Fiona writes: It’s still early days, but now I’ve started writing my novel again (after feeling the fear and doing it anyway), my life feels much more spacious.

When I’m avoiding something important, I often feel a nagging sense of ‘not being able to catch up’ during the day, and of course as the poem below reminds us, there are always things to catch up on.

Now that I’m checking in with April, the protagonist of my novel, even if it’s just for twenty minutes first thing, I find I don’t mind so much if some email is left unanswered for a few days or if the weeding isn’t finished.

Doing what’s important is one way of making life more spacious. Another, of course, is writing small stones. Here’s a recent piece extolling their magical healing powers if you missed it. And of course you don’t even have to write them down, really. Stop to notice the cuckoo’s call and the shapes the clothes make as they sway in the breeze on the washing line. Slow down and enjoy every sip of your earl grey. These intensely observed moments only take twenty seconds. And they will cast a delicious shadow over your whole day.

On an unrelated note. Another part of my life is being a psychotherapist and a member of the Institute for Zen Therapy. You might be able to get along to one of our training days in our Buddhist centre in north London. We offer I’ve written a post today about how familiar we should be to our clients as psychotherapists – here it is.

Have wonderful weekends, all.

*

The washing never gets done.
The furnace never gets heated.
Books never get read.
Life is never completed.
Life is like a ball which one must continually
Catch and hit so that it won’t fall.
When the fence is repaired at one end,
It collapses at the other. The roof leaks,
The kitchen door won’t close, there are cracks in the foundation,
The torn knees of children’s pants…
One can’t keep everything in mind. The wonder is
That beside all this one can notice
The spring which is so full of everything
Continuing in all directions–into evening clouds,
Into the redwing’s song and into every
Drop of dew on every blade of grass in the meadow,
As far as the eye can see, into the dusk.

Jaan Kaplinski (translated by Sam Hamill)

*

washing line by bombhead with gratitude

Fiona writes: For at least four months now, I’ve been saying ‘I’ll get back to work on my new novel when we’ve moved house’.

We’ve moved to our new house.

We’ve been here a month. At the weekend we had our house-warming in glorious sunshine, and a stream of lovely people brought lavender and sat in our garden and ate blondies. The house is warmed.

I have a physical writing space. A glossy chestnut-coloured antique school desk which hides my laptop inside. The heart-shaped wire candle-holder my friend Esther gave me, which I light when I’m writing. My half-pint milk bottle full of daisies from the garden.

What more do I need? What am I waiting for?

I’m frightened of clearing space for writing in my diary.

I’m frightened of being an awful writer. I’m frightened of not living up to my last book. I’m frightened of saying no to clients who can only do the times when I’ve said I’m writing and all my other clients finishing at once and not being able to pay the mortgage. That’s just for starters.

It would be much easier to not be a writer. God/Buddha knows I’ve got enough other things to be getting on with.

But how can I sit here in this half-shaded garden and not tell you about the long tubes of papery caramel-coloured bark hanging from our eucalyptus tree? How can I resist showing you the shocking pink rose campions on their silver candelabras? And how can I desert April, who’s the protagonist of the novel I’ve been stuck with, before her story is told?

The best way of dealing with fear is to admit it, and then to go ahead regardless. I cleared space in my diary today. I will sit at my desk tomorrow morning and open the manuscript. I will write a sentence, and then another.

What do you need to do tomorrow? Join me. Admit it. Go ahead regardless.

POSTSCRIPT: I did write this morning. And I shall do so again tomorrow. How did you get on?

Well, can it?

Here’s a post Kaspa put up on our Buddhist blog this week – an interview our teacher Dharmavidya did with himself, on his favourite subject. Luckily he seems to mostly agree with himself…

Can love change people?

Certainly. Love is simple, so when people come close to love they give up things less important.

Do you mean pure love? Some love is conditional whereas some…

All love is conditional.

All love is conditional?

In this world, yes. Unconditional love, you can say, belongs to heaven, to God’s world, not to this one.

Why is it conditional?

Everything here is conditional, but the pure essence of love is inherent even in conditional love.

But conditional love creates conflicts.

Exactly. At the root of conflicts is love. People fight for what they love.

So at the root of all hate is love?

Yes. Love is not the elimination of conflict, but love can be more or less skilful.

So love is at the root of everything we do.

Yes, including the most stupid things.

But sometimes people are only aware of the hate.

The converse is also possible.

How so?

A soldier is aware, perhaps, of loving his country, but hardly sees the destruction he is inflicting. He is just doing a job.

But in other situations?

Similarly. In couples or in communities, for instance. Each fights for what they believe is right – what they love – but it does not co-incide with what the other thinks. The conflict then gets entrenched through self-righteousness. Fundamentally, each side of the conflcit is growing from a seed of love, but that does not prevent it becoming bitter. But this started with you asking about change…

Yes, how does one change such bitterness?

By, on the one hand, seeing the love in its simplicity and, on the other, seeing one’s own propensity toward folly and realising how universal it is. The latter enables us to see that we are in a conditional world, the former to realise that in this very place we are blessed.

But to change one has to be willing.

Not necessarily. Not even commonly. People are changing all the time, mostly unconsciously.

So the fact that I want to change does not necessarily mean that I will?

Quite. We change when the conditions change. Also, mostly, we are not clear what we really want. People often think they want to change but do not want to change the conditions that keep them the way they are. When the conditions change in spite of themseves they change.

Not always for the better.

Correct.

But love changes…?

Because it is simple and fundamental. It is at the root of everything. It is like dying.

Like dying?

Yes, in love and death one gives up everything. Love and death together are enlightenment. Can you truly love at the point of death? Can you die in the midst of your love?

What does this mean?

To die in the midst of your love is to love more completely.

But still conditionally?

We are in the midst of conditions – there is nothing we can do about that – but to be aware of love is still liberating.

So some changes are due to change of conditions and some are due to love?

Yes, love, in its great simplicity, allows conditions to fall away. ‘Let go of body and mind’ the sages say. ‘Return to the source’. Love is ‘the spirit of the valley’, like water naturally finding the lowest place. Where that place is depends on the conditions, but the water is always the same.

So understanding love and understanding our own conditioned nature will free us?

Yes, but not in the way that we initially expect. Initially we are like a person trying to make a bicycle stand up-right by using our own will. The bicycle does not stay up-right by our will. When the bicycle is in motion, we find we have a different kind of control. In the same way, understanding the human situation – love and our conditioned being – gives us a kind of balance that we did not expect but does not mean that we control things in the manner that we initially thought was essential yet so difficult.

So how can we gain this understanding of love?

Have the faith to love simply in your heart; do what needs doing in a loving way; notice one’s own folly; smile at the human situation. We are all weak. we are all human. If we were not, love would be unnecessary. In effect, we change when we realise our weakness without losing sight of the love that enfolds us.

by David Brazier

image by nyoin

Fiona writes: I have some medicine for you. It has dangerous side-effects. It will make you fall a little bit in love with everything.

Kaspa is working hard on editing our second small stone anthology, and so small stones have been very much on my mind.

We run a ‘write one a day’ challenge every January, but, like puppies at Christmas-time, small stones aren’t just for January.

Jean is still capturing exquisite moments every day over at Trail Mix. I still edit a handful of stones. People tweet using #smallstone. I’m still use small stones as my daily writing practice.

So why might you want to develop a small stone habit?

Because pausing between the front door and the front gate to notice the precise blue of the campanula is the kind of moment we could all do with more of. And if you write a small stone every day, you’ll have to do this at least once.

You don’t have to be a ‘writer’, whatever that is. You don’t need more than five minutes a day. You do  need curiosity. You do need some gumption to persevere when you’d rather watch Eastenders instead.

Possible side-effects – clear-seeing, gratitude, relaxation, love.

If you still need convincing, listen to Lorrie’s story. I’ll leave you with one of Jean’s recent small stones which also says what I want to say perfectly. Do post your small stone in the comments _/\_

Nearly midnight -
reach into the darkness
for a few words. 

Fiona writes: After landing with a little bump from Buddhafield yesterday, I felt the day’s tasks looming ahead of me like a pile of huge rocks that needed carrying (one by one) to the next village.

The most important of these tasks was finishing writing our Summer Moodle ecourse. It felt big and complicated. I avoided starting. I got other things done instead. I ended the day with the big rock of Summer Moodle still untouched.

This morning I woke up in an entirely different mood. I wrote for two hours before breakfast, the sentences sliding out of me. I enjoyed every chewy bits of my fresh-bread-toast-and-honey. I weeded the front garden for half an hour. I sat out the back in the sun and read through what I’d written with a red pen. I came in and started this blog post.

Everything flowed effortlessly. It all tasted wonderful. The words nourished me as I proof-read them. The wind shush-shushed the trees to keep me company. The day opened up – spacious, leisurely.

I moodled my way through it all.

Now make sure you read this exquisite poem by Stafford as slowly as you can. Imagine the sound of the swaying leaves accompanying you. Imagine that every word is a tiny tasty wild strawberry…

Any Morning

Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People won’t even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.

~William Stafford

*

More bluebells by richjjones

“The best way out is always through.”
~Robert Frost

Fiona writes: This weekend Kaspa & I were at our first (mega-muddy) Buddhafield festival in Devon. We were there representing our Buddhist Order and had been invited to join the Dharma Parlour team in place of our colleague Modgala.  

I always feel wobbly in new groups. I want strangers to know how brilliant I am, to feel that I am contributing something valuable, & to love me. I can wait around five minutes for this to happen.

This can be challenging if they have already known each other for many years, or don’t really need anything, or are human beings.

Despite the team’s warm welcome, as the day went on I felt increasingly ‘new’. I was the only one who didn’t know what I was doing. I felt guilty about getting into the festival for free & then not ‘earning my keep’. I felt unimportant and useless.  

Things came to a head on Saturday when we sat in our first workshop on mindful writing and nobody came.

I knew this was probably because we hadn’t advertised it in the right place, but it still left me on the edge of tears. We walked through a patch of woodland and tried to make sense of what was happening and why I was feeling the way I did.

I had a cry and considered running away home. I sat with the feelings of rejection and uselessness. Something gradually shifted. (A Buddhist festival is a good place to face the size & particular audaciousness of your ego.) 

I decided to share how I felt with the organiser. I lowered my expectations of myself and of how quickly we would become ‘useful’. And we went back to our team campfire.

One of the team painted my face with luminous yellow & pink dots. I made another a cup of tea and chatted about the mud. Another three of us shared terrible jokes that night around the fire. I attended my first puja with another. Another gave me his crazy hat to wear as a kind of ‘crazy-hat prescription’.

The next morning, as I sat round with the same group of strangers at our daily ‘check-in’, I saw that they weren’t strangers any more. I shared my crisis of the day before. They listened. That afternoon we had another workshop and twenty people came. We enjoyed it. It went well. I was deeply grateful.

The best way out is through. I wish it wasn’t. But if you don’t go through, you’ll just end up at the same gate again before too long.

Take the first step. Ask someone to hold your hand. You’ll be at the other side before you know it.

*

‘Underfoot’ by MrGiles

Fiona writes: This weekend Kaspa & I decided to limit the number of participants on our mindful writing e-courses to eight each. This will sometimes mean turning people (which means money) away. Why have we done this?

Over the weekend I was in a safe space, and this is often where fresh insight appears. I was flicking through my diary and I noticed how busy I seemed to be.

I realised that my psychotherapy practice, which has grown very slowly since we moved to Malvern a year and a half ago, has got bigger and bigger when I wasn’t looking.

I thought about how many clients I want to see a week, taking into consideration how much ‘space’ each client takes in my head, how much time I have, the other things I do. I decided ten was a good number. I counted how many I was currently seeing.

Ten. That means I’m ‘full’.

I looked at the other sources of my income. My Fridays are full with work I do for a telephone counselling company. I want some space to write. I have three places left for a fortnightly or monthly coaching client, and that’s about it… All full.

So what about our e-courses? Numbers on them have varied over the past year between three and sixteen. Rather than being greedy, rather than how many people we COULD squeeze in, how many people did we WANT in each group? We thought, eight. Eight is a good number.

I’m very grateful for this luxurious place of having to put new psychotherapy clients on a waiting list, and having to say no to people who want to join our e-courses when we’re full. We’ve worked hard, and we’ve also had lots of luck. We’ve had good support from lots of good people.

I also suspect that being ‘full’ is also partly a result of a shift towards a different state of mind – less panicky about having enough. Not being greedy, and also feeling entitled to some good stuff (including  pancakes).

Paradoxically, (and annoyingly), it is often when we stop desperately wanting something that it arrives.

How can you get what you want? Find a way of being less in need of it. Get on with doing the best you can, and enjoying as much of your life as-it-is as you can. Trust that what you want will arrive, sooner or later. Or it won’t. Whatever happens, you’ll be just fine.

*

‘Look after the pennies’ by Mukumbura via Creative Commons, with thanks