Backcards failed in the hole in the wall this morning, left with $2 in my pocket, and that’s Kate’s, as I borrowed money from her for the train this morning. Ah well, all this is strangely familiar.
4 days to go, and then hopefully some work, or at the very least some promise of work. Cari and I reconnected over the weekend, but unfortunately I’m down to .60 cents of phone credit so I’m out of contact at the moment, not good.
As for the course I’m kind of over it – just want it to be over now. As Cari said in the weekend it would be good to be positive, to continue to know that the universe will provide. I realise I am struggling here …
Still counting down though it seems to matter so much less right now. I am no longer concerned about making it to the end or how long that may take – all that will happen, as they say, as a matter of course (hahahah). The last couple of days have simply been about numbed endurance – about just doing it – with little enthusiasm and little motivation.
The weekend looms (tomorrow is Saturday), so that’s a blessing. I’ll spend some time applying for jobs. I am broke and broken now. A job or two may be just what I need to rehabilitate myself.
My mind has for the moment stopped roaming and has landed like a butterfly on the simpliest of places. I am making plans to stay right here. Don’t go anywhere – can’t get any easier than that. Just stay put, find work, find digs and see what happens. It is all of a sudden about pure practicalities, pure survival. I want nothing other than to function. Work. Putting on a performance with whomever I end up working with is a necessity, when what I really want is to be left alone. Ironically I can’t afford that at the moment.
This desire for isolation is a familar place. Like a wounded animal I just want to duck back into my den and lick my wounds (all self-inflicted as always). I do not want company. I just want to be left alone with my thoughts, so I can start letting them go.
With persistent practice, consciousness may eventually be perceived or felt as an entity of mere luminosity and knowing, to which anything is capable of appearing and which, when appropriate conditions arise, can be generated in the image of whatsoever object. As long as the mind does not encounter the external circumstance of conceptuality, it will abide empty without anything appearing in it, like clear water. Its very entity is that of mere experience. Let the mind flow of its own accord without conceptual overlay. Let the mind rest in its natural state, and observe it. In the beginning, when you are not used to this practice, it is quite difficult, but in time the mind appears like clear water.
–The Dalai Lama, in The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness
Let the mind rest in its natural state, and observe it. In the beginning, when you are not used to this practice, it is quite difficult.
Always practice - and more practice.
The only way you can ‘cruise’ is (a) if you have no more lessons to learn, or (b) you take a cruisy attitude to the lessons as they present themselves. Remember we all suffer, every one of us, all the time. So there is no end to suffering. Do not wish that to cease, such wishing is pointless and ultimately debilitating.
Rather the trick (and the lesson, every lesson) is to change the way we respond to suffering. By being less torn and upset by it we feel like we are cruising more (obviously), life becomes ‘easier’.
Others perceive us as suffering less. They are right and wrong. Do not confuse the exterior conditions of suffering (those that were once causes) with interior ’sufferance’. The external conditions of suffering are still there, what we learn is to suffer less (and laugh more? be more irreverent? take it less seriously?). What we learn is that these external conditions need not cause us to be unhappy.
To reach the point that the DL describes we must first accept all that ‘appears’ in our consciousness as ‘ok’. That is as neither good nor bad, neither having the characteristic of invoking pleasure or suffering. Things that appear ’simply are’. When this is the case we have (and must accept) total responsibility for how we will feel in regard to this things. Sufferance becomes a choice.
Week 5 the lights started to flicker. It would be another 3 weeks before I realised that something had eaten it’s way through the wiring. This was the week of Slimming World at Wimbledon. This was the week that war was declared, plain and simple. Three weeks before the collision, one week before the break, 10 days before the outbreak of sickness. Week 5 was a week I chose to write less, and now those lesser words have come back as ghosts. Empheral spectres that gather in the surrounding mist.
I am hurt, a wounded animal just wanting to retreat to the safety of my lair. Yet I can not find my way back. Too long in exile, I have travelled halfway around the world. Closer now to my destination than my departure point, I wait to be tested. Like Ulysses I await my final challenge.
Yet I have travelled only halfway, and as I stand here in the middle of my journey, in the middle of the day I am told I have some way to go. I will not face the walk of shame just yet. I must await the call. I step outside and am once again lost in the midday sun: a mad dog and an englishman all in one.
I am afraid of teachers. I am afraid of being a ‘teacher’. Do not consider me so. Do not have those expectations of me. I am happy, comfortable being a student. Leave me alone. An old mad dog that tries to learn but cannot be taught.
New tricks. Old ways.
Old tricks that still work. I am a competent wizard. A sorcerer’s apprentice who does not want to accept that my teacher has died. I am without oversight – without shadow. I have woven spells and sowen seeds. Now the spectres surround me, and taunt me. In ragged harmony they chant:
Where are you going?
How will you get there?
How will you know you have arrived?
Three little pigs with three little questions. And the big bad wolf with the hairs on his chinny-chin-chin huffs and puffs and blows and blows and manages to answer the first two questions. Well done old mad dog!! But that third question … It is build from bricks, like most things here in the centre of my universe. The third question could not be blown away. The third questions remains standing to this day.
Just got back from my first morning at Cert TESOL training. Wow! My head was spinning on the way home, still is, so be prepared for a bit of a giddy ride. The good thing is that writing a journal (PDA I think the acronym is) after each session is part of the coursework, so I’m blessed. I get to do what I like doing (writing about me) and I knock of some coursework at the same time. The teacher did however emphasise brevity – oh well I’ll try.
The teacher is brilliant, friendly, full of energy and has a dry wit (I love it!) . As an icebreaker she asked all 15 of us to stand in the middle of the room and order ourselves alphabetically according to our first names. Maybe she (I can’t remember her name) should have joined in, because the exercise was not only a brilliant way to remember some names, it broke down our sense of personal space as we gostled and jived trying to worked out our relative positions.
I get the feeling that the course is to be a lot about this type of thing; practical teaching techniques - teaching practice. I am excited about this, as it is something that challenges me. I think maybe I have issues about telling people what to do, which is a little ironic given that in much of my previous work this was seemingly a primary role (i.e prison officer, lecturer, social worker, probation officer). I do note though that in all those jobs I was in an established position of authority. Maybe I’m just afraid of asking ‘ordinary everyday’ people (with total freedom of choice) to do something; afraid they’ll just won’t do it or think I’m silly or something.
Mostly my head was/is spinning about the 10 minute presentation we were advised we are to give in a couple of weeks time. The suggestion is that we extend the 5 minute presentation we gave at our interviews. If you are wondering why I am spinning then click hereΦ .
It took a lot of courage to give that (very non-interactive) 5 minute presentation to one person, the thought of giving the same presentation, now involving the participation and interaction of 15 people for 10 minutes is somewhat daunting, and yet I find myself wanting to do it.
I recognise this moment. When I am committing myself to something that IKNOW:
will cause me discomfort and self-doubt (suffering)
I will think about between now and then
will cause me to practise letting go, and TRUST (cessation of suffering)
What a GREAT start to a course. To feel challenged from day 1. To have a sense of anticipation of not just learning something new but enjoying that learning process. To be practising the eight-fold path. Yehaaaa, bring it on…
