Really excellent conversation with my preceptor, Kalyanaprabha, this morning. Also a really excellent night and conversation with Suryagita last night. Once again I come face to face with the dualities in me, namely the duality between the part which feels strong, capable, powerful and the one which feels small, afraid and weak. In terms of my current situation (meaning my decision to leave the UK and move to Seattle) there is the part which is adventurous and visionary, which felt the possibilities for me of this new life from really early on in my connection with W. This is the part which knows, which intuits, which is connected to my guides and allies, the part which is just able to say "Yes. This is right. I know it." This is the part which kept pushing the boundaries of my communication with W in the first year or so; this is the part which seized the opportunity to visit for the first time; this is the part which looked him straight in the eye as we sat in Carmelita's and told him "I want this. I am ready now." But then there is the other part. The part which panics as my emotions slowly begin to catch up to all the loss involved in this move. I start to feel just the edges of how it will be to say goodbye to my mum, to Clare, to Debz, to Cath....to the land and culture of England. I feel these things and that second side of me gets afraid. Afraid that I won't cope. Afraid that I've just taken on something too big. And yet another part comes in and tells me I'm stupid; tries to trash my vision and my instinct; my body throws up some pretty feisty ailments and I start wondering if it's a sign that I shouldn't be doing this, if my body is somehow punishing me for my stupidity, my naivete.

So we spoke about all these things, and Kalyanaprabha likened it to the Buddhist path of Vision and Transformation. She really reflected back to me that my vision of this move is not to be trashed and reminded me of the depth and power of it, remembering our conversations from a year or so ago. She said she thought that there needed to be more dialogue between these two sides of me, that maybe the visionary side was perhaps inclined to make these big decisions without necessarily consulting with the rest of me, but that that didn't invalidate the vision or make it naive. She said sometimes the visionary side of us, vast as the sky, has trouble realising the patience that is needed for the transformation itself, the slow growth unfolding back on the ground. She talked of acorns and oak trees.

So it made me realise (as did the Rosen treatment last weekend) that I've become a bit identified with the small, fearful side of myself lately, feeling that to be the whole of the story. Whereas what I need to do is allow space for both sides. I need for the visionary side to take account of and be patient and loving with the fearful side; I also (very importantly) need the fearful side to listen to and trust in the integrity of the visionary side. If the two aren't communicating or even allowing space for the other to exist then I guess my experience is just this lurching from one extreme to the other, which is tiring and also somewhat crazy-making. This time last year I had such a good strong feeling of trust in my intuition, my ability to follow the threads and currents of my life, to know what I need and when I need it. Lately I've really lost that trust and it's painful. I'd like it back, and I feel it returning, through these conversations with good wise women who know me and have witnessed me and my journey over eight years now.

So, my beloved blackwingedboy wants to buy me a camcorder for my birthday. He is such a sweetie and I am just overflowing with the goodness of how wonderful he is. But that's another story. I am having real trouble choosing between The Flip and the Panasonic SDR-S7. They are both tiny, hardly much difference in size between them. The big plus about the Panasonic is it has a 10X Optical Zoom, whereas The Flip has a 2X Digital Zoom, which is probably not much help at all. However, The Flip is just so goddamn CUTE. I have really fallen in love with it and I'm very tempted just to follow that feeling. The serious art-maker in me says that a zoom is actually quite important and would really help me capture things I can't actually get near enough to, like crows and other birds, dogs, faces of strangers, etc. But then I look at the picture of it, all dark and boring-looking and a just feel unexcited. And I look back at the Flip and the child in me grins stupidly and I get a bouncy feeling in my chest and feel like if I had one I'd just love it so much I'd want to be out playing with it all the time. But then I think "what about the zoom?" and wonder if I'm being silly and girly and should just get a hold of myself and choose the one that's going to make the best movies.... But surely the one that's going to make the best movies is the one that makes me happy and inspired and wanting to make movies.... Did I just convince myself? I think maybe I did. However, any pearls of wisdom from the floor would be greatly appreciated. I think I have to make my mind up by the end of the day so there's some chance it may arrive in time for Paris :)

Also, I'm a bit torn about colours. I *really* wanted the green Flip, but that's not available in the 2GB model. Really it's between pink and orange, althoughimtboo has a pink one and I don't want to be a copy cat... Oh, so many decisions, however will I get through the day....

OMG. We did it! We (my amazingly generous and wonderful friend Debz) & I just booked Eurostar tickets to Paris. She's taking me there for the day for my birthday next month to see an exhibition of Patti Smith's photos / films etc. I am so excited. And grateful. I haven't been to Paris since I was 20. Wooo!

So, I have actually been *happy* for a couple of days now. Maybe not the super bouncy skippy happy of my twenties when all was full of promise and the body worked as it should and so forth, but still. I want to record it. Because it's the first time in a longish while and I'd been falling into some rather hopeless places. As some of you know, I've been really struggling with body woes for nearly six months now. They are of a somewhat personal nature, so I don't really want to share too much detail here, but suffice to say I'm in mild pain most of the time and have recently been diagnosed with a condition which is partly neurological but also to a large extent stress-related and linked to emotional factors. So, on the negative side, there's not much known about cures or treatments and I can fall into a lot of fear about whether it will get better; on the positive side, I feel it's really just energy which is blocked and which I have the power to unblock if I can find the way to do so.

Anyway. The long and the short of it is that much of the past six months have been consumed by my journey in dealing with and coming to terms with the presence of these symptoms. It's been a real struggle of fighting against the reality of what's happening, feeling betrayed, like it's just so unfair, that I'm supposed to be so happy right now as I scamper off into the sunset of my glorious new life with blackwingedboy.

But I didn't sit down to write about all that side of the story. I wanted to record the slow opening of my heart that has taken place over the last day or two. The gorgeous hot sun has helped a lot, the wide open windows and the sounds of happy voices floating in. Yesterday afternoon I lay in the corner of my living room just watching the trees waving in the breeze, their brand new green shoots delicious in their freshness. I glanced over at my laptop to see writeanya and blackwingedboy laughing with one another on cam and felt so blessed by all the good people I know. I read some Jack Kornfield and marvelled at how much better he makes me feel about everything. I felt my heart glowing with love for my friends and my astonishingly wonderful partner. I realised that the pain had not gone away but that I could allow it to co-exist with the rest of my life. I hope that when the time is right it will shift and depart but for the time being it is my companion and I feel some hope that I can find an appropriate place and volume for it where it doesn't overwhelm everything else I'm experiencing. I tend to struggle a lot with believing things are either completely one way or completely the other. So either my life is perfect or it's ruined. No matter what joyful things may be coming up, they will all be pointless if there's something *wrong* with me. I've wrestled with some dark places in this respect lately, really feeling at times like I'll never be happy again. So that's why I'm so relieved to be genuinely experiencing joy once again. To be finding a kind of joy which is quieter, maybe, than its more youthful cousins, but is more real. A joy which takes in the full spectrum of life and its pleasures and pains, which is not dependent on everything working out just right. It's easy to look around at people whose bodies appear to be working properly and feel envious, even slightly hateful. Easy to make bargains in my head. But today I feel that I have precious things within me that I wouldn't trade for a perfect body, places of peace and beauty I can touch which don't depend on the physical.

So next time I'm sinking into hopelessness, I shall direct myself back here. I shall remind myself that joy is always possible, that happiness depends more on an open, tender heart than it does on the vagaries of circumstance. I shall remind myself of hummingbird medicine which invites me to look at the beauty and abundance of what is in front of me rather than dwelling on the perpetual presence of that which is unwanted. I shall remember writeanya's practice of telling herself "THIS is my path" - not the other path I think I *should* be on, *this* one.." I shall remember the Ryokan poem which came my way this evening, which encapsulates it all perfectly:

"Left behind by the thief
The moon at the window"

I was woken by crows this morning, loud insistent crows, cawing madly out back. Then I dozed off again and had one of my lovely Patti Smith dreams. This one was unusually lengthy and just lovely. She was staying somewhere in England and I turned up at her door but it was as if we'd kinda been around each other recently and she knew me a little. She was pleased to see me. It was her last day here before flying to Paris and she wanted advice about how to spend it. I asked if she wanted quiet solitary time and suggested some quiet rural places nearby. She said "Excellent. Would you like to come with me?" She was so full of life and joy, friendly and a playful. I said I'd love to but I'd have to go and put my wellies on first. She laughed and teased me for not wanting to get messy. I said she and I together reminded me of my (tidy) mum and her (messy, chaotic) sister. There was also a part, in her bedroom, where she cautioned me not to tread on a grasshopper she was in the process of rescuing. I was a bit wary of it after my grasshopper experiences a couple of summers ago, but she treated it very lovingly and gently. It was such a lovely dream: warm and encouraging and a hopeful start to another hot Springy day.

I'd like to do a detox this Spring, and wonder if any of you can recommend a particular programme? I'm particularly interested in trying to do one which aligns with my Ayurvedic type (Vata) - I'm pretty sure that serious fasting would *not* suit me, as I need regular fuel in order not to fall over. I guess I could just invent my own - fresh fruit and veggies with some detox tea, loads of water and cutting out sugar, yeast, dairy, etc. but in some ways I'd like a proper regime to follow. Any ideas?

Feeling tired but pleased with myself. Today I led a Shamanic Journeying Day at the Brighton Buddhist Centre. I arranged it a couple of months ago in one of my rash confident moments, the type I always curse myself for when I wake up on the morning of the huge scary thing I've agreed to do, and then feel grateful for when I've got to the end and all has gone well and I feel like a valuable member of society.

So, true to the pattern, I woke up this morning feeling horrible. I get *so* nervous about anything which requires me to be "out front" speaking to a group of people, and the knowledge that I'd be doing that for a whole seven hours was daunting to say the least. But of course there's not really any way out at that point so of course I just showed up and did it and of course it went very well. Sadly not many people turned up (three to be precise) and so I didn't make much money (£27.65 to be precise) but on the plus side it was less scary to lead a smaller group and everyone got a lot out of it. We did three journeys: one to the lower world, one to the upper world; and one on behalf of someone else in the room, with a question. I was really pleased with how much more naturally confident I am these days. I feel like I really know the territory of journeying now, having done so much of it myself, so I'm not so scared of people asking me awkward questions or even of them having difficult journeys where not much happens.

So, I'm feeling the good stuff now - in touch with my medicine and fulfilled to know I have skills and wisdom in a field that I personally find endlessly fascinating and is both helpful and enjoyable to others. I'm also really pleased with how my hands held up. I've never drummed for longer than 15 minutes in one go; today I did three separate twenty-minute journeys. That is such great news. Go hands, go!

Now I would love to curl up in bed for the rest of the day but instead I am off out into the world once again, to celebrate the birthday of my best friend in the whole world. I hope she won't mind me slinking off home early. I usually do :)

I really liked this story from "Of Wolves and Men" which I've been reading for about six months now :)

"Before a wolf was brought into their class, a group of grade school children were asked to draw pictures of wolves. The wolves in the pictures all had enormous fangs. The wolf was brought in, and the person with him began speaking about wolves. The children were awed by the animal. When the wolf left, the teacher asked the children to do another drawing. The new drawings had no large fangs. They all had enormous feet."

Walked up to the garden centre today to buy something for my window box. Disappointingly they had none of the tiny violas of previous years (who knows - it's probably a totally different season from when I bought them before). I trailed around for ages trying to find something I liked and almost went bigtime goth with some black pansies. I pulled myself back from the brink though and chose these rather gorgeous dark red ones. Now I can enjoy a rare moment of feeling all earth motherish, until this time next year :)

I just booked my first Rebirthing session this morning. I'm really feeling excited about it and hopeful that it may help me let go into a more trusting place at this time of such huge transitions and challenges. Pat Benaceur (not to be confused with Pat Benatar) sounds really lovely and comes highly recommended by my good friend Cath. Yay. The journey continues.

Speaking of which, blackwingedboy & I are now halfway through our 4.5 month separation. And the second half usually seems to fly much quicker than the first, so that's good.

In other monumental news, they've changed the angle on the bearcam, so now we get to see the whole rock where the bears hang out and eat their salad before napping a while in the afternoon sun. This pose almost made me cry at the cuteness of Existential Bear himself.

Off to my Mum's for a long weekend. Back Tuesday. Have good weekends, y'all....

Anyone know much about rebirthing? I'm feeling really drawn to it at the moment. I saw a card round at Cath's the other day advertising Pat Bennaceur, a local Rebirther with this poem on it:

and you held me and there were no words
and there was no time and you held me
and there was only wanting and
being held and being filled with wanting
and I was nothing but letting go
and being held
and there were no words and there
needed to be no words
and there was no terror only stillness
and I was wanting nothing and
it was fullness and it was like aching for God
and it was touch and warmth and
darkness and no time and no words and we flowed
and I flowed and I was not empty
and I was given up to the dark and
in the darkness I was not lost
and the wanting was like fullness and I could
hardly hold it and I was held and
you were dark and warm and without time and
without words and you held me

- Janet Morley

I was kinda blown away by it. Surrender is a theme just now as is the realisation of how much I hold on all the time, trying to control, fearing the future, the world, not trusting in my body, in healing.... Cath speaks very highly of Pat, though she is pricey. I am plotting how I could possibly get to see her. I could really do with some help trusting and letting go just now.

Do any of you have a default song in your head, which you find yourself singing or starting to sing whilst walking around, out and about in the world? I just realised today that mine is "All I Want" by Joni Mitchell. Regardless of how long it's been since I last heard it, unless I have something I'm more currently obsessed with on the brain, it's always this song I start singing. I wonder if there's any significance to it. The first few lines are:

"I am on a lonely road and I am travelling, travelling, travelling, travelling
Looking for something, what can it be...."


Anybody care to share their default song, if indeed you have one? If not, what's currently rotating in your mind?

My good friend Suryagita now has a MySpace page up for her music. She and I have sung together on numerous occasions now over the past few years. She will be returning to her native New Zealand at the end of May and I'll be sorry to see her go. If you fancy checking out her songs, you'll find me singing on the last two (He Moemoea & Free to Fly).

While I'm at it I should also point you to another two superbly talented musical friends of mine.

Firstly, the amazing Clare - best friend and awesome poet and musician;
and secondly the lovely Cath - writing and playing gorgeous music with her husband-to-be....

I would really love one of these dresses. Monsoon just gets me every year with one or two gorgeous things that I seemingly can't manage without. However, I think with all my current not-inconsequential expenses I shall have to make do with enjoying these on my blog rather than on my body :)

What would Buddhism say about the Buddhist who reaches Nirvana and, in the process, neglects his or her children? (Is Buddhism navel-gazing?)

Hmm. Well this is a tricky one. I think I'll start it with a quick explanation of Buddhist ethics. In Buddhism, the skilfullness or unskilfullness of an action is determined by the intention behind it, the state of mind from which the action originated. So it's actually *really* difficult to look at another person's actions and judge them to be either good or bad. For example, say you have two people who volunteer at a soup kitchen for the underprivileged. One of them may do it because she feels a genuine empathy and desire to alleviate suffering in the world; the second may mainly do it because she likes to tell people at dinner parties how much she does for the poor and needy. Of course we all have mixed motives and I'm not saying you should refrain from acts of kindness until you have absolutely no ego involved in them at all. I just want to caution against the tendency to make black and white judgements about people based on our assumptions about the intentions behind their actions. I actually think that most miscommunication that takes place in the world is based in a tendency to assume we know what other people's intentions are when often we really don't.

Your question reflects a real event in the life of the Buddha, who, as you may know, did indeed leave his wife and son to go off and begin his path of investigation into the nature of suffering. I have no doubt this was not an easy time for those he left behind. However, after some years he did of course gain enlightenment and he returned to the two of them who then became his disciples and subsequently gained enlightenment too. So, although of course I have no idea what was going through his mind as he decided to leave, I guess you could say that his wife and son benefitted much more in the long run from his decision to go forth than they would have done had he stayed. I do think it's quite complex though, as life usually is. I think it's actually pretty hard to look at all the myriad choices which go to make up one person's life and make a single judgement about it.

As to the charge of navel-gazing, well I'd say it could be but it doesn't have to be. Again, it depends entirely on the individual. I think in the modern world it's not seen as particularly normal to spend time away from the rounds of ceaseless activity which characterise the majority of lives these days. As I see it, the ideal Buddhist life should be perfectly balanced between action and stillness. There is much to be done in the world to alleviate suffering and it wouldn't be much good if everyone just closed their doors and spent the rest of their lives in meditation. However, I believe in order to *really* help in the world, one needs to have enough wisdom to know what is *really* needed. And I believe that wisdom is gained in part, through the quiet times of meditation and solitude. And sometimes a person may need a lot of that internal time. Sometimes people go off on solitary retreat for three years or more. However, there are many tales of such people attaining amazingly advanced states of bliss and peace, only to come back into the world and immediately be filled with ill will once again as soon as they encounter an objectionable person or situation :) I think it's all about integration and balance. If your solitary insights can't be integrated into your life in the world, then they're not worth too much. However I also think many people spend far too much time running around like headless chickens, compulsively trying to help people when actually what they really need is to stop, recharge and spend some time reflecting on life and how it works. And as a Buddhist, what I believe is really of benefit to the world is insight. Deep insight into our non-fixed nature and our interconnectedness. You can spend your whole life attending to the symptoms of people's suffering, trying to improve their situation (and of course I don't at all dispute the fact that there is much good and necessary work to be done in this area) but ultimately, people will continue to suffer until they gain insight into the nature of existence. So I believe it's crucial to the welfare of the world that as many people as possible are doing what they can to try and gain this insight and share it around.

So. I believe that brings me to the end of eightoclock 's fascinating and challenging questions. I've really enjoyed delving into my beliefs and experiences and doing my best to answer. I'm really up for hearing any responses, reactions, further questions from anyone who cares to jump in.... And thanks once again to eightoclock for catalysing this whole process with his open-minded curiosity. 

"Traditionally the dark night arises only after we have had some initial spiritual opening. In the first flush of practice, joy, clarity, love, and a sense of the sacred can arise, and with them we experience a great excitement at our spiritual progress. However, these states will inevitably pass away. It is as if they arise for us as initial gifts, but then we discover how much discipline and surrender are needed to sustain and live in these realms. Inwardly we often touch the light and then lose it, falling back into separateness, despair, or unconsciousness. This may happen many times in the repeated cycles of opening and letting go, of death and rebirth, that mark our spiritual path. Yet it is this very process of death and rebirth that leads us to freedom."

- Jack Kornfield

Firstly, it's my mum's 71st birthday today! Happy Birthday Mum! It's also her first wedding anniversary. I cannot believe a whole year has passed since her wedding. Incredible.

Secondly, I am getting a cold. Except it's coming on really slowly and in some ways I'd rather it just got on with it. I slept till nearly midday today and had weird dreams.

Thirdly and most excitingly, blackwingedboy & I have booked our flights for the summer. He arrives here on Friday July 4th and stays for three weeks. We go to see Death Cab for Cutie in London the night before we head up to the Midlands for our third week together which will be spent with my mum & her husband. This includes a day in the Cotswolds meeting up with aunts, uncles, cousins and their kids (all from my dad's side of the family). On July 25th we will catch a train up to York for my friend Cath's wedding. We're staying here for two nights before heading back to Brighton on the Sunday and flying back to Seattle together on Monday July 28th. I hope to do a two-week retreat down in California at the beginning of August, then will be staying with W until September 15th. That's a whole seven weeks in the U.S. for me. Yay!

Now I shall wobble into town to buy some vegetables to keep my body healthy. Then I may have a little nap.

"Our grasping or resistance to any experience stops our practice in that spot, stops our opening to the truth."

 - Jack Kornfield

Wanting to record moments of joy, for those times when I believe it's disappeared for good....

• Getting W's e mail this morning and touching in to that deep place of our soul connection which goes beyond pleasure and pain
• Seeing a photo of Debz and feeling my heart open with love for her
• Putting Death Cab on loud and singing along. Remembering driving around Seattle with W, singing our hearts out. Catching sight of my reflection in the kitchen window. Feeling joy in my heart and getting rushes up and down my skin.
• Seeing the bears
• Hanging out with Otto the dog at the Buddhist Centre

There will be more of this. I am investigating joy. In a non-serious way :)