Life force

The pictures above are of tulips I bought to welcome home DC a couple of weeks ago. They were soon spent as I knew they would be but they were cheerful. Even spent like this they have a charm I think. They seem to be saying 'darling, it's all too much, yet what a blast'!

In various ways my OCD among other things has been draining energy away from me over the winter. This I know is part of a spent feeling I've been with for some time. That feeling is also part of mid-life and quite a lot of experience of various kinds of dukkha. Sitting with this I see both tiredness and acceptance. Cutting through ties of the past in faith and humility with compassion for myself is challenging; I find the inner critic all too active. And there is a sense of the value of experience, of life. I've heard it said that one should embark upon a spiritual life with compassion as a focus and not emptiness. Well my own experience, I think it fair to say, has been of spiritual life turning a dark emptiness full of fear into one of light, pregnant with possibility. Of the three poisons (ignorance, attachment and aversion) it's probably aversion that has had most hold over me for most of my life. The illusion of separation drives the whole process and I have my share of attachments as do us all, but you get the picture; it's fear of it all going wrong rather than craving for more experience which has been my pattern. So, with this feeling of spentness I've come to consider the life force behind both fear and desire, the birth coming from the pregnancy of emptiness. This raw energy of being in the world, described in various ways by various traditions, is for me generally dissipated in a complex web of experience. I suppose that over the years I've held the intention to cultivate awareness, and to see the reflection of experience and awareness in each other. And with this to accept what is. I'm sure that in this I've not been really present with what is, really felt the living energy of it. I know my mind will drift from part experience to part experience. As well as cultivating spaciousness there is also being with the very aliveness of the space and I probably could do with remembering that.

Sustaining

Tidying up my study this morning I had a quick tidy of the suspension file holding the instructions for appliances etc. and came across the access codes for DC's old Mercury phone line account from 1993. Not only is the account gone but Mercury too! We still have two phones with the 'blue button', the memory button for the Mercury access code- one now on my study desk and another now by our bed. In the days of the Mercury account the first was in the kitchen and the second on DC's desk - both in the previous address. Nothing stays the same but some things do sustain.

This post is for DC with all my love

The wrong kind of doubt

The past few weeks I've been sitting with quite a bit. Before I got my job interview and subsequent job a lot of anxiety had started to flood in. Some of this was rooted in 'genuine' concerns but there has been a large measure of OCD in it. I know the territory well and there is nothing to do but sit with it. It's difficult, tiring and most unpleasant. There is very little that seems solid and even the slightest concern feels like certain disaster. It has eased considerably, as I knew it would but it has taken time and in part still remains. In all this I've been wondering about posting here and noticed that there was no 'voice'; nothing to say. Of course this 'nothing to say' is more accurately described as 'nothing to say to the imagined reader' And who is this imagined reader? Well, I guess that there are two aspects to that; the inside and the outside. There is the part of me that's interested in what I'm saying (the inside) and there is a conglomeration of imagined foes that might take a 'negative or judgemental' view on what I might write (the outside). The outside is of course a projection. With this particular OCD anxiety the outside assumes the proportions of a very big and unfriendly other.

I recall talking with my friend about writing in a way which doesn't say with certainty 'this is how it is'. The it being my personal experience and NOT some great pronouncement about the very nature of reality. As an engineer I'm trained in being clear, precise and definite. So, trying to write with honesty and openness about my inner life and keeping an open mind, saying something of how it seems without being rigid can be a challenge. And it's all too easy to come across as some great pronouncement of certainty about reality. Which would be absurd! It's not that I'm 100% sure - it's just that as soon as I try to say anything it sounds like I am. In fact at times, such as when my OCD is raging, I feel so uncertain of  things (except that I'm a terrible person) that I loose too much solidity. There is in my experience, a healthy 'great doubt' and a very unhealthy doubting of ones self.

Taking refuge in the three treasures and having faith that this does let one put one foot in front of the other with confidence in the midst of great doubt even when that doubt is the 'wrong kind' has been much of the challenge this past couple of months. The direction of a new job is helping in the move to the 'right' kind of doubt.

 Today, I've also been more closely faced with some of the fears I have about those 'immagined' readers.

New job

I start a new job on Monday. I'm looking forward to 'getting stuck in'!
It's a role I've enjoyed in the past and the signs are that this role could be more rewarding.
As ever, life will throw up challenges and after a long search the job may prove an anti-climax. But that too would be just great! I was interested to read Ajahn Sucitto's blog post regarding roles. A timely reminder for me as I start a new role.

Shoe shoal

A while ago I took this photo:

I thought the shoes looked like a shoal of fish at a food location and then I thought shoal sounds like sole. Ha ha. :)

Bees

I've been reading about beekeeping; I intend taking a course in the spring and then getting some bees. I'm looking at topbar v national hive design and considering if there is anything to be said for so called natural beekeeping. Certainly I think I'm more interested in the keeping of the bees as a part of a 'spiritual life' and for fun than I am in harvesting large quantities of honey.

Bees are in decline due to a number of factors and need the support of beekeepers to help them. Although some would say that part of the difficulties they face have been caused by industrial beekeeping, the main root of their difficulties would seem to be the industrialisation of farming and the associated use of chemicals and loss of diversity and quantity of flowering plants. Which when you boil it down might be said to be due to human greed. But of course things need to be seen in context; some of those Victorian beekeepers would have thought of humans as God's chosen creatures with a right to reign over the earth. Fortunately I think most people would see that as a very suspect position now. I wonder what commonly held views of today will be regarded as strange in the future? I do hope to things work out so I can keep a hive or two, or three...

Longing in the world

I had a few ideas for a post a week or so back but as can happen the muse left me too soon. Robin William's suicide has put a bit more shape around those ideas.

As I've said before I think we come out of the unknowable void of unity, that which is called by many names; God, Buddha, Source, in order that the very void may perceive itself both as raw consciousness and as apparently separate forms within that consciousness. But this too is just an idea and one not to get too attached to. Part of experience is undoubtedly a sense of self, a will and desire. Fear might be said to be the feeling generated by the prospect of a seemingly unbearable contradiction between desire and apparent circumstance; usually the desire for safety and well being of the self. And whilst there is no separate self there is the interconnected self, a self were it wise enough to see, that is The Self; the unknowable. The purpose of life is to experience it. I think depression arises when that purpose feels thwarted. And whilst Buddha nature like paper never refusing ink irrespective of what is written, is always accepting, our experience is naturally filled with desire, contradiction, fear, confusion and much more.

Desire it seems to me is the fuel which makes things happen, or at least the feeling which goes along with things happening. I'll not get too distracted here into writing about control and how much or rather how little we actually have. And as I've alluded to above the real desire is to live that we may see our true (Buddha) nature. Creativity is an aspect of sexual energy or vice-versa . Sex, to me a calling to unity, fires us up and draws us to each other; cracks us open that we might love. Happy young straight couples experience this uniting love albeit tangled with romantic attachment and glow in its joy. Young gay men sometimes have this too, but their path is often more complex. When enmeshed in the pursuit of some subject or area of study both our self and the subject are also cracked open. Most gay men will tell you of the pain involved in coming to terms with their sexuality and the complexities of their love lives. Yet this experience is revealing and ultimately rewarding as we see the water which other (straight) fish simply swim through. History is littered with people who have been washed up on the shores of their subject be it technical, political or human. We all see our own version of the world. For many it's fine and they fit; no problem. For others the world they see is filled with contradictions; aspects that don't seem as they could be. Those aspects mingle with desire and creativity and beckon a new awakening; a further exploration of the void. For some this process is joyful but often it is painful. Consciousness cares not either way; all it wants is to explore the void. I've heard it said that our environmental problems are sort of irrelevant to consciousness; if we mess up consciousness will just spring up out of what is left behind. We will have been an interesting experiment and life will move on. Of course it's only an interesting experiment because we do care what happens; we are both infinitely expendable and infinitely priceless. This priclessness resides in love. Sometimes sight is lost of this love in all its guises and great enveloping waves of heavy grey-blackness wash in; depression. Like Sisyphus eternally pushing  the bolder up hill only to have it roll back, we are entombed in wave upon wave of heavy darkness with no end in sight. Sometimes the darkness is shot through with lightning bolts of fear at other times the fear is like sheet lightning or rain. Rain, it rains and rains... then worse, the rain and the dry have merged together; the self seems lost, merged in the enveloping grey. Objectivity is lost, the will seems to have fled, chased out by fear. An empty maw remains. And still the stone has to be pushed and still it rolls back... and on... and on. From where does this bleakness come? Then, almost as quick as it came it can leave. Colour returns, the will creeps back and the world regains some objectivity. And more. The world is more seen, the water is more visible, the swim is more visible.

There is talk in the media just now about the link between creativity and depression. There are warnings not to romanticise depression in this way. Good warnings I think. But it is I think also true that a certain kind of seeing and seeking, a certain kind of creating a world comes at a price. I think this inevitable as when we touch the depth of our human being we inevitably see that there is a rich sadness at the root of life; we long to return home (to the void) yet we are already there and long to enter the world...

The merit of this post is offered for Robin William's family.