love filled leaving meal out on Thursday night and Friday brought a card and generous leaving gift. No bridges were burnt with 'the management' and the time was a strange mix of emotions. What shone out for me was the warmth, the Buddha nature of people radiating through the layers of karmic dust. All viewed of course through my own karmic dust. And if the corporate culture helped foster rather than stifle that then I might have stayed. But the shinning light so evident during my leaving night out and goodbye is being far too heavily obscured by the that culture.

Then in the afternoon a call from my parents needing help. I in turn called upon others and by close of play on Saturday all was just about sorted. And the asking and receiving, the giving and taking as ever brought opportunity for purpose and connection. Yet whilst I felt more warmth in my dealings with those others I asked for help, with my parents I am afraid that I let slip the opportunity for warmth and just felt myself slip into anger at being drawn into a parenting roll just when I needed to withdraw and reflect on the day. And so my inner critic had a great time throwing his weight around in every direction. Complex stuff, too many emotions to deal with at a time. And of course the main 'back ground noise' to daily life at the moment is full of emotion. Having been feeling stuck, motionless, I've loosened the ties and now know not what motion and where it will lead. Hence mixed emotion. You can imagine the raw feeling by bed time. Called my parents this morning; all seems well. But they are tired, they have had too much on their plates over the years. I try to do my best for them.

I feel more relaxed today. I will soon be starting Exploring Community Life (ECL) and after that probably Living in Community as a Guest (LCG). So that's a plan for the next couple of months, after that I don't have a plan.

School

2009-09-16T22:07:00.005+01:00

My mother was telling DC and I about a little boy who had just started school. He's not happy and keeps asking why he is being punished by being sent to school. 'I am too small to go, why are you punishing me?' He is, apparently very upset. My mother had consoled the boy's mother saying that she knew all about it, I'd been just the same, it took the fist two years until I stopped being extremely distressed. I felt for him. And of course it's likely that he has a rocky road ahead. He would probably be better off in a Steiner school, but that's no doubt off radar for his family... I hope he finds a way to be himself and be happy and before too long, may the road be kind.

Talking this morning with DC he recalled the conversation with my mother. He said that upon hearing of my distress in those early school years he realised that most of the time we've been together I've been trying to find a way to individuation in the Jungian sense. A rocky road it has been in that respect at times. And where is the road now taking me? Any way, a thought for the boy, may he find his way soon, may he grow to express the universe's desire to be in the fullest way he can and in adulthood may his inner child be happy.

Film

2009-09-03T22:30:00.003+01:00

Well, I could write all sorts of stuff about how I feel and the various interactions with people at work and where do I think I am going and blah blah but anyway...

We went to the Star and Shadow cinema this evening and saw Sita Sings the Blues. Follow the link / arrange to see it; it's good.

Resignation

2009-09-01T17:56:00.003+01:00

I resigned from my job today. I just felt that I was wasting my time and that it was not doing me any good. So, the plan is to spend some time living in community as a guest at Findhorn. Time will tell if this is wise. I am looking forward to spending time in a work department being of service. It should be enjoyable and good for me. I want to take the time to consider my life. It's both scary and exciting and yes, I feel a mixture of relief and 'what the f*** have I done'. But to be honest the choice was starting to make its self; I just could not go on being so unproductive.

And in the long run, what then? Well, I have a rough plan to be back in employment in the construction industry is about six months. But we'll just have to see. Just for today, I'll stick with this day.

I have four weeks notice to work.

Connection

2009-08-29T18:00:00.005+01:00

Last week was the first back at work after our week on Iona staying at the Findhorn retreat house Traigh Bhan. Both DC and I had a peaceful and very enjoyable time. The house is lovely and in a wonderful location and it was good to share it with the other guests and of course to spend time with Niels who I know from his Gay Man's Inner Journey workshop which I did in May. We also visited Tina a friend I made back in February on the essentials of psychosynthesis course. Tina has just had a baby and lives on Erraid. DC and I very much enjoyed our visit and it was good to catch up with Tina and meet her husband Paul, his son and the new baby.

I did a few odd jobs at Traigh Bhan; a bit of plumbing to a water filter, new WC seats (which were bought by Niels during GMIJ) and replacement of a door bolt. It was also fun to clear the path of sheep poo so we would tread in less on our return in the dark from the céilidh on the Monday night. The house is located in a farmer's field and not served by a paved surface once the road from the village to the farm is left. Visitor's luggage is transported on a hand cart which everyone helps pull. There are two carts at the house but one was broken as it had lost the retaining screw and nylon bush to one of the wheels. Unable to resist such a challenge I inspected the wheels; a replacement bush was required to replace the lost one. I brought the one from the other side home and checked on the net. No luck; all the wrong size. Found that the place I was thinking of which sold such things has closed. I went to see my dad; did he still know anyone that could make one and a thrust washer, I asked and gave him the bush I'd brought back. 'Leave it with me'. That was Monday, Tuesday morning he called. 'The lad's just dropped the bush in.' It and the washer were spot on and I posted all the parts back to Neils. Took a call on Thursday from Niels to say that he received them on Iona on Wednesday! The whole thing seems such a delight.

I went out with dad on Wednessday night and met a lad that has had a tough time and been helped by dad and his mates in the pub. Again, so good that caring help has been given just because that is what is required. Buddha nature.

DC enjoyed Iona and I could see the 'Findhorn thing' working on him...

So, having sat with the way things have been and the need to move out of the rut I seem to have fallen into I have decided that I really do want to spend a bit more time at Findhorn in a work department doing something and not just sleep walking through life at my current job. So, I plan to delay starting the foundation year in psychosynthesis and arranging a little sabbatical. It's both scary and exciting but I feel I must do something...

Truth

2009-08-12T22:15:00.006+01:00

The truth is that I've not been blogging much of late because my head has been a bit mashed. Yes it is good to put it down in words to clear the thoughts and to have it out in the public realm is a good check on feelings of authenticity. But a lot of the stuff isn't just mine to write about, others form a part (no this is not the time to be clever about oneness) and they must be respected. So have I kept a private journal of this stuff? I did a bit, but in truth I've been lost to the stuff. And separating inner voice that intuitive knowing from the twists and turns of the ego has been oh so hard. It continues but less so; and this too will pass... So, the koan reminds me that it can't be 'solved' by logic.

Last week we went to see the outdoor theatre event Beautiful journey. I really enjoyed it, very creative, very atmospheric. Set in a disused industrial area by the river, a magical world was brought to life as the audience followed the players around the yards and buildings and even to the river. I found my inner critic having a go at me for not being as creative as those involved in the production when I was in my youth. Of course it completely forgets that my creativity was in fact sizable even by its own standards should it remember just what I was doing. All stories, all stories. Just what play am I watching? DC and Paul A' did a bit of a critique afterwards walking back to the car, Bethany and I looked side ways at each other... Yeh, just what play did we each see? But we all had a good time and went back to Paul A's for tea and a bit of nosh. A late night for a 'school night'.

Tonight Bethany came to dinner with DC and I. Playing various music, some of it described as a bit 'New Age', prompted me to consider what the 'shlockiness' that DC describes is all about. I suppose that the question is about the journey from head to heart, the return to more childlike being. The danger, the shlockiness, could be the risk of turning not to playful child but indulged infant; ego not peeled away but pampered. But is it such a terrible thing to take the risk?

Creativity

2009-08-02T23:27:00.002+01:00

Just returned from the cinema having seen Coco before Channel.
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Clearly she was ahead of her time and with a sense of purpose, a need for meaning as well as security. And we see our belief in creativity in the joy we have in watching the movie, with its creativity.

Anyway, time for bed.

Falling

2009-08-02T19:07:00.004+01:00

One way or an other I keep coming back to what I was thinking when I posted in January on Vitality.

The title of this blog refers to Mumonkan Case 5 Kyogen's "Man up in a Tree"

Kyogen Osho said, "It is like a man up in a tree hanging from a branch with his mouth; his hands grasp no bough, his feet rest on no limb. Someone appears under the tree and asks him. 'What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?' If he does not answer, he fails to respond to the question. If he does answer, he will lose his life. What would you do in such a situation?"

In his commentary Katsuki Sekida explains that there is no meaning but that this means emptiness, not nihilistic emptiness, but the ancient Way. He goes on to explain 'Bodhidharma came from the West, but he came without being attached to a single purpose'.

This koan spoke to me at a time when I just could not see how to proceed. Recently for different reasons I've struggled to see how to proceed. However, what the situation seems to be showing me is my need for meaning. And I think there is some deep wisdom in all this which his beyond my ken. The answer seems to be in the falling. Acceptance whilst trying to do the 'right' thing. Sounds simple. Why then is it so difficult?

Ingenuity

2009-07-22T21:19:00.003+01:00

The professional body of which I am a member regularly sends me journals/magazines and whilst the content is a mixed bag there are some interesting snippets. A short item featuring an exhibit at the Imperial War Museum Manchester is one such. Prisoners of war built a radio from scrounged bits and pieces using great ingenuity to construct the electrical components from card tubes, tins, toothbrushes, ashtrays and the like together with a film projector. The radio was hidden under the floorboards, powered from the lighting circuit, operated using knitting needles and remained undiscovered. Upon liberation the set was recovered still working and had kept the men well informed about the state of the war. I've checked the War Museum website and can't find any information to which I could make a link, but you will get a picture of the ingenuity of the prisoners from the above and will no doubt be aware of their suffering.

There it is, that great human inventiveness! Like I said in Monday's post, it's what we are, we went to the moon. Such a shame that we don't always use our talents in the pursuit of noble aims. We don't always create the best forms but there is a beauty in the creativeness described above that made me want to share it with you.

Going to the Moon

2009-07-20T20:31:00.007+01:00

There has been much in the news about the 40th anniversary of man's visits to the moon.
Surely no one can fail to see the significance of mankind travelling to and returning from an other celestial body. We are the only sentient life form to have done this (so far as we know). The fact that it was done apparently with less computing power than I have here now to write this and probably less than most mobile phones have now, makes it all the more amazing. Our kind got off the planet, travelled to the moon, strolled around a bit and came home! And this says something about what we are. We are the kind that expands its capability, its know how, its experience. Trisna (see tanha from post on Vitality) certainly seems to lead us to some amazing creations. And I think that points to some interesting aspects of what it means to be human. Much of the desire to get to the moon was connected with the cold war but even behind that, as a species we had the desire to go there, it's the sort of thing we do, like exploring the earth we want to explore the heavens. Interestingly we want to explore the 'heavens' of both the material and mystical worlds. The former about leaving 'home' and the later returning. But I digress, or do I? What I am driving at is that vexed issue so often pondered; how do we cope with being such driven creatures and how is one to evaluate the outcome of our efforts?

I've heard myself say more than once, 'we went to the moon; it's in our nature' when talking about desire in the context of spirituality. Even though poking into things and taking control with our (Western?) scientific mind seems to reduce the poetic view I wonder if we shift our view point a little to look at the wonder of our endeavours if the poetic does not reappear. The moon, which is often used in spiritual imagery, might not appear quite so charismatic, so yin, so poetic for knowing that it came to be at least in part within our reach, yet in considering when in better frame of mind than Hamlet 'what a piece of work man is', do we not once more return to the poetic? We are amazing, complex, contradictory creatures. I take exception to the view expressed in Western religious frameworks which places man above the animals and created in God's image etc. (that whole set of values is, I think tied up in the above quote) but that we are able to be so creative and also able to contemplate getting beyond our own ego is surely a measure of what we are. We have this ego and we need it to get across the road and even go to the moon and it keeps us from our spiritual 'home' yet we can somehow still see 'home' and realise the challenge of living in the realm of form, the material world as physically incarnated beings whilst contemplating our (true) nature. We see the moon in more ways than one.

Transition

2009-07-12T18:42:00.005+01:00

I've not been posting much of late. If I could get it clear enough to post it would probably be a good way to being resolved, that's how it has been. A period of transition is underway but I've no idea what the outcome will be.

Anyway, a colleague and I taught a class of eleven year olds last Friday morning. It was industry day and so we headed off to one of the schools we are rebuilding with some demonstration eco / green energy kits; a wind generator, a photovoltaic panel and a solar water heater. I had no idea I was to do this until just before we left the office to go to the school. I busked it quite well, had them lining up to be electrons, jumped off a bench to illustrate potential and kinetic energy, got them playing with the kits etc. My colleague runs scouts so he was well used with rousing them. Hopefully they got something from it, I know I did. Talking about it with friends over the weekend I saw just how much it seemed many of the kids may have got from it. And it is sad to think of the shut down kids, jaded at such a young age, let's hope they meet good teachers who can overcome the odds and help them see their own worth.

We all need to use our creative energies in the pursuit of valuable forms. Form in emptiness.

Funny things

2009-07-01T22:01:00.003+01:00

When I was little I used to think that the trees made the wind and imagined that there was a room somewhere where they switched all the street lights on and off from.

Tribe

2009-06-27T18:24:00.003+01:00

How many of us recognise the tribes of which we are a part? Or for that matter apart? Gay men are often aware of tribe initially from the not fitting point of view; those childhood years. Then coming out we associate with the tribe of gay men in all its shapes, sizes and styles. The need to belong is strong in humans; we want to be rid of our aloneness however illusory it may be. We are all connected but it isn't always clear to us, or available in the ways we seem to want or need. The more life is to be lived, expanded, the more connection is needed and the possible range of tribes extend. This all points to formation of self and thus to Self. Even the monastic in searching for Self, paring away at self, is identified with a tribe and thus part of an identity formation. It must take some paring that one way. Our lives are made by the tribes to which we relate either as insiders or outsiders; the co-creation of selves.

Happy Birthday

2009-06-17T11:15:00.004+01:00

It's my birthday today. I am forty two. It seems like yesterday it was new year and now it's June! And how did it get to be my forty second birthday so soon?! And with the feeling of the sands of time running ever faster through the glass and the realisation of the years spent asleep or feeling that 'this is not what I should be making of my life' and visions of what might be, comes anxiety. All thoughts of course and a counter call might be to seek out and empty the attachments causing the anxiety and to become fully present in the moment. A period of transition is underway that is all. But there is still the call to act, to live. The basic desire. All life a process of transition.

And having dismantled certain defenses (or so it seems) which have become redundant, become more a prison than a fortress, having let back in the life, comes life's contradictions. It's a mixed bag life. Which of course is why we build those defenses in the first place. So in some ways this birthday I am more open, relaxed and balanced than ever, in other ways I am scared, lonely, anxious, unsure which way to turn and desperate to get a move on. A move on? Where does that sit with practice? Form in emptiness I guess.

Alertness, awareness, freedom; scary stuff! And it isn't possible to have one's cake and eat it, choices have to be made. I recall 'The road not taken'. Yet I remain convinced that everyone is doing their best to square the circle of their own life at a deep level. Nothing has been or is wrong, all is well.

Sewing with care

2009-06-14T20:49:00.003+01:00

The past few months
Depths of interconnection and sanctity
Yet isolation, spread all ways and no way
In the garden today in DC's shoes
I note a spot of green paint on them
More than ten years since we left the house where that paint was applied
Our efforts woven through each other's these seventeen years
Three fabrics we have woven in to all those others
One each and a shared
And each one shared again
And where now is the loom taking our threads
All the threads not just ours
What warp and weft
As we each look to the threads of our own life
And those of others

Energies

2009-06-07T17:59:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I was chatting to our new next door but one neighbour, a single woman about my age with a four year old daughter. I'd previously offered my help if she needed any furniture moving and the offer was taken up. She has just been updating the house having just moved in. Nothing to drastic just replacing the 1960's wood wallboard and tiled ceilings with plasterboard, rewiring and making the ground floor study area into an open plan kitchen family room together with redecoration. Generally keeping the 1960's feel but bringing a new fresh air to the place. I really liked the energy as we walked around; the original 1960's concept brought back to life. Fresh young energy in the place is good.

I guess it is in part the four year old that brings the young energy but her mother also has this quality. I am aware of my own mixed aged sub-personalities and think it's good to keep a youthful outlook; I have been too old too soon in the past.

Our conversation turned to sub-personalities and I was granted the complement of seeming to be very calm! I am however, fairly duck like at present; under the surface there is turbulence. I need to find a creative purposeful direction to move into; I need to be much more yang, I feel I am wasting my life just now and I am torn between some difficult choices. I'll just have to keep listening out for what I already know to become more clear. The calmer the water the easier it should be but it's difficult when one feels stuck in a back water and wanting to move with the tide.

Some interesting posts on http://www.jademountains.net/ and http://www.thinkbuddha.org/
relating to mind. I think Dan Dennett misses the point that we only have our own phenomenal experience; we can't access an Archimedean point. The argument that consciousness is an illusion arising out of material substance misses the point that the only experience any of us have of the material is through our phenomenal experience, our conscious mind. And there is a lot more meaning to be found looking at the mind as it appears to one's self (or should that be the other way around) than might be found by trying to reduce experience down to an emergent property of mater. Certainly our need to relate to each other is at the level of our experience, the flow of energy that forms our world(s).

Each life a manifestation of the one life, the Tao flows on, the changing forms of emptiness.

Meaning

2009-06-01T17:45:00.006+01:00

It comes down to this, I must have meaning. It is the will to meaning. I acknowledge that we poor humans are deluded but I believe I am right to insist on meaning. Form in emptiness. A day without work is a day without food as they say. And I must have the company of like minded people. The second point leads to the question of intimacy of all kinds and is very complex; my needs for connection at various levels and depths. These seem to be at the root of spirituality for me; I need to be living in tune with the life force that flows though me, I must not dam this up, pervert it or deny it. I need to share, to feel the interconnectedness that we are. And we share in a space of doing. And all this with compassion not tight ego shell. To work towards being a transcending self actualiser. Is this to go with the flow, the way to follow the Way? This is the stuff of the form one feels one's life should take. What bigger question is there? The meaning of life is that which we give it. It is a huge responsibility, we hold our own salvation. Well, it seems that way today... Life throws up issues for us to deal with. Rooting through the thoughts and emotions to find the attachments, to work out what is the 'right' thing to do, even if that is just to do nothing, is not so simple. And that's probably much to do with knowing that there are many attachments that I just ain't ready to give up, and they are in conflict.

Still sitting with it

2009-05-27T19:19:00.004+01:00

Even though challenges present themselves and I can't find answers, life provides it's own answer. The old choosing not to choose reality is enacted. Even if my monkey mind is jumping through hoops I am just sitting with it, it is as it is. I must try to remember this and not get dragged through the hoops. I see that I must try to remain the watcher if I am to make wise decisions. Some hope!

Separation

2009-05-21T21:16:00.003+01:00

A loose strings plays no note
I feel the red thread tighten
Ah, where is the sound of my flute

Again when this came to me I pondered with some equanimity the relation between meaning, desire, vitality, compassion, non-attachment, enlightenment, what seems authentic for me, the whole koan in a way, but I've much less equanimity now. And worse, when I was happy to search for the ox and to try to see all before me as just so much not to get attached to, then there was a way to peace of mind. Oh yes, I saw the danger of attaching to emptiness but I though I'd got a balance. But I had expected trouble to come in the form of loss of some thing in my frame of meaning, not a loss of meaning. Oh, this is dangerous water, this is for the experienced practitioner. I can't accept my koan, I can't accept a no answer. I seem to have broken one set of chains only to tie myself with the tools that broke them. It is that thorny point; I am always approaching from some where. Right now it is painful, so painful.

I am no doubt mixing metaphors in a dreadful way, but that fits my confusion. I am giving myself permission to be upset.

Not posting

2009-05-18T19:39:00.003+01:00

Traveling up to Forres last week the view from the train was emotive:

A beautiful yellow moon
Hangs in a pale Blue sky
Over dark water

I have not been posting. I have too much in my mind. It is very difficult stuff to sit with. I do not belong only to myself. I do not have as much equanimity just now as when the poem above came to me. The last line seems somehow troubling whereas when I composed it I was not thinking so.

At Cluny

2009-05-15T13:14:00.004+01:00

It is just after lunch here in Cluny. It is almost the end of the workshop; we have our completion this afternoon and there will be a ceilidh this evening. I am tired, quite drained. The re-entry into the world at large will be painful I suspect.

I have had ideas for posting and next week I'll see how my thoughts and emotions stir. But for now I want to keep it all inside, keep with deeper process, to write would be to dissipate.

Cues

2009-05-05T20:16:00.006+01:00

DC bought me a Sony MP3 player for Christmas. His plan to get me to take more interest in the music I like seems to have worked and having up loaded CD's on to it I've started down loading stuff from the net too. Having it plugged into the HiFi I find I play more music in the house too. It's something to do with the availability of the music in one compact handheld sliver of a thing. And it has an 'intelligent' shuffle which lets one pick tracks by mood, that certainly makes me listen to more stuff.

Anyway, listening to the radio the other day I heard a track by the Eagles. I recalled that I'd always liked that music and so decided to download some from the net. Playing the albums 'One of these nights' and 'Hotel California' I recalled the 70's. I must have had a slight sense of the 70's that was generating such tracks- California and the watered down version that reached the English perhaps left leaning middle classes, as a kid, but that was not my world. No, it was just a hint of something I sort of liked the look of but did not know and could not have; my 70's did not come as an extension to the 60's people think of as the 60's. My 70's were of the Northern working class and short of cash. The left was of tabloids and trade unions not of the broad sheets and the party either political or dinner...

I can enjoy the music and there is no visceral wrenching of the past. It's of a time when I was a sensitive loner but not yet in adolescence. So the innocence is sweet. It's music of the 80's that can generate the wrenching feeling. But the pattern started sooner...

But, the Eagles music left me in good spirits and feeling quite alive. Interesting to muse how I liked that music both sides of sexual awakening.

And, a copy of 'I Heart Huckabees' arrived today in the post. DC and I have just watched it and it's GREAT! So many of the metaphors match my own! Thanks to Jenny (who I met on a course last year) for the recommendation. The movie is based around a couple of existential detectives... Funny and heart warming.

Thoughts, emotions, our stories, our aloneness our interconnection, the triggers or cues that set us off spinning our webs...

I didn't have the childhood or the adolescence that I as an adult fancy I would have liked then or is it now? But that past did lead me to the present and a probably deeper understanding of the meaning of the desires around all this than I might have had. After all, the electrical and electronic engineering books are replaced on the shelves by titles by Huxley, both Suzuki's, Sekida, Kapleau, etc. I practice TaiChi and dance to music feeling the energy in ways I would describe with reference to chakras, have explored the Red thread koan, sit zazen each day and try to practice throughout the day, write like this, live in a very pleasant 60's townhouse with my partner, I have been out as a gay man at work since a time when that was an issue, DC and I were at a Wesak festival at a local Zen Buddhist abbey at the weekend and I am back off to Findhorn at the end of the week. How close I am in many ways to that other world I might have had as a kid. And looking back, is it not the same koan now as then?

Reflection

2009-05-03T16:15:00.004+01:00

I got my hair cut yesterday; number two back and sides, top short, chip the fringe away, leave the side burns at the ear lobe. I've had this cut for years and I am not sure how long my hair would get if I left it to get past the needing a hair cut stage so that I could consider something else. I don't think it would get much longer than the needing a hair cut stage and I suspect that it would not lend its self to to a longer style. I just go to a 'clip joint' but I once went to a more expensive place and I did enquire about alternatives; the response was not optimistic...'well with your hair...' he said. The cut took ages there and confirmed for me the great benefit of the 'clip joint'.

Anyway, sat in the chair I looked up and looking through the mirror and out through the large glass window I struggled to make sense of the view. More glass? Some people, was there further reflection? What? Some movement. What? Reflection from the other side of the street? No; the building there is solid. What? Bouncing back and forward trying to find the object and the reflection. Ah, it's a bus stuck in traffic! All in little more than an instant, but long enough to feel the mind searching for 'reality'. Umm, a bit like sitting zazen that was, I thought.

The guy in the adjacent chair was offered his usual; quick description followed by what seemed a slightly nervous acknowledgement and some small talk. I started piecing together a picture of the customer from the exchange. My mind building realities for its self...

Clothes shopping followed, not my favorite activity. Shall I reinvent my look? Is that an option? If I was somehow able to expand my consciousness to consider more options could I reinvent my self? I try to give it a bit of a go but always seem to end up looking much the same; it's part the choice open to the shape I am and part sensibilities. Still mostly I would say that upon reflection I'd 'do' me.

A colleague at work asked me what the purpose of my blog was last week. Umm I thought, now there is a question David, just why do you post? I responded that I consider what I seem to be with and try to be authentic with myself by posting in public. And that is part of it as well as the opportunity to try to be creative in this form. I thought the better of going into ideas of goallessness in response to the question. But that is relevant of course to the koan. This constant interplay of forms shaping and reflecting each other, but just who is it that is looking? Can I get get beyond this infinite regression of appearances? I seem to have a faith in non-duality.

Can we find it?

2009-04-29T22:05:00.004+01:00

I've just watched Grand designs revisited. Kevin McCloud revisits the Sussex woodsman's cottage. It's a beautiful building housing what looks like a beautiful family. I think it possible to really see the care and love put in here. A man in tune with the Tao I would guess.

And it seems to me that the task before us is to take this and expand it into the global scale needed in the face of impending environmental crisis, economic problems and the arguably impoverished state of many peoples existence. In the face of rampant capitalism consuming all before it, can we find a real sustainability? Can the people of the world look at each nation and find a way to be in harmony with the earth, the Tao, the Way?

India and China with their great philosophical and spiritual traditions of the Way are following in the way of the West, of separation, consumerism. Could we all East and West find a way to move towards the Way?

We can't all be woodsmen. And we can't go on consuming resources and generating pollution. There is not the resource available for each of us on the planet to live the way we have selfishly done in the the developed world. What is to be done?

Sustainable

2009-04-26T14:10:00.004+01:00

DC and I went to see In the loop last night. It was funny and sort of awful at the same time; egos gone quite mad. And if it were not all too close to the truth and that one can always see one's own craziness in the outrageous theatrical rantings of others if one chooses to look, then it would be just a jolly good farcical romp. But they really did go to war and we do all get a bit like those crazy people at times and of course that's how we are as we are.

And those awful politicians we have chosen for ourselves by default of not demanding better have in the past and continue now to dismantle the very fabric of society as fast as people try to create it. I think that if any of them had the balls to stand up and say 'Enough is enough, we're going to move away from pandering to the greed of the city financiers, stop this out sourcing, dismembering of systems and go back to rational forms. We are going to take an honest look at what it would really mean to have sustainable lives across all spheres- social, community, environment and finance at national and international levels. We are going to consider our existential position in a truly open way and not just restrict our view to the traditional rules of the political game.' then apart from the fact that the party machines and Whitehall would spin their spins people would take an interest and consider their own positions. But right now we just have talk of getting back to economic growth. Mad fools! Oh, and anyone who promised to ban those dreadful telephone systems - listen to the following options, if you want to listen to more of this press 1, if you want to listen to some other blather press 2, if you want to speak to a real person dream on...- well they would get every one's vote!

Last night I dreamt of a houseboat tied with a rope to stop it floating away. No prizes for analyzing that one. Today I listened to a Madness album from the 80's. Great stuff; such energy, such sanity.

What is it?

2009-04-24T18:06:00.004+01:00

To set the scene; I was at work today and a colleague mentioned his proposed parachute jump, I commented that I was far too aware of the void to do that, I didn't need that to feel death nearby. He commented that it might light something in me. He thinks I am disappointed with the world. I don't think he has me right. It's not that I said, it is alight. What is it? he said. I'd tossed a few ideas about sub-personalities about (they have seen the inner terrier a few times) and I listed the classic inner child etc. 'What about the disappointed child?' he said.

What is it? Indeed! Does he have any idea of the size of the question? And the disappointed child? That's not the word I'd use. Frightened, sensitive, feeling that others were very different. Probably deeply in tune with many aspects of his world but not the presentation of his cultural surroundings. And to locate all that and find the child in question here in the now? And yes what about it? What comfort? The ego shell connected with all this is still tight. It's probably the subtle tension I can feel and can't let go of in zazen.

I've just finished reading what I thought a good book by David Guy on the Red thread koan. His thoughts match many of my own on this one. The little death of orgasm, the death of aspects of the ego in love and making love. The tension in the body how this is related to being closed, pain, loneliness and temporary release in orgasm. The need for softening and more lasting freeing up from ones ego shell. Big subject lots of related items-

sex(ual), spirit, (pre)sexual, nakedness, innocence, ego, death, orgasm, desire, life force, creativity, energy, void, form, emotion, communication, feeling, bonding, thought, head, heart, self, Self, love (four fold model), body, visual, attraction, evolutionary biology, yin, yang, gay, straight, bi, intimacy, same, other, power, control, personal, impersonal.

And I recall a post I made on vitality which attempts to start to look at desire, form, void, creativity, the Tao.

And my own ideas about part ego death whilst making love before orgasm so that the little death is less important than when that is not the case and one is just locked in the excitement of the head long race to the oblivion of pointed release. And to thoughts of those post orgasmic laughs that accompany the breaking of a modality, the absurdity of it (all).

And that all this flashes through my monkey mind with the thoughts of recent dabbles with colleagues talking about the hopelessness of continued economic growth, awareness practice, and other things that make them all think I am just strange, and the knowledge that I always fail to present stuff in an open relaxed manner and slip into ranting, which is no good and I tell myself it's all just fingers pointing at the moon...

All this, and my own recollected history, the struggle with the fear stemming from the all too evident fragility of each life in the face of life, not mention the ever nagging grief from the imagined loss of in particular the adolescence that never was. And he asks what about the disappointed child?! What the **** do you think you are looking at?

And I am supposed to give an answer? I told him - I picked my koan and I'm sticking with it, I am hanging in the tree, what more answer can I give?

And that will be just part of it and that's before getting any where near ideas about there not being any it, let alone any experience of no it, just being. I am still far too caught up in it for that.

KerPlunk

2009-04-20T22:36:00.003+01:00

I was musing earlier that I often think of things and the self as an array of axes, sort of at varying planes to each other sort of like the straws in the KerPlunk game my brother and I had when we were kids. Various dialectical relationships and interconnectedness, a sort cloud of points connected by... well you get the idea; a sort of visualisation of Buddhist interdependent arising with a bit of Taoism I suppose. And more importantly that if I could get sufficient spaciousness of mind that it would all fall into place and like pulling out the straws in the game - KerPlunk, it all makes perfect sense and I am liberated. (Gosh, might even be a sort of enlightenment.) What a trap, how cunning the mind is at finding ways to have control, some thing to grasp on to. But it does sort of help, the trick is probably to recognise that expectation of the marbles dropping and drop it.

It was a lovely sunny day today.

Developing form

2009-04-19T22:47:00.003+01:00

Back from a weeks holiday with DC in Devon. I kept a few very short notes while away as a summary of what I seemed to be with, in summary it boils down a sense that I have been and remain negligent in expanding my life to be all that is possible and all this tied tightly with my OCD, which I see is not quite as residual as I have for years assumed.

Looking back at my past I am aware that I have all sorts of emotions about who I recall that I was. Now unpicking this is difficult; not only is it a question of sub-personalities and dis-identification in the present, but this as a rolling development through time. Where to find the position to stand? Can I be compassionate with myself now for struggling with my recollected self(s), can I find a way to locate each of the selfs I recall and give the vestige (is that the word) that I now have in this self the support laking (as I perceive it now) at the time of that self? Standing back, dis-identifying with all this, becoming the watcher I see as ever, that I still approach from a position. It's no easy thing to give a 'no answer' to the koan, so my patterns continue and some aspect of me watches.

Of course the koan is answered, life flows on, I was/am and will be at each moment all that is possible for me; I like everyone else am always doing my best. Star dust made conscious looks back at its self and in its limited view defined by the forms available finds gaps. Gaps between what it can imagine might have been, might be, was, is, might be. Life flows into gaps, the constant out of balance giving rise to our experience else there would be no change and thus no life.

Developing form, sex, life force, spirit, time and death. The missing one from the list, the one that summarises the others in a way; OCD, which is, I think just the great grasping for control, the denial of our ultimate loss of form, the accepting and denial of death.

And for the most part the weather was fine and I caught the sun and so did DC. The leaves are coming out and the spring is springing. Late now; time for bed, work tomorrow. If I had more time to write this I'd unpick through the emotions and try to be more honest.

Tide

2009-04-09T23:04:00.004+01:00

I have a feeling that things are shifting a bit. Just the odd conversation, seeing links, options, that sort of thing. I feel lighter with it. But I am also aware that things are messy and even though I have tried to be sensitive to avoid causing suffering, I can see that I've not managed this. And there seems to be a natural flow of in and out, retreating and engaging , yin and yang to this. Maybe one way to look at authenticity is that one tries to be with this flow (as they say), not to get stuck in either yin or yang phases, and to remember whilst in each that it will pass and to try to avoid building walls or clinging to things against the tide. Emptiness in form. But as so often seems to be the case, the universe moves on at a pace slightly ahead of our keeping up and forms then seem to jar. And, to push the metaphor, it is not easy to see what is tide and what is just local turbulence that we do indeed need to protect our self from. So the waves can be battering but then that's to be expected; samsara, it's all fuel for practice I guess.

As it is

2009-04-07T20:37:00.002+01:00

On the one hand: arrgghhhh, and on the other: umm, interesting.

At the wheel

2009-04-06T18:13:00.006+01:00

Pushing the sub-personality bus idea I notice that there is a tussle at the wheel; the playful child is bored and wants to drive, the parent is clearly most concerned about that, the copious and far to tricky to see but definitely felt crowd are still clinging on (and know they are at the root of most plans anyway) and the pragmatist applies correction as required. Of course this is par for the course but the driving is rough just now and the ride as seen by the self is less than it might be. Trouble is, the will is not clear. All this would be no problem if it wasn't for the feeling that the journey is at or past the average halfway mark and a more productive second half is hoped for. Mid-life stuff.

DC and I had a nice time in London over the weekend and met up with someone from my Essentials of Psychosynthesis week in Scotland. We also checked out the constructivist exhibition at Tate Modern. I found the work hollow, soulless. I thought of Japanese calligraphy attempting to portray emptiness and giving a rich sense of humanity so lacking in much of this exhibit.

We all need a language (in the broadest sense) with which to make our world. We need forms. I am not happy with the ones I have I guess, or at least what I am doing with them. I am trying to be so careful not to fall into grass is greener whilst balancing to avoid falling into complacency. This I reckon is the best way I can attempt authenticity.

DC has just had back copies of a consciousness journal delivered, our home is full of interesting things to read and there is so little time to read. DC pointed out an article the title of which includes 'the doors of perception', I guess it asks that question about religious experience as either seeing our true nature or states of mind in the material world. I've sort of found that one merging into two sides of the same coin and fading away... And I consider, just what do I hold as my yard stick when considering questions that lead to using phrases including words like; the unborn, karma, connection, intimacy... Intimacy brings up all sorts of practical questions about the form of ones life and the meaning and complexity of the term. The forms and depths of connection barley explored by the word seem manifold... Not just the (simple) erotic aspect of the red thread, but the much more subtle interplay of meaning and connection. We are all connected but the more immediate connection and direct communication...

Can I look at the depth of my existence and be the most without making awful mistakes and threatening immensely valuable parts of my and other people's life?

Right action

2009-04-02T22:51:00.003+01:00

Lovely night last night with two friends from work. To be open, soften ego shells and extend compassion is as much of an answer to the koan as I could ask.

With choice before me, and the (inevitable) waxing and waning of meaning(s) I have been if not lost then struggling to read the compass of my emotions this past month. Lining up with the true north of compassion should help me get better bearings. But I am not yet out of the woods.

Meaning

2009-04-01T13:40:00.007+01:00

I am finding this a tough post to write. I am reviewing how I came to have chosen this koan. (By this I suppose I mean life as I see it now.) Choice is not the word.

I have come back to the search for meaning. For a while it was a search for emptiness. An emptiness so full that it would rid me of the fear of impermanence. But from the start I knew this was a dangerous attachment and loosened its grip. Anyway, it's all too obvious that I have far too many attachments to travel without purpose and meaning. So I review my values and my belief system, my world view. And this brings me to my connection with the Findhorn Foundation, my understanding and practice of Zen Buddhism and... And what? The relationship between the existential and the spiritual axis of being? Between self and Self? That might be one way to put it. But maybe I am being too dramatic.

Doing is an inseparable part of our being. I always approach my sitting place from a physical and what is more an intellectual / philosophical position. My intellectual understanding that 'I' is empty is only of partial value. But what to do? Do 'devil's eyes sprout...'? They have in the past, then less so (thankfully) and a few more again now.

I have freinds coming to dinner tonight.

Room for one more on top

2009-03-29T13:09:00.003+01:00

DC and I were out to dinner at the home of friends on Friday. What an intriguing two pairs we are, RB&AK and DR&DC. A by now formulaic comparison of each others partner takes place along the lines of the carer and the cared for (in the medical/social needs model) with the various combinations each taken throughout the evening. 'Oh do you find yours needs...' that sort of thing, as if we all kept each other as a sort of pet. And it came to me that this is sort of like the familiar of myth. Who I asked is who's familiar. Not that I am in any way suggesting witchery. I checked this line out a bit on Wiki and note a reference to Imps, who apparently are so lonely that they will do anything, even be turned to good to have a committed friend. Funny how these resonances or archetypes pop up.

I saw Paul A. yesterday and we prodded at each others plans in an attempt to test for thin ice both in our selves and each other.

We're all bonkers, mad as a box of frogs. DC is, as ever, steady at his helm.

Sub-personalities and co-dependencies having an outing or what? How many are on the sub-personality bus and how are the buses relating out there on the road? Man on a Clapham omnibus indeed. Who does he have on his sub-personality bus?

Dancing

2009-03-26T18:38:00.024Z

Yesterday:

Brief casual discussion with a couple of the guys from one of the firms of consulting engineers we work with regarding my proposed three day week; first response was a bit incredulous. Then, as the wheels go around the penny starts to drop, but I came away feeling like I was somehow in the wrong! Which upon reflection was a shame, because had I been less in the I am not ok position, (defending my ego) I would have been able to be more compassionate and supportive of those expressing dismay and thus coax them to seeing a wider view. But that's probably to be a bit egotistical too. That said towards the end of the discussion I think a view of getting off the tread mill was gained, who knows.

We went to see Rambert Dance Company in the evening; an excellent evening. First dance together with the music was very moving, a spiritual piece. It came to me early in the performance that my young nephew, who is eight and is interested in dance and theatre could one day be a professional dancer. I was quite moved by that thought. Not because of some kind of pride but because the thought that he might flow smoothly from bud to flower without that constricted tight unopened time that so many of us face, is moving. Nice to see DC moved by the piece too. And our friend also expressing his enjoyment.

Second dance (or was it third? I forget the order) was more playful, a delightful child like quality which resonated gently with the spirituality of the first piece. My own inner child is frustrated at present and I need to take some action to route out the attachments keeping me feeling low.

I enjoyed last night but I became aware that I had drifted off several times; monkey mind, it's so unproductive, but then...

I am not so lustful over the beautiful male dancers as in the past. But it is nice to see them in animation. And I see just what energy there is in that attraction. Even though I some times wonder if I might ever explore some heterosexual side I never find that raw energy with women that is elicited for me by the sight of a beautiful man. However, these days I do see the yin in women and that's nice.

I recall Gregory's Girl; 'keep dancing or you'll fall off the world' one of them said, or something like that.

Sitting where?

2009-03-22T11:43:00.004Z

Posts have been a bit erratic in both frequency and meaning lately. And this is because I have lost to some extent the voice of ...bough (oh I like that, the voice of ...bough, very Dr Who). Well not lost exactly, it's more that two aspects need to be considered; first how much and in what way should be said, ie how frank, and second behind whatever I might say I need to have seen myself first, ie what is my objectivity. So how frank and where is my objectivity? And (being hopefully objective) they are both out of whack!

So, I could drop back, be reflective, find the still point and observe. Which I do, but not obviously all the time, the rest of the time I am gone; lost in the drama. Which points to the whole question; who exactly is running the show here! And what show out of how many options shall I (add in huge loop back around which I) chose (add in huge loop about choice, nature of the will etc.).

At the physical level I have been feeling a bit rough and my neck, shoulder and back are painful. This will be partly mechanical and substantially a further manifestation of what is being said above. Added to this my perception of physical vulnerability / robustness is also shifted towards the vulnerable end of the spectrum. This is a much more complex symptom and it can't be unpacked here.

So, can I drop out of the thinking (or ruminating) head space and into the emotional body space? Answer; it ain't easy. But yes I can, and that's why the voice is erratic, because the felt meaning in the emotional body space is still churning it around and the head (where the voice is) is babbling it's own tale. The two are probably not yet in harmony.

And no, I can't be specific about the details here; they are too personal.

Willow

2009-03-19T16:57:00.004Z

What am I with just now? Well, I am on a week long health & safety course at work and to be honest five days is a long time to sit through that. Fortunately we are quite a creative and humorous lot. For better or worse I've injected a few loosely Buddhist ideas in.

Still can't find out if they are going to accept me going to 60%. And the longer that goes on the more I get primed to accept a choice of 100% (probably 120% or more) or 0%. So I feel the winds of change may be about to blow. Hope I've got like the willow - pliable- I seem to have settled on a course of action at some level.