Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 46

Today we go for an early walk again, back to Abney Park. The cow parsley is so tall now it’s as if the graves are floating on a sea of white foam.

Because of the rain the park’s like a jungle, everything fresh and sweetly blooming, pungent and popping against a dark grey sky.

I’m starting to recognise other morning graveyard visitors. A young family, the little boy no more than 3, wearing bright yellow wellies and a yellow raincoat. Couples with familiar dogs, this one a Westie, that one a Black Terrier.

Almost everything blooming in the cemetery is white, except the blue bells. We are surrounded by green and white. Compassion and emptiness.

I’m starting to learn my way around the labyrinth of paths that weave through the park. Intuitively we turn this way and that and eventually find our way back out again, no problem.

When we get back home the post’s arrived and there’s a card for me. The envelope has a stamp on it from Valderrobres, Spain. I immediately know who the card is from and why.

Almost ten years ago to the day I was ordained on a three-month retreat in the mountains of Aragon, Spain. The retreat centre is called Akashavana, which means “forest retreat of luminous space” in Sanskrit. The closest town is Valderrobres.

The card says thank you for supporting the centre. They send one every year. This year it’s a handmade card by my friend who chairs the centre and is also an artist. She’s made cards of the five female Buddhas and has been selling them as a fundraiser.

I get Locana, the Goddess of the East, embodiment of the water element. She symbolizes mirror-like wisdom; in a mind free from attachment and resistance, all experiences, like objects reflected in a mirror, are free to arise and pass away without interference, just as they are.

She is the colour blue, seated in meditation, looking into a still, clear pool of water, with water flowing all around her. I am reminded of a pith instruction from my teacher:

“Having attained stability, open to the mystery.”

It feels deeply significant that I’ve received her today. I’ve been reflecting on the qualities of water this week. I’ve been bleeding, it’s been raining, there are emotions.

For me this is the crux of the question of how to live in this world. How to experience all emotions, especially the really tough ones like anger and grief, from a place of stability, without attachment or aversion.

At times I’ve been able to open fully to these emotions, allowing them to flow through me, as painful as that is. This opening comes with a great sense of tenderness and relief, even amongst the suffering. So I know it’s possible even though I’m not always able to be that open.

What I am able to do is stay connected with the ideal, while also holding the tension between how I’d like things to be and what’s actually happening right now.

Locana holds that for me today.

I’m back on Zoom for the second half of a two-day mtg which I’ve been facilitating. I can feel Zoom fatigue settling in. The headaches and nausea get worse every time I have to get back on. Tomorrow I’m going to try and get through the day without any Zooming.

At some point while I’ve got the group in breakout rooms, I get a message saying one of the rooms is asking for help. I click on the button inviting me to join their group and the next thing I know Zoom has taken hosting controls away from me, given them to someone else in the mtg, I can’t tell who, and I’ve lost all control of the breakout rooms and any and all ways to communicate with them.

I take a deep breath.

I recognise this glitch. It happened recently to the host of a mtg I was participating in. But it was worse for her, as Zoom locked her out of the mtg entirely. She ended up having to call someone on their mobile and run the mtg via speaker phone.

I tell myself to remain calm. At least I’m still in the mtg.

I write a message in the chat box hoping those in breakout rooms can see it. Please text or call me if you’ve been made host.

A colleague in one of the breakout rooms WhatsApp’s me. She’s with the person who has been assigned host. I instruct them to come back to the main mtg room and try to make me host again. Fingers crossed it works.

We are successful and the mtg continues without any more hitches.

After the mtg I decide I need a nap. As I’m pulling the bedroom curtains closed my eyes catch the form of a cat, barely discernable in my neighbor’s back garden. It is so well camouflaged that you’d have to look really closely to find it.

I smile at that cat, alone in the garden. Hidden in plain sight. A trickster on the prowl. It’s a wild world out there, in the back garden.

My name means “she who has the radiance of a lion.” I have an independent streak, a wild side, while also fiercely loyal to the pride. I need both, autonomy and belonging.

The shadow side of these qualities is that I also need to be in control, in charge, have things my way. I enjoy the group most when I am running it. This is why it was so unsettling when I lost control of the Zoom mtg earlier.

It’s my worst nightmare. Literally, I have nightmares of losing control of groups I am facilitating.

I’ve had to work hard with these tendencies over the years. These days they are so familiar to me that I am mostly able to let them arise and pass without giving them too much notice or airtime. I have to remind myself that there is nothing to fix here.

As long as I don’t identify with them, they are welcome to be part of my experience, which also includes my intentions to free up habits of control and dominance. It’s a work in progress.

After my nap I make myself a veggie burger before jumping back on Zoom to run the last evening of a six-week meditation course. Halfway through we break to clap for the NHS.

It’s been threatening to storm for hours, and just as we’re heading out the door, the sky opens up, literally raining down blessings. We join our neighbors to clap our hands, bang pots and pans, and honk horns to the sound of rushing water, pouring down from above.

In the second half of the class we report-out. It’s moving to hear people share the things they’ve learned, how they’ve changed, what they want to remember, what they’ve appreciated - the context for practice at this time, community, connection, sangha.

We end by giving away the merit of our collective practice to all beings everywhere. So long as all have not attained to peace.