Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 69
My partner gets me up around 9am with a cup of coffee. It’s luxurious to have slept in so long and I linger over it, enjoying the laziness.
I stay in bed with my ipad, reading the news and scrolling through Facebook until it’s time to talk to a good friend who I teach with regularly. We’re also writing a book together.
We talk around the challenges and benefits of teaching on Zoom and then get into what we’re exploring in our own personal practice. As always, we go in and out of what we’re noticing in ourselves and how we’re bringing that into our teaching.
In particular there is this interesting middle ground between shamata (calming) and vipassana (insight) meditation practices. It’s this place where the mind is quiet enough to get a sense of the habitual nature of thoughts and emotions but not yet stable enough to see clearly the true nature of those thoughts and emotions.
It’s an uncomfortable place. We’re starting to see how we create suffering for ourselves and others over and over, but the habits still feel immovable. In fact, in seeing them a bit more clearly, they can appear even more real and unchanging.
This is where compassion and confidence can come to the fore to support us in keeping going. Trusting in the practice. And trusting in the struggle.
This is also where knowing when and how to back off and stop trying so hard becomes essential. You can’t not see what you’ve seen, so now the work becomes about getting curious about when and how the habits are appearing.
This place also requires radical honesty. Often what we see are parts of ourselves we don’t like and would rather not be aware of. If we are serious about waking up, we have to learn to be radically honest with ourselves about what we discover on the journey and what we plan to do about it.
It’s an engaging and inspiring conversation and we end the call with a commitment to keep going with the writing, weaving in new insights as we go.
I’m ready for lunch but don’t know what I want so I roll around on the floor for a while stretching and listening to my belly to see what emerges. I decide to make gazpacho.
I don’t have a blender so I guess I’ll use my NutriBullet. I throw in everything I can think of that goes into gazpacho; tomatoes, onion, garlic, cucumber, red pepper, salt, pepper, chili and olive oil.
It’s an experiment that doesn’t end well. I didn’t get the proportions right and its way too oniony and garlicy. I’m hungry so eat some of it anyway and decide to add more of the other veggies to it tomorrow to try and get the balance right.
After lunch we head out for a walk to Springfield Park, across the canal, through Walthamstow Marshes and back home through Clapton. We stop a couple of times to lay around in the grass and gaze at the sky.
At the entrance to the park there is a construction site. They’ve spray painted social distancing guidance on the paving at the entrance to the site. On the door there is a sign reading:
COVID-19
is still spreadable
Please practice social
Distancing where
Possible on this site
I wonder to myself what kind of an employer would ask their employees to come back to work at a site where it might not be possible to practice social distancing. And what are the workers supposed to do when it’s not possible? And who will take responsibility if they get sick and die?
It’s a blustery day and the clouds are moving fast and furiously. As we walk through the park I take a few snaps and a slo-mo video of frothy white blossoms buzzing with bees.
We’re surprised there aren’t as many people out as the last time we were here. We imagine the wind’s kept them away.
On the bridge over the canal we pass two cyclists walking their bikes. Before I know it my partner is saying hello and I look up to see Christian, our neighbour who recently photographed us, and his girlfriend Lisa.
There are people waiting behind us to cross the bridge so we can’t stop and chat but it’s lovely to have seen them. We carry on into the marshes.
The grasses are taller than us now and the wind is blowing them this way and that, making beautiful patterns of colour and light. We stop to watch them a few times before settling into a sheltered patch behind a row of tall trees.
I lay in the grass watching the clouds and trees blowing in the wind. The roaring sound as the air whips through the branches is almost terrifying. I marvel at their strength and resilience.
The sun is more in than out now and it’s starting to get cold so we decide to head home. On the way we pass graffiti of the word “Ha” which is also a Tibetan seed syllable symbolizing love, compassion, joy and equanimity.
Heading back through Clapton we come across a dead fox on the side of the road. When we get home I look up the symbolism.
Apparently I am going to triumph over a cunning enemy. Sounds good! Hopefully that enemy is my own delusion.
When we get home we eat leftovers for dinner and decide to start on a new series, Little Fires Everywhere, with Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon. It’s a complex drama about motherhood with lots of interesting racial, cultural and economic dynamics and tension.
Both characters are intriguing for different reasons and they are both likeable and unlikeable but in completely different ways.
And as always, there are secrets yet to be revealed.