It is true that when you long for something to arrive, time actually extends. Its a bit like Pinocchio's nose getting longer the more he lies. Any event seeming further away, even as it paradoxically is actually getting nearer. The effect of our desires, the longings, the expectations appears to slow the experience and acceleration of time, putting the brake on how our lives are progressing. Expectation freeze frames the sense of forward motion.
As I've mentioned before, post Christmas trade in Sheringham is always dire. However,having no experience of March before, we naively expected trade to start picking up. But despite our neighbours in The Courtyard repeatedly telling us its always pants, we clung to our hopes that for us it might be different. It wasn't. Also the constant news about hard times and income squeezes to come, gave our confidence a shake. What effect will all this have on the tourist season? Everyone talks of how things don't really pick up till Easter. But will it this time.? Easter is also late, it seems an age away. We've bought in new stock lines in readiness. Let the season begin ....soonish.
If our experience of the last three months has felt harder than before, this is partly of our own making. What helps a bit, is if I practice cultivating a hopeful demeanor, unattached to any specific outcome. Trust in days being whatever they will be. Observe how they sometimes will turn around from dire, to fine, to flush. All this will happen inspite of my wishes and longings. So I try to minimise wishful thinking, speculation and expectation. To paraphrase the Indian teacher Sadguru, there is only the present moment where you can have any effect on what happens, so focus on that, keep plugging away putting energy and initiative into it. Remaining unattached to any desired for result.
Soon enough the bunnies of Easter will be seen bounding over the fields with their bountiful baskets full of eggs. From the moment April arrived things did indeed begin to pick up. The sales pattern of each day is erratic and unpredictable,though takings prove steady in the end. We have found that the number of sales has gone up, though the average sale figure has dropped by about a third. So this coming season, it seems, will require us to keep pace with the increased turnover on smaller priced items. Simply matching last year may be harder to achieve, but not necessarily impossible. We wont have our first real indication until the end of this month where we might be with it all. But people are certainly being price conscious, purchases are taking more consideration. Increasingly folk are paying in cash, which usually means they are carefully managing their spending.
In June this year it will be four years since I resigned from the Triratna Order. This has of course removed me from close association with that Sangha, from the network of friendship I'd built up over my years of involvement. Subsequently trying to find a new Buddhist Sangha to join, proved to be like putting the cart before the horse. An atmosphere of aloneness inhabits the individual spiritual path, it's one of its particular qualities and one could say a down side.
Independence rarely exists in a pure state, its neither entirely 'free from' nor entirely 'part of'. In the same way, a country cannot be wholly an independent sovereign entity. In the interaction of trade and culture we choose to relax the degree and scope of our independent activity. Countries agree to collaborate wherever it becomes mutually advantageous to do so. Likewise for me, if there is a middle way here spiritually speaking between independence and belonging, it's in the area of 'freely associating'
So, because I remembered with fondness doing meditation and morning service regularly I've returned to attending them a few times a week via Zoom at Norwich Zen Priory. It is just for that. I'm not committing fully to their approach. Its simply their morning service still speaks to me. It sustains me in some way, perhaps it helps to touch base with this regular morning meditation Sangha. To feel less cut off on this path of spiritual exploration I'm on. Even though that is in reality how it actually is.
Jnanasalin and I recently spent a delightful day in Bury St Edmund's with Taradasa and Vidyasiddhi two friends of ours from Cambridge. Last week Saddharaja and Saddhahadaya were up here in holiday and came round for dinner. Saddharaja is a friend whom I've known the longest in Triratna, and I always enjoy his company, shared enthusiasms and his encouraging presence. Each experience was delightful and invigorating. They lifted my spirits, but this also reminded me what was currently in short supply.
Jnanasalin and I make a good team and effectively support each other. Though we know we each have our limitations. Everyone needs a broader supportive network if only for the benefit of a different quality, tone or perspective to the conversations. Jnanasalin is still part of the Order so he still has that context outside of just the two of us. I've had moments over the Winter of feeling the lack of friendship here quite keenly.
Not a naturally gregarious person, I'm the classic introvert in many ways. Friendship doesn't come easy. I tend to be initially wary in new contexts. Opening up and relaxing more once I feel at home and welcome. An aim for this year is to start making connections outside of the shop context. To find groups in my area I'd feel happy to join and be a part of. I have some ideas, its just getting around to acting on them. There are the mountains of prevarication to overcome. Well little mossy hillocks really.
I continue to work, admittedly somewhat erratically, on my shrine to Our Lady of Walsingham. I'm nearing completion of the external structure. So I will have to start settling soon on the form for its interior. What is that going to be like? I'm loving the shade of blue I"ve used for the exterior. The shape of the shrine is reminiscent of Anglo Saxon caskets. Which is very apt as the original shrine was a small rectangular chapel built by an Anglo Saxon noblewoman in response to a vision she had.
My vision for the interior keeps changing from day to day. My uncertainty is making me prevaricate starting on it. But like the exterior I just need to begin doing something, then the ideas and direction will evolve out of that. That's the problem with both expectations and prevarication, they both tend to inhibit action being taken, yet that is the very thing that will overcome them.
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