Nearly eight years ago Jim retired from, what I described as, the War Zone. By all accounts his job held the kind of intensity similar to how I imagine it must be in an actual war zone. Moment to moment, from where are the bullets coming? That kinda intensity I could only imagine. It was outside my experience. (Although working on an inner city adventure playground in the 1970’s came close!) I said, You are as one who has returned home from war, and your boots are still smoking! I also said soon after his retirement, Why don’t you write about how it is for you now? And that is what he did, back in 2003.

So it is, and so it was. I have been encouraging people to write about their experiences of life and training for quite some years. And now Jim’s writing is coming home to roost in his piece titled Boots Still Smoking just published after these long years. As with Adrienne it has been an honour to walk and talk beside you Jim.

A post by Reverend Mugo from back in February has kept coming to mind for me. It was about ‘Giving it up’ (Feb. 26th). I find that teachings often burrow themselves inside me somewhere and keep on working somehow at an almost unconscious level; and so it has been with this one.

And what I have realised is that I so often approach life expecting it to be so hard. Which is why the ‘looking up’ has always appealed – but it has still felt like it was a ‘hard’ effort to look up and not be dragged down by the seeming inevitable difficulty of life and the sense of loss foreseen with ‘letting things go’, ‘offering them up’ or even until now with ‘give it up’.

Because we do have such deep patterns of comfort in our life regardless of the costs (both to ourselves and others) that may be involved. These patterns often involve (for me at least) recurring cycles of denial, craving and dependency on people, things, activities; and the idea of giving them up seems so hard. But where is all this negative expectation coming from? and why do I listen to it? Not just with big life habits but with seemingly small things. Like, eating fewer of the things that are probably not good for me (even going on a diet); breaking some of my dependency on car travel; facing and challenging my aversion to computers and the internet; being more organised with our finances; being more tidy…

So, given that things still seem different with our lives I am trying to look at just ‘giving up’ some of these things – without expectation, without looking for how hard it is going to be, and without listening to the feeling that I am doomed to fail.

And what seems to happen, as has happened so often before, is that after all the commentary has gone from my mind, far from being hard there is actually a ‘lightness’ and ease involved with giving up these patterns (or at least trying to give them up). It is as though they have weighed me down just carrying all this stuff around with me, for so, so long. Then giving it up comes with a feeling of being lifted up and maybe it is the gratitude that is doing the lifting.

Then I read this quote from The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines, at the front of this book and it seemed to re-enforce and immediately (and massively) expand what has been slowly revealing itself to me:

I should not like to have the bodhisattva think this kind of work hard to achieve and hard to plan out. If he did, there are beings beyond calculation, and he will not be able to benefit them. Let him on the contrary consider the work easy and pleasant, thinking they were all his mother and father and children, for this is the way to benefit all beings whose number is beyond calculation.

Being a parent is always hectic; nothing new there. Life has been especially busy recently, with one daughter moving back to live with us temporarily and the other moving into a new house. The distractions/demands come thick and fast and my response to these demands/distractions is something for me to take a closer look at. What is good to do?

I want to be supportive but is it always good to say yes? I know the answer to that one (N0 if you are in any doubt!). But in the moment, when I am caught off guard, when the dynamic pull of parent/child stuff occurs, I find myself saying yes far too often. Old habits die hard and the years of being the single parent who did it all has meant expectations sometimes run high. And, in the not too distant future I am to be a grandparent and with that will come yet more demands/distractions, some of which I happily anticipate, however………….

Last year, in a conversation with Rev Mugo, we talked about this. She gave me a suggestion and since then, when I remember to, I have put her suggestion into practice. The first time I tried the idea it went like this: the phone rings and it is my daughter, wanting something from me. What usually happens, and it happened this time, is that I feel a strong mental pull in a forward direction. This pull feels like I am being sucked forward, both by the words I am hearing and the kicking in of my habitual responses of OK, I am needed again, I am wanted therefore I will. I want to say no but I can’t. But this time I chose to change my perspective. I allowed myself to become aware of the physical space behind me. I immediately felt a loosening, a relaxing of the tension I was feeling. The pull forward stopped and I was able to be still in a way that I haven’t experienced before.

My daughter must have noticed something because she stopped talking and asked me if I was OK. I just said that I was listening to her. But something had happened between us and she and I noticed a difference. Our communication softened. I can’t remember whether I said yes or no to her request; my actual response isn’t relevant. What is important is that the experience gave me a sense of how it is possible to be really present by a simple change in my perspective. And in that space I was more able to respond fully.

Since then, when I remember to, I bring my attention to that space that isn’t in front of me. There is also the space that is behind and either side of me. When I am not just focused on forwards I can connect myself to the space I inhabit. I don’t just exist in relation to the pull of pressures, distractions, demands, habits. What a relief!