Priceless time

Listening today to The Eagles; Wasted Time, I came again to that place of reflection. It's a song about the death of a romantic relationship but I wonder is it also just as much about the little and some not so little deaths we face on our journey through life. And that line 'you're afraid it's all been wasted time' is so poignant. Has it been so far, a life well lived? Were the 'right' choices made? Well, were they ever choices? Coming out of the void, entering samsara we make our way seeking experience and perhaps eventually sensing the longing to return home. At this place is there a looking one way at the life so far lived and the other towards home; the source? And if there is doubt or sadness then what part is it that feels sad? And sad for what? The line 'So you can get on with your search, baby, and I can get on with mine' reminds us that we do seek. But it's the line 'And maybe someday we will find, that it wasn't really wasted time' that moves me to tears. Can we ever but square the circle of our own life? I'm reminded of this post on Jade Mountain Buddha Hall. Is this moment anything but complete? Whatever it might seem, we are the answer to our koan. Bodhidharma is indeed the red bearded barbarian! I just need to keep saying YES!

Job!

I have a new job. I got the news two days ago. It's a relief not just to me but to DC too. Reading DC blog it's clear just what a wonderful man he is. Of course I don't need to read his blog to know that. We will travel on Sunday to see friends in Scotland and it should be a time of renewal.

Redundant but hopefully not for long

It was great to be working as an M&E Manager for a principal contractor again. But then their cash flow problems started to ring alarm bells. Then with virtually zero notice the administrator arrives and we are all made redundant. Against my better judgment I decided to accept the administrators advice to sign on. I found that a stressful thing to do. The people working there seem ok but there is a feeling that the system seems setup to make you feel bad.  Making you wait outside the building for example because you are five minutes early. I say early not late. Job hunting is stressful. But some good leads are unfolding and I may well soon be back in a good job.

Sitting in compassion with all this is a challenge!

How it is just now

Sometimes I see the enormous challenge that being human is. Trying to be the best person I can be and feeling so much less than the task seems to demand, there is realisation of the huge heart that is the willingness to try in each of us. I find it difficult to describe the sense of a still power which runs with the profound sweet sadness at the root of human life. At times I feel old and tired and half want to return home to the source. Yet the giving up is not yet a giving up and looking up. There's attachment and fear and some depression in there. There is working through the koan. There is interest to see how the koan arrises. There is in these mid-life years reflection; snapshots of the past sometimes vivid, perhaps more vivid than was seen at the time, at least in some ways. Or maybe that's just one more storey. What is seen at any time is not the whole picture, it's just what is salient. I wonder if there is any rhyme or reason to the salient and how much reality or truth there is in it. The saliency is not just the drama of life - all the world is indeed a stage and all the men and women indeed players, but awakening through the enactment of the drama and watching of the play. My life energy is not as open and free flowing, as joyous in this as a true letting go would generate. There seems to be much going on in all this at some level.

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.