Great doing

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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.