Christ this is really a trial.  There is little pleasure in it. It is more a test of endurance… and… trust. Trust that the trainers know what they are doing. Trust that I will become more accomplished at teaching. Trust that the ways, techniques and methods we are being taught are the ‘right’ ones. Trust that the way the knowledge is packaged and paced and ordered has been tested many times before and has been proven to work. Trust that after another 16 days I will be  a much better teacher than I am now, coz I’m not so comfortable with the teaching I’m doing at the moment. I don’t recall ever feeling this uncomfortable in the classroom/tutoring environment when teaching at uni.

I think maybe my uncomfortableness has something to do with not understanding people at the best of times – ha. And not just at a philosophical level but at a very real hearing and listening level. I have for many years now had difficulty understanding people – I am maybe a little deaf and a little disinterested, and this makes hearing and understanding what someone is saying rather difficult. I’ve got into the habit of reading body language, of coming to know what is expected in response even when I do not understand the words. I do my best to produce a reassuring smile or confirming nod or shake of the head. This way of being is not realy too well suited to teaching English to foreign students.  Ah well – keep going – ha.

As I have said it is simply a matter of endurance. I am running out of money – something I knew would happen and didn’t quite anticipate it happening so quickly. Being here, in a city, in Auckland, is sucking the life out of me, in all ways. I do not feel I belong here. I do not feel at ease here. I am temporary, out of step, and while I need a job I am not sure that working here will be good for me in any way other than financially. To stay here, not just in Auckland, but perhaps in NZ, does not rest easy with me. And yet …

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Sent to me from Anna – thanks, I like this. The drawing below was submitted by a Primary school girl (5yrs old) for a homework assignment.

 
After it was marked and the child brought it home, she returned to school the next day with the following note:
 

Dear Ms. Davis,
I want to be very clear on my child’s illustration.  It is NOT of me on a dance pole on a stage in a strip joint.  I work at B&Q [a UK hardware chain] and had commented to my daughter how much money we made in the recent snowstorm.  This  picture  is of me selling a shovel !.

Yeah right, we believe you! And anyway what’s wrong with working on a dance pole, on a stage, in a strip joint (I love that we still call them that – ‘joint’ – has real sleazy connotations).

Anyway it brought a smile to my face, and I hope it has to yours. Thanks again Anna. Hope all is well where you are, and I hear Richelle has left TESOL. Three down!

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

I can’t recall exactly where and when I first learnt this practice. I’ve googled it and have come up with this – tonglen. I’ve read a number of Pema Chodron books, and have had some read to me while at Shambhala meditation sessions. It is very likely that it is from Pema that I first learnt this practice.

I think of this practice as ‘black and yellow’. I practice tonglen with one of the men I visit. Mr Singh is an old frail Indian man. He speaks English well, and says very little. His wife however hardly speaks any English and talks with me all the time. I love them both to bits. Mrs Singh is always (and I mean always – ever time I open the door) smiling and laughing. She finds me enormously funny. Don’t ask me why, perhaps it is because I don’t understand a word she says, although I do now know that ‘tikka’ means something akin to ‘ok’ or ‘correct/right’. Something like that. And every morning we say ‘Co-naa’ (that’s what it sounds like anyway) to each other through the glass of the front door. This sends her into fits of laughter.

I am coming to recognise Mr. Singh as one of my gurus. He sure looks the part. I wash him every morning. This has always been a meditative and spiritual moment, one that at first I was a little slow to recognise. Now, every morning, I am well aware of how palpable the calmness, quiet and presence is that pervades the time  and space we share together.

Large blisters will rise up and pass away upon Mr. Singh’s body. I saw these as I washed him. At first I just started trying to be as present as I could when I was with him. He made this easy as he sat very still, hardly moving other than to help me as I undressed and dressed him. The few movements he makes are graceful and economical. I’d focus on each button of his shirt intently as I did them up, being mindful of my breath as I did so.

I guess that was akin to Anapanna Sati I learnt on the Goenka retreats. It wasn’t long before I started practising ‘black and yellow’ – trying to match my inbreath with a sense of congealed blackness entering me, and my outbreath as one with a brilliant translucent yellow light. I tried to do this without attachment. I tried to consider these moments as an opportunity for me to practice, nothing else.

I added something else, something that for me is a mish-mash of many things I have learnt, heard and read. As I slowly and systemtically washed Mr. Singh’s body, from head to foot I started to add blessings, such things as:

May your head be clear so you can be still and at peace

May your arms be strong and healthy so that you can hug those you love and keep them safe

May you chest be clear so you can breathe deeply and sleep soundly

May your stomach be healthy so you can eat well

May your legs be strong so that they can carry you whereever you may want to go

May you feet be strong and hearty, so you can stand firmly

So this is what I do ever morning. I am privileged to have such an opportunity. And here I was, just the other day, thinking I would like to meditate more. I think at this stage I just need to continue practising while I am with Mr. Singh.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Maybe I am a healer. Maybe we all are. Healers.

If I know myself as a healer, am I then a healer?

I have healed myself, yet am I whole enough to identify myself as a healer, as healed? And why? Why now this interest? This searching for identity.

Because I recognise that I enjoy touching and loving others. I enjoy touching Dharam and Frank and Mr. Crosby. I have become close to these men. So very different from what has gone before, these are the people I am intimate with, outside of my relationship with Cari. Never before have I been so close to, so intimate, with other men.

I was asleep, now I am awake. Awoken to my love. Awoken to the magic and wonder of the universe. The ‘Is’ of ‘Illusions’.

I now see my ‘work’ as my greatest gift. It is a wish, a dream fulfilled. It is a desire realised, without effort.  It is the work of transformation.

I have climbed the wall of my own fear and entered the intimate darkness within. I have touched my beating heart. I have felt it – at last – I have felt it, and it is a healing touch.

I have turned away many times before. I have denied myself. I have shied away, hidden myself in the mirrors that surround me. Choosing not to look into the eyes reflected back at me. Choosing not to recognise the love inside. Choosing not to enter the hole in the soul.

I have been afraid of the emptiness inside. Now I know.

I know …

                     …that a moment of recognition is best forgotten

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Not sure what this post is going to be about – there is so much going on in my head at the moment – and most of it, if not all of it, I am constantly in a process of trying to let go of.

Something that springs to mind (you gotta LOVE that phrase) is ESOL training – or ESL or TEFL – there are so many acronyms – whichever, it boils down to the same thing – I am seriously thinking about enrolling in a course. The kind of plan (and those of you who know me, know that I use ‘plan’ in a very loose sense) at the moment is to do some part time training over the next year or so, maybe get some part-time work teaching, and in 2-3 years get a placement somewhere in Europe. I’m trying to talk Cari into the plan – and as she is one of you who knows me well – very well, she knows that buying into one of my plans can result in …. not what was planned – ha! So she is taking just a wee bit of convincing. Anyway, watch this space.

Other than that, I was thinking of having a rant about social work and social workers. Now one of my bestest friends is a social worker (yep that’s you Jim), so this is a general rant about the whole ’social work industry’ I guess rather than about the individuals within it. Social work (SW) is coming in for a bit of stick over here at the moment – after the death of a baby, the parents of whom were part of the SW caseload – now this will sound all too familar to those of you in Aotearoa. The death of children, and the failings of state agencies in regard to those deaths seemed to me to be a constant news item in NZ in the years before I left.

Mind you, I may have been a little sensitive to the whole deal as the role of probation officers was often being challenged as much as social workers. On reflection I have spent much of my career on the edges of social work – and was even once employed as a ‘residential social worker’ – the ‘residential’ signifying I think that I didn’t have any formal qualifications. And I have taught a large number of budding social workers at university – stage I sociology, if I remember correctly, being a core paper within the Massey social work degree.

There is also my experience within Corrections of witnessing the attempted shift of culture within the Community Probation Service from one that validated a social work type approach to one centred more upon clinical psychology. Having many years before been a probation officer, and one who benefited in many ways from the social work ethos within the service at that time, the playing out of this shift interested and engaged me.

I found myself fence-sitting, and while of course I often understand this from a metaphysical point of view as being perhaps the only valid position, in this case it was more personal. I knew that as a probation officer, operating as a pseudo social worker I was largely unaccountable for much of what I did – my decision-making in regard to those on my caseload included.

And there is no doubt that then, as now, I had an agenda. Probably a somewhat different one to the one I operate from now, nevertheless I was operating from a personal philosophy about life that effected all my actions, interactions and reactions. The thing was back then I was acting most of the time unconscious of this philosophy that informed the way I was. I was miles away from mindfulness – in fact back then I didn’t even know it existed.

And by and large I was never officially challenged about it – I say ‘officially’ because a lot of what I did, a lot of what I learnt through courses that were provided, and a lot of the wonderful people I met, did cause me to stop and think and reflect. However for the most part this was not the intended purpose of these interactions.

I was growing myself. I was young – ha -  in my mid to late twenties. I skivved off, cut corners, got way distracted by many things - wine (well beer mostly), women and song being chief amongst them. I was learning about myself – in a very random and chaotic way – and I was not alone in this, there were plenty amongst my colleagues to play with.

While helping people was the type of job I wanted to do (I recall sitting in the Prison Superintendent’s office being interviewed for a job as a prison officer, and being advised quite unequivocably that ‘you know this isn’t social work’). Once I was working as a probation officer (and the difference in philosophy and focus to my work as a prison officer was quite remarkable – no pretence of social work amongst the screws – although quite a bit of what they did was just that), it did become a job. Simply part of my life – that fitted in along side all the other parts. And that’s fair enough. And that’s the nub.

Helping people is not a job. Social work is not a job. It is a vocation – in the truest sense of the word. A calling. It is not something that fits inside a job description, a time frame, a career plan. The desire to help people when it is geniune, when it is a calling, pervades all that we are. In this sense social work is the expression of dharma. And the expression of dharma is not about meeting certain standards or targets or goals - as modern social work has become – rather it is about meeting certain values -  values that are shared by both the giver and the reciever.

Social work is a relationship, a mutual, equal, loving relationship. And as in all loving relationships, all the time, one person gives and the other recieves. Neither is better or worse, stronger or weaker, more or less powerful in this giving and receiving – for both are understood as a gift. The helper is given the opportunity to give, the receiver to recieve, It is a relationship governed by dharma – and that dharma may be expressed in a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or any other religious, spiritual, secular or cultural way – the key is that the essence of the dharma within the relationship is known by both giver and reciever.

There is no deception. There is no attempt to be objective, to be removed. No pretence of one person acting professionally and the other a client, customer, service user or whatever else. Social work requires presence. And to be able to be present we must feel safe, we must trust eachother – completely, we must love each other in an essential and unconditional way.

The profession and industry of social work has an impossible task. It is an attempt to formalise the transmission of dharma within a society largely devoid of shared values, in which unconditional love and complete trust are considered romantic and unobtainable notions. Social workers and their clients do not by in large respect, love and trust eachother. SW has a bad name. It does.

Someone should start again – with a different name.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x