In the head

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

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

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?

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.