research

A key ingredient of a business plan is market research ... thanks to the internet, hours of browsing fun are possible simply from typing "Retreats" into google (other search engines are available) ... yoga is popular and luxury pops up quite a lot too ... one senses a particular segment of the market caters for wealthy folks and the prices confirm it ... and why not? Indeed the Stanhope house has a luxurious feel to it, though simplicity will temper that sense of excess and shared bedrooms seem likely especially as there are only five to start with.

An interesting place diverts attention and ends with a booking for June at Sharpham ... browsing is one thing, experience another .. this place feels right ...

More diversion occurs with some reflection on suffering, which featured a few posts back, and exploring the various words used to translate "dukkha" it seems "dissatisfaction" is richer ... and with wider resonance for folks not consciously suffering but vaguely aware that all is not well ...

A tangential link leads to Gaunts House in Dorset and a story from two decades ago, when seeking not spiritual growth but a farm on which to start a visitor attraction, Sir Richard Glyn was suggested as someone nearby with a farm looking for a purpose. Honeybrook Farm was the place and it did indeed become a visitor attraction, though some time after your blogger departed ... still, it was a fascinating experience, a chance to prepare a business plan and to work with an Old Etonian, albeit with alternative views ... the combination of supreme self-confidence and emotional neediness quite compelling ... it's how the Empire was sustained all those years ... maybe .... anyway, the business plan looked sound enough on paper, which is where it stayed ...

Another Buddhist theme arises ... Sangha ... and one that needs attention ... after all, the solitude is only a step on the path ... interbeing is the thing it seems and very persuasive at Plum Village, though the Buddhist forms are not quite my thing ... bringing this post to another observation, the use of  "I", "Me" and "My" and "Mine" .... avoided for a while now as part of the losing of self and an interesting if tiresome discipline ... a favourite teacher of non-duality, Jeff Foster, spoke out about the practice recently ... let's see about that ... anyway language is worth playing with sometimes ... to disrupt its forms and challenge the reader ... as for Sangha, which is the group practising together around shared values ... not so easy to identify with rather ill-defined values to share ... yet defining too tightly also to be resisted ... sensing the tribe was easy enough on the pilgrimages ... though maybe because the relationships were fleeting ...

Crafting the Retreat House and its activities will help draw the Sangha together no doubt and it has already been seen as a place of gentle energy ... we'll know it when we see it ...

cause and effect ...

Cause and effect are interesting to explore ... the link generally accepted ... in Buddhism elevated to a Law, Karma ... plenty of reading on this elsewhere, for now a cautionary note for commentators invoking karma as revenge, which is a common error and surely leading to adverse consequences if practised ... though today's story is headed along another route ... the Velvet Path to be precise ... along which this morning's musing wandered to causality and the challenges of tracing causal links in the non-local field ... then along the path a bloke and his dog and since the sun was shining philosophy ensued for a while, including the information that he was seeking a suitable Care Home for his aged mother .... later, back in the village, a friend and sometime provider of social care in the Dale appears ... her story has a mother and a mother-in-law ... the latter in advanced stage of dementia and in a Residential Home "waiting to die"; the former in her own home and determined to stay there, the friend committed to support her in that, despite the geographical distance ... stimulating discussion of how to redesign social care radically ... the current system creaking ...

So, the causal chain between this morning's chance encounters and yesterday's intention is unclear ... which does not mean there isn't one ... the mysteries gladly embraced on Wear and Dao ...

Now, where's that business plan?

focus

Yesterday's trip to County Hall was interesting ... senior officers explaining the social care landscape and their role generally as well as Newtown House in particular ... potential providers await, leaving the community enterprise looking premature ... though other models of social care, as proposed by Stanhope resident and blog reader the other day are essential ... an area to be explored outside of the current paradigm ... of which more later ...

The Retreat House picked up energy with lunch at Ciao Ciao and encouragement from Andreas, who speaks of it as already done ... possibly informed by revelations in deep meditation many years ago ... anyway, the social responsibility of Newtown House lifts for a while to enable more focus, though the blog still diverts (the Directory idea less so ...) ... Age UK's Life magazine Spring edition appears with a story about Wear and Dao and a contact from a new reader, who is also a writer ...

More books arrive via the Oxfam Bookshop and Hive .... requiring reading focus, with so much choice ... fortunately television and radio are not available to further distract ... though an occasional film evening intervenes, with startling results to report ... the years of abstinence have changed the brain structure to make what was once normal Hollywood style dramas, with noise, violence, foul language and plots designed to evoke strong emotions, intolerable ...

It will be interesting to monitor the mind as this peaceful blogger re-enters more active versions of his self ... integrating new lessons perhaps ... anyway, retreating is always available and the idea that creating a Retreat Centre is likely to be a cause of stress itself an amusing idea ...

This afternoon's useful activity means taking the bus up the Dale and walking back delivering programmes for next month ... a warm sunny day and good to test the legs on a longer trek ...

Focus for the weekend? A business plan for the Retreat House ... and "Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind" a likely distraction ...

Business Plans ...

Some years ago, in times of plenty, a government scheme to promote entrepreneurial activity in the rather unentrepreneurial region of England which is the post-industrial North- East, sub-contracted to a huge bureaucratic entity composed of the great and the good, and with an inspired strapline acknowledging the key to enterprise ... Passionate About ... passion being the spark sadly missing from the process, which was typically reductionist .... the trap of mistaking the word for the thing described perhaps ... anyway ... a small social enterprise deludly attempting to redesign public services as if the customer was important (many of them having evolved to meet the needs of the folks working in them, not least the rather over endowed tiers of management ... promoted politically as a way to maintain a high wage economy ... a supported employment scheme in effect) ... found itself helping would-be entrepreneurs by encouraging them and knocking out business plans at £1k a time ... of course other businesses soon spotted the scheme and it became discredited ... but in the meantime we learned about business plans and met some interesting folks, some of whom are running their businesses to this day, though thanks not to the plan or our encouragement, but to their own confidence and good luck ...

All of which colourful context leads to the revelation that most business plans bear no resemblance to what happens and that banks and sensible advisors often reject the plans of  businesses which turn out to be very successful ... and vice versa ...

So, the two parallel projects in Stanhope will require business plans from someone who has experience in producing plausible versions, whilst filing them under F for fiction ... which is not to say that business acumen is unnecessary ... on the contrary ... and this is where modesty and teamwork come in handy ...

Meanwhile a daughter arrives through Spring snow with faithful collie ... fostering children and describing the dilemmas facing the social workers, beset by budget pressures, family attachment, children's safety ... who would do that job? Fewer and fewer folks is the answer ...

Later, a discussion with neighbour on the need for new models of social care ...  let's see how things pan out with the council tomorrow ...

bluster

Exhilarating early wander thanks to a mix of sunshine and showers ... which yesterday produced a rainbow ... a drop in temperature meant snow, drier and prettier than rain ... beautiful settling on the hills ... check Weardale Noticeboard on FB for pics ... and reflections on yesterday's conversation with fellow philosopher and inner space explorer ... and a gift for the library - the dvd "What the Bleep" which makes a good attempt to explain what's going on ... or at least clearly shows that all is not as it first appears ... that the quantum world is one of possibilities, maybe infinite ... that "reality" is contingent on the observer ... everything connects to everything else ...and lots of other weird stuff which has to be experienced to be comprehended ... none more so than the source of it all, which is not to be named or described .... from which we are not separate ...

The good news is that we humans are capable of so much more than we normally believe .... but only as long as we believe bigger ... and that the gift of the dvd itself adds energy to the Retreat House and its library ... big ideas generally not lacking here, more the patience as they unfold ...

As for the philosophy, these things have been said before, since the dawn of consciousness, or language, which may not be the same thing ... religions arise from the revelations, forget first that "the Tao which can be described is not the immortal Tao", then, having begun the naming and describing, that all is part of the whole and the whole is present in all [if all is divine and the divine is in all, why are we humans thinking so small?] ... and having separated, the original sin, the deluded human minds create suffering ... along with all the other wonderful and not so wonderful things which are part of human doing ...

Speculation on the evolution of homo sapiens continues with another book for the library, soon to arrive via Hive, the ethical alternative to that which need not be named ... after all, what's the point of free choice if we keep buying from the very corporate entities we criticise?

Speculation on whether or not we have free choice continues also ... since experimental evidence shows a time lapse between an action and its ideation, the action coming prior to the thought ... though thoughts themselves have never actually been identified, only areas of the brain associated with the action to be tested ... perhaps the impulse or intuition precedes the action and the brain activity creates, post hoc, the rationale? Leading to the next leap ... is the mind in the brain anyway?

Looking forward to some feedback from a qualified cognitive psychologist ... what's the chances of one of those reading this blog?

... or synchronicity

 Yesterday's post allowing the possibility of memories being random and given shape by an organising mind in search of meaning is quickly slapped down by Brainpickings which arrives early next morning ... this bit is not accidental, since it arrives every week on a Sunday via email and is always worth a browse ... however the very compelling tale of synchronicity with erudite references to the founders of the word (though not the phenomenon, presumably), physicist Pauli and psychologist Jung, suggests otherwise .... or maybe not ... anyway synchronicity is a welcome version of coincidence here ....a cynical friend observes that we don't remark on all those times when there was not a coincidence to be noted as a synchronicity ,,, also true, though less amusing ....

Today's other reading - Bede Griffith's very detailed attempt to unify the insights of the major religions with quantum physics, is heavy going for a simple mind, which wanders off to ask whether all that helps get to the truth, or Truth ... since the key insight is that we find ourselves in a participatory universe and going over all the old ground with its layers of superstition and mythology ... and whilst study may be a valid way to participate in creation, creating seems valider ... which appears to be a new word, always a joy for a pretentious writer ...

Which brings us to the creative process itself ... what is to be done in the world in which we find ourself? Apart from shifting to another part of the world, of course .... and a combination of Spring weather, John Brierley's book and an internet forum for the Caminos to Santiago are tempting ... maybe later this year or early next ...the two major projects continue to take shape, though both lack the injection of energy of co-creators on full power ... let's see what turns up at the meeting with the powers that be on Thursday over the Residential Home for Elders in the Dale ... the Retreat Centre awaits funds, arriving later this year, to spark activity, though who knows what else may happen to help along a resource with such potential to relieve suffering in our small corner of England ... maybe time to draft a business plan!

From the archives ...

An early walk over the hills stimulates memories from the dawning of the Age of Aquarius ... there was a song about that, which is how it's recalled ... astrology not being in the skill set ... folks for whom it is reckon that Aquarius is full on now, the early dawning having dimmed through the dark age of the 80s,  90s,  maybe noughties too ...

The arrival of a friend, recently retired from a career in clinical psychology, prompts recall of R.D. Laing, champion of anti-psychiatry .... the inspiration for Ken Loach's film, Family Life, which examines the devastating consequences of a perfectly "normal" upbringing ... the trap of accepting the world we experience, with its injustice, greed, violence and wage-slavery as normal and anyone resisting it diagnosed as abnormal ... the conflict at a personal level leading to cognitive dissonance, existential angst, mental suffering to be treated with medication to relieve the pain, dull the senses and comply with the culture in which we live ...

Following the thread from Laing to another heretic from psychology of that time, Wilhelm Reich, whose work was so disturbing for the authorities in his adopted home, the land of the free, that the FBI burnt his books ...whether it was his analysis of the Nazis in "The Mass Psychology of Fascism", or his promotion of sexual freedom in "The Function of the Orgasm" ... Reich died in a US prison ... though if you thought it couldn't happen here, your blogger was involved in rescuing some boxes of a banned book from the publisher in London ... this was the very dangerous "Little Red Schoolbook", translated from the Danish and promoting revolution in schools .... or rather, open discussion of sex, drugs and society ... the Schools Action Union was busy promoting its ideas and found a platform at the rather staid College of Education where some of the deconditioning of the writer occurred ... heady days! Needless to say a long and respectable career in teaching did not ensue ....

The glimmer of freedom in the 60s and 70s offered liberation and, once free, it is difficult to accept slavery again .... hence the fly by wire life of following the heart, with periods of stability ... 

All of which nostalgic reflection passes the time in retirement and may eventually fit into a cohesive narrative ... or perhaps that's just the organising mind wanting to create meaning from a random set of barely related events ...

more art of living ...

A stern rebuke arrives from the editor ... advising against diversions into technobabble and rather to return to the A Place to Be theme .... followed by an interesting diversion into .... technobabble:

"which is just Millenials attempting to do something useful and making a Bollox of it. Computing has become horribly complex - not what we were promised or indeed had many years ago when stuff did what it said on the tin and worked. V asked me the other day why we should be bothered about cyber terrorism which would only affect people with remote connection kettles. It shouldn't but those suckers who have their lives run by their phones or tablets should panic big style as the Russians /Chinese /Americans will be trying to get them to run up big utility bills buying the stuff that they can hack and put them in hock for ever.

Ho Ho Ho and all just to be cool,and trendy!"

And, "The art of living is dying young, but as late as possible. There. It's been said. So that one has been put to bed." 

Pithy and with a rhyme, which often helps the prose to flow, though there is much more to explore about this topic. And how pleasing to have other contributors to the blog ... 

Before that, a brief post from 2014 is revisited as the story of the hermit in the woods of Maine gets more detail ... interesting corroboration for the no-self theme of recent posts ...

Recent finds, following the trip to Durham's Oxfam Bookshop, offer rich seams to excavate ... Marcus Arelius' Meditations, often quoted for inspiration, though not so much meditations as guidelines for living a good life .... and deeper and harder to get at, Bede Griffiths' A New Vision of Reality ... rewarding and addressing many of the questions running through these pages ...

One of the Arts of Living is to follow intuition and stay grounded ... Marcus' ethics offering a framework, Griffiths and other mystics pointing to deeper truths ... but a deeper truth doesn't make the less deep one untrue and it is possible to lose the ground by going too deep too soon ... new insights need embodying before moving on ... David Bowie offers some wise advice about working just beyond the comfort zone ...

On FB this morning information about a course at Findhorn Foundation College "Diploma in Practical Spirituality and Wellness" tutored by William Bloom and accredited by Ofqual ... raising a raft of questions about authenticity in teaching the immeasurable within the reductionist paradigm of measuring ... a practical question for A Place to Be and its Retreat Centre ... and embracing paradoxical thinking to accept that some assurance of competence is helpful in any subject, whilst recognising that many highly qualified teachers have turned out to be frauds, incompetent or downright dangerous. Perhaps published customer feedback may help, as in Trip Advisor etc, though open to manipulation ... one to explore, like all the best paradoxes ... and in the psycho-therapeutic and spiritual domains the personal relationship the key ...

death

After yesterday's putative programme title, The Art of Living, regular reader James of Scotland, one of the few to have mastered the surprisingly tricky comment function on Blogger, offers information from work with the elders in Newcastle upon Tyne in North-East England ... though without hyperlink, a function your technophobic blogger has discovered here ... good old google search unearths many references to "The Art of Living", the most resonant being from Epictetus, since current reading mentions him and current collaborator, Andreas, proposes bringing Ancient Greek philosophy into focus ... though why it is not filosophy into phocus is a semantic mystery ...

While you ponder this, dear reader, a diversion into the murky world of google, windows and yahoo ... another mystery here ... google ("do no evil"), having become a verb, offers a "free" platform for this would be writer .. who, seeking a publisher, is already publishing ... readership varying, though not insignificant (if the stats are right) ... yet, google declines to make the comment function on blogger user-friendly ... perhaps they have a wiki function to sell? Windows, the Microsoft programme running on the newly acquired laptop (due to your blogger's ineptitude on operating open source alternatives) allows yahoo (another search engine) to arrive uninvited and unsupervised by Macafee or whatever was recommended to keep this laptop safe from cyber-attack and inveigle its way into the daily life of a simple blogger and browser, hoping, naively, for an experience designed to be easy for the end user ... windows, meanwhile, has a hair trigger design, which manages to offer ads you didn't ask for .. genius! Please be aware, that free lunches are rare ... so we pay in the end ...

Meanwhile, back to the Filosophy .... and The Art of Living must encompass the Art of Dying ... a part of Life often feared ... the vague boundary between the two unrecognised as health technicians carry on as if immortality is possible in this 3D world ... intervening to prolong the dying period as if longevity was desirable at all costs ... and since it is a target against which performance may be measured, what else can we expect?

As noted before in these pages, a rehearsal is always helpful to allay fear ... and everyone's dying is unique ... for this blogger the brief flirtation with it was wonderful, though unsought ... and suggested that dying well was just as important as living well ... and in the end there is no separation one from the other ...

More practically, end of life research reports that regrets are mostly for things not tried and not things tried which did not work out ... no problem there then ...

Retreating ...

So, what does a retreat look like in 21st century Stanhope?

What are the issues of likely visitors, residential and daily?

What are the aspirations of the organisers?

This is where the blog really needs collaborative writing, because the Retreat Centre has to be a collaboration ... and whilst such places may take many forms, this one will reflect the founders and their philosophies ... not easy to define, but compassion is key and flowing from that a desire to relieve suffering ... an understanding that the root of suffering is thinking ... and that along with mindfulness training and practice, an integrated programme may include care of the body, through understanding the poisonous potential of processed food, the practical lessons of preparing simple dishes from pure ingredients, sourced locally, some grown in the garden ... and eating together at tables (a practice fast disappearing in many families) and speaking of "fast", why not a preliminary day without food, to reset the system ... some silent meals to embed the mindfulness ... guided walks in the beautiful local Nature ... yoga ...tai chi ... group discussions ...

Reports from the world of potential participants report increasing levels of stress, anxiety, depression.

All this while knowledge increases .... suggesting that more learning is not the answer .... maybe unlearning what no longer serves first ... rediscovering the simplicity in slowing down ...

How about "The Art of Living" ...

For the Facebook refuseniks (including the editor), here's this resonant report from Kelly Brogan ... hope you like it ...

Healers welcome at the Retreat House ... Charlie?

A Day in Durham ...

The weekend arrives, though the concept has less significance for a pensioner than a nine to fiver ... nevertheless, a trip out calls ... no buses on winter Sundays and Saturday has its own energy on public transport, conversations of fellow travellers entertaining to observe and small dramas enacted, touching the heart though not disrupting the equanimity ...

Durham is a small city, so called thanks to a very impressive cathedral ... its size suggests town status ... Bill Bryson, the writer, was a fan ... so much so he stopped awhile and became Chancellor of the ancient university ... it is two buses from Stanhope, with a change in Crook or Bishop Auckland ... and an aimless wander produces some bread from the market, three new books for the library from the Oxfam bookshop and an unplanned and very deep connection with Andreas from Ciao Ciao cafe ... giving energy to the Stanhope Retreat Centre and potential links with similar activity in Crete ... and a promise of some books for the library ... which is in its third iteration since 2011, when visitors to the circles at no. 7 were invited to bring books which inspired them and take books which attracted them ... there were maybe 150 on the shelves and a similar number circulating before the first dispersal in 2014 .... you may have come across one in a cafe or on a train, with an inscription inside from A Place to Be .... books, like money, only working when in circulation .... and the right book at the right time so often taking us up a step on our journeys ...

So, whilst the library was not explicitly explored in Ciao Ciao, other things were .... meditation, food, therapies, exercise .... and authenticity in all of it ...

Returning from a long, early wander over the fells this morning, another cafe .... the Everyday Cafe in Stanhope and another deep connection .... this time with Venita, the owner and previous owner of the local care company ... updating on progress with the Residential Home project ... another opportunity to practise patience, though word from the Council is positive ....

All that, a Friday evening visit from a returning goddess and this afternoon's Celtic Hearth gathering making a very fruitful Spring weekend ...

Stanhope

Hard to pin down the allure of Stanhope, the adopted home in the North Pennines of England, though many others, incomers and locals (often defined as having several generations of residents in the Dale), feel it. Perhaps an energy powerpoint ... beautiful views of course and whilst less spectacular than the Lake District over the top to the West, it has its own bleak simplicity ... zen maybe ... and the advantage over the Lakes of relatively few tourists, though that is changing ...

Being consciously positive in general, the few negatives are mostly ignored, though there are two centres of darkness here, to balance the light ... firstly (and recognising that a major employer is not to be sneezed at hereabouts, since the demise of the lead and fluorspar mining and reduction in quarrying) is a foundry apparently making weaponry (in the interests of disclosure and non-hypocrisy your blogger once worked at such a facility in the New Forest); the second is the Castle, an old hunting lodge for the Prince Bishops of Durham, then a home, approved for young men in need of chastisement and retraining ... more recently acquired by a retired gangster, sometime acquaintance of the Kray twins, having spent many years as a guest of Her Majesty, whose flag is flown as a gesture of appreciation and loyalty ...actually he really wants to be somewhere warmer, on the Costa del Sol, home to many other retired gangsters ... his problem is that he is only out on licence, never having confessed to the murder for which he was convicted ... indeed he is most affronted that he was framed for it all those years ago, when police forces around the country decided things needed tidying up and politicians mollified ... and police forces generally know who the bad guys are, sometimes from personal and corrupt relationships ... and when the heat is on and evidence hard to come by, then the crime may be found to fit the criminal, whether or not he or she actually did that crime. Anyway, he has written his book, if you like that sort of thing, and is now a fairly respectable pensioner, albeit not very happy with his lot ...

maps and guides or freedom ...

The title is a tease, of course and K fans may spot an oblique reference to "Freedom from the Known" or maybe just the too literal take on it ... anyway the topic is prompted by the submission of the blog to preferred publisher, the Findhorn Press, who also publish the well known guide books to the Camino de Santiago by John Brierley .... a confession to never having read them or any other guide books ... the routes were left rather to chance and intuition, though of course the ubiquitous yellow arrows are a help .... as for hostels, they were never booked ahead ... anyway many of them do not allow it ... first come first served as long as there is the credential ... walkers get first crack, with horse riders next (though stabling is presumably a requirement), and cyclists last. Being a walker and loving the meditative pace of it, there is a sense that cycling is more recreational than spiritual .... and happy to be corrected by cycling pilgrims ... also there are plenty of walkers focused on the physical achievment ....

Another prompt is provided by a request to guide a friend along a nearby route so she can describe it, risk-assess it and log it with the Council as a permitted Walking for Health route. You can imagine the struggle to take such a concept seriously ... another example of the reductionism in daily life .... based on what could go wrong and folks with responsibility to implement measures determined to ensure their fingerprints are not at the scene if it does .... interestingly the friend is better adapted for such a world, holding the stupidity in awareness and complying in order to gain the benefits of fresh air, exercise and company for herself and others less confident in wandering about the countryside freely ....

Meanwhile back to the camino, the very uplifting trip to the retail experience yesterday, led to several warm exchanges with elders ... Wendy on her first trip out to the house for months after nearly passing on with the pneumonia in the winter, others talking about their life experiences ... and in the contemporary version of the department store, a dvd called The Way ... Hollywood's version of the Camino, with Martin Sheen, walking his son's ashes along the Way, gathering an assorted group from Holland, Canada and Ireland, managing some clumsy product placement for the outdoor gear, some superficial spiritual references, unlikely adventures and an inspiration for lots of Americans following the route ... if anyone wants to borrow it, let me know!

Having suggested asking John Brierley to write an introduction to Wear and Dao the book, it seemed appropriate to buy a copy .... also available for loan sometime soon (the library is growing again) ... as for Wear and Dao the film .... you'll have to wait for that .... or maybe skip it all and go for your own walk ....

Personas, rivers, interbeing, ineffability ...

An early message arrives in response to the plea for help with no-self ... proposing the river metaphor, ever changing, yet flowing somewhere ... in its own time ... personas for others to relate with .... this new word standing for role and in contemporary usage a montage for advertisers to address ... the older usage a sign of the correspondent's background in psychology ... and it is comforting to have qualified psychologists casting an eye over the ramblings to check for symptoms of plot loss ... not to say that the profession is immune to losing it, of course! Anyway the river story develops nicely, with the need for a name on the map (Heraclitus notwithstanding) and for some water flowing: "not some dried up river bed" ... and of course, like all metaphors, it ends up in the sea ... or possibly a lake ... maybe another river ... or, to be clear, the words are never the thing described .... which brings us to another correspondent, this time via a Dutch FB friend, found via Noomap, posting about an interview with a local philosophy professor, from Durham University, which ranges over lots of famous thinkers, with a liking for the Daoists and Existentialists, and pointing to the need to acknowledge that beyond the knowable, however defined, lies the ineffable .... 

Meanwhile, in projectland, interbeing is required and it is an art to weave one's "self", persona or whatever, with the others needed to bring visions into form ... between patience and reaching out ... experience shows that the right partners in the dance/drama/work of art lead to effortless action ... yet lassitude and wishful thinking don't help!

On a more practical note, a call arrives for a role required on Wednesday ... an assisted shopping trip, to some retail delight in Gateshead, is looking for .... shopping assistants ... whilst not a fully functional retail advisor or enthusiast, safely propelling a person in a wheelchair is within the skill set ... and provides a focus for that key ingredient of interbeing - being useful .... 

The second diary date of the week is set for Friday, when a further round of no-self exploration is booked with Cameron ... whose own train of thought is asking whether being dead is better than the alternative, though not in a negative way ... hmmm ... could be an interesting afternoon ...

Gardening

Finding the writing rhythm again ... early walk musing and storying, drafting, later editing, polishing, posting ... hoping for some help with the more difficult ideas and recognising the limits of the platform for feedback, creating a bespoke email address for readers to easily respond ... sday.weardao@gmail.com  ... let me know if you want your thoughts posted on here ...

So, wandering the hills, with a mixture of sunshine and showers ... pondering the question of suffering and finding the gardening metaphor apt ... you dream of a beautiful garden in which to wander .... the one you have is full of weeds, brambles, stinging nettles and frankly a mess ... there is suffering and in this case the cause is clear: your dream is impossible because of the state of your garden ... before doing anything about the mess, you could simply change the dream and imagine instead a nature sanctuary ... harvest blackberries in autumn ... carefully collect nettles for soup, tea or for fertiliser ... enjoy the abundance of insect life ... listen to the birds singing, the bees humming .... to be honest, this is tempting for the writer, who is a lazy gardener ... but the neighbours are not impressed and you really dream of a space for flowers and vegetables, with spiral paths ... so an effort is required ... the weeds, nettles, brambles are removed ... the space is restored to bare earth ... a blank canvas on which to create your dream ... with more effort the space takes shape, as seasons permit, the flowers bloom, the fruit falls, the spuds are ready to dig ... and if left untended, of course, the weeds soon return along with the suffering of a lost dream ... this story has some basis in reality at no. 7, with some expert help from proper gardeners ... and indeed it has reverted to a mess, untended and now with the rubble from the fireplace awaiting collection ... the writer, however, is not suffering and not just because he is along the terrace at no.4, with its more developed structure of mature shrubs, deck and raised beds ...

Does the no-self story sit in this garden too? Well maybe, inasmuch as the somebody has opinions, concepts of a proper garden ... though nobody could easily enjoy the weedy mess or the blank canvas, a nobody who lacked compassion for gardening neighbours would be better wandering footloose without garden or any sustained companions to feed the somebody ...which is where the everybody, or a new somebody appears, with neighbours to consider ... and if you sense this topic is losing touch with reality, please do write ....  Facebook World has quite a few Friends exhibiting symptoms of plot loss, having started off along similar routes, maybe drug assisted ... finding anguish instead of bliss, not anchoring .... skipping stages ... getting stuck in unhelpful dimensions ... not to mention some seeming inauthentic ... quoting insights of the sages endlessly, even teaching from the books they read .... not living it ...

Time to wrap up the rambling .... the sun is shining and a second walk calls ... maybe collect some new season wild garlic for supper ... even connect with "real" humans to earth the wilder flights of imagination ... and note to self and no-self that interbeing wants exploring ... indeed developing if the projects are to take form ...

somebody, nobody, everybody ...

This no-self topic is cause for more reflection ...

Rupert Spira says: "Being somebody leads to suffering; being nobody leads to peace; being everybody leads to happiness."

Maybe so, though a lack of self-esteem is generally considered a psychological weakness ... as is an excess of it ... perhaps these stages can't be bypassed ... perhaps a healthy, balanced sense of self is necessary to face the prospect of being nothing ... for a while ... hmmm that peace is very seductive, especially if the self-being suffering has been extreme ... is it safe to rest in no-self for the duration? Is this the trap of the permanent retreatant?  Certainly, solitude is an aid to no-being ... supporting the view that we only exist in relation with others ... the selfie craze illustrates this ... look carefully at the image of yourself or another, taken when alone ... check the eyes ... there is a often a vacancy ...

So, does shifting from nobody to everybody entail a return to somebody? What if the discovery of nobody was not so much the annihilation of self, as the recognition that the illusory self as the centre of the universe may be replaced by a lightly held and fluid self as a fragment of the whole .. the everybody or everything as the deeper reality ...

Buddha said: There is suffering; there are the causes of suffering; there is the cessation of suffering; there are the ways to end suffering.

Claire says suffering is necessary to lead us to the spiritual path ... on the road to Santiago de Compostela there were plenty of pilgrims embracing suffering with heavy packs, bleeding blisters ... maybe suffering is often the spark .... but is it necessary to seek it out? Flagellation as a practice? Once the causes of suffering are identified, isn't that the opportunity to find the ways to eliminate suffering? First from our own fragment of the whole and then from the world.. .. ?

This is getting interesting folks and it would be good to have some feedback ... if the comment function is too hard (and it could be easier google) maybe drop an email?

Thanks!

More no-self ...

Claire arrives for philosophical discourse ... deep into her journey and resonating with the no-self story, from experience and the books she brings ... Ramana Maharshi and Nisargatta ... a walk with Jake, the very affectionate collie, lunch, more discussion ... the time flies, the book is no further forward, projects neither, except some energy generated from sharing the retreat centre plans ... which may fit into her developing journey sometime ... anyway, the combination of mystic and entrepreneur is intriguing and much as she wants to drop the business role and concentrate on the interior journey, she does know from experience how business works ... as does Gary ... still a mystery here, though not too late to learn perhaps ...

becoming ...

First lambs spotted along the back road, sprinkling of snow still on the tops and a cool breeze in early sun encouraging washing on the line .... always a simple joy!

Reflecting on Cameron's dark, constricted version of no-self ... no fun, he says ... and how integrating the various illusory selves available to the writer, philosopher, social-entrepreneur, father, brother, friend ... finds vast space in which to play ... starting early each morning before Sun rises (trickier as He is getting up earlier each day) settling the mind, waking the body with coffee, porridge, walking ... exploring options and priorities ...

The Residential Home project awaits further discussion with local players ... a local directory "Eating Out About Weardale by Bus" ... an expansion of the Wheels to Meals scheme recognising the free bus pass still available to senior citizens .... like this one, who finds the conviviality of public transport energising .... and its availability sometimes restricting ... a car sharing arrangement maybe?

Diogo, last seen on these pages in Gibraltar, sends a heartwarming message from Coimbra .. having spent much of last year in Croatia with an Erasmus programme, has discovered self-love, which opened his heart to family reconciliation and a new appreciation of Portugal ...

Gary brings a copy of his book, which itself diverts the writer to reading role and competes with other exponents of the art of mindfulness for attention (and in the end it is not the reading but the practice itself which liberates) ... anyway, you can find it in good bookshops and at Hive ... the ethical version of Amazon ... so that's two free ads in one line and maybe a review to follow when it has been read and digested ... some fascinating conversation around the holographic universe, mindfulness in education as well as therapeutic intervention, retreat centres ... the shared dream of A Place to Be come back full circle ... the Law of Attraction, secrets of abundance ... and encouragement for this blog to become a book ... heard before and maybe time to pursue a publisher ... though the writer struggles to take the role seriously enough to imagine a large audience out there for these ramblings ...

Meanwhile, here is a peek at the beautiful Retreat Centre in Stanhope, home for residential and daily opportunities to recreate your life as if it were a work of art .... starting with the bundle of thoughts that constitute a self ... unlearning what no longer serves .... interbeing with others on the journey ... the first £150k is pledged, another £350k on the way to bring the 7 year vision to fruition ...