As a Buddhist, it isn’t unusual to have thoughts about “path”, but at this time of year it always very much at the fore. Each ‘twixmas’ I spend those ‘in-between days’ reflecting on the year just gone, and feeding any insights into the year ahead. I have been doing this same process for 12 years …
This past week has been one of consolidation. Mid-way through the first academic term of the New Year, it has been helpful for me to take a step back from client work and reduce my teaching-related commitments to a minimum. Having worked last weekend facilitating a gestalt training workshop, it was also important to find …
Each year for nearly a decade now, I have used my time over the Christmas and New Year break to turn inward and reflect on the year that has been. This year, that process took on new profundity as I continue to navigate my experience of living in this time of pandemic and its consequences. …
…has happened since I last wrote in mid-June. The sameness of life (which inspired a friend to call each day of the week ‘blursday’) under the heavy blanket of a global pandemic, coupled by the multitude of emotions (same friend calls this ‘corona-coaster’) sets up a strange paradox in daily life for me. I’ve simply …
I’ve shared on this blog a number of times my journey with anxiety: once out of my awareness (covered up with strategies and false appearance of strength), uncovered and fought against (like a foe), and now something of a companion (from whom I get to learn and grow). Many of us will have experienced emotions …
Read more “Fearlessness and courage: a need to distinguish?”
As I sat on the garden bench at the front of my house this morning (flanked by my two tree friends), I was able to tune in to a deeper sense of contentment; this has been somewhat out of reach for me recently. I, like many of those I spoke to last week, felt the …
I’ve taken to asking people I meet online – friends, family, students, supervisees – the question “what are you learning about yourself in all of this?” I’m intrigued by the ‘growth’ aspects that the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing. As a relative newbie to the Vajrayana path, I am appreciative of the View – that the …
When I re-read my last blog post, I actually feel a little naive…given the experience of “stay-treat” and how I have come to view it in my rearview mirror. I’m reading a lot of Jung right now, and his explanations of individuation as alchemy has relevance for me: the intentions with which I entered my …
As I sit here at my desk, I realise how fortunate I am to be in a position of ‘retreating’. As a nation, as a global community we face a huge and unprecedented situation; and I am still able to put aside time and space for myself to practice and to do some writing. I …
I sit here in the early phase of bereavement. Just hours ago I found out a friend had died. It isn’t a shock – it’s been on the horizon since his cancer diagnosis nearly three years ago, and its turn toward a terminal condition some two years ago. On one level, I had been preparing. …