A week back, almost...

I've been back for a week. I'm not really sure what happened in this week. I've been staying away from the computer, and staying away from a lot of things. I've had a few good walks. I got two rolls of film back when I got back to Rossland for the weekend. Yes, I get my parents to deal with my film. Why? I like the end product better. I don't really know why. It just seems to have better colour and everything with the machine at Doel Photo. Maybe it's just me, but my mum has agreed with that.

As I said, I really don't know what I did this last week. A few walks. Good. Well, one walk. And it was a short walk. Something significant happened on that walk, but maybe it wasn't all that significant. Well, I noticed that the lake has gotten down to a pretty much normal level. Oh, some of the photos I got back were of the lake at the peak I saw it. May have been higher at some other time, but this must have been near peak.

I came to Rossland. We had a nice walk on the Black Jack ski trails. I got some computer work done. Even got my parents' new DVD player hooked up. Unfortunately I think we are going to be loosing one channel of audio with it until I get the stereo signal from the DVD player mixed to a mono audio signal I can put into the VCR.

Hazel was asking about weekthun. Well it was good. I think that I got more or less what I expected. Lots of sitting, lots of keeping occupied. I had a regular schedual for the first time in a very long time. I really think I'd like a 3 day a week or maybe 2.5 day a week job durring the day to give me a regular schedual. I now realise just how hard it is for me to maintain a schedual, and how good it is for me to do that.

But, I continue to sleep a lot durring the day. Since I got back, my doctor has increased one of my medications, it is really helping with the pain. I wake up in a lot less pain. That is really good. I'm not sure if maybe it also means that I'm having a harder time staying awake durring the day.

Weekthun, yes, that was requested. It was really good. No electricity for a week, well no AC electricity for a week. We did have various battery controlled things like flashlights, tooth bruushes, um, what else, cameras (Stephen has a few pictures up on his blog http://dondrup.blogger.com/ that are good). I might post a few pictures tomorrow, I don't know. Some of my pictures well, they're rather different. Photos of things most people would really shy away from. I don't know, do I take them because they make people uncofortable? Or do I take them because I find beauty in them despite the fact that many people find them repulsive. That's odd.

Russ gave some really good talks about the experience of the 8 conciousnesses, the five sense conciousnesses, the mind conscousness, then the other two I really don't know a whole lot about, one is a kind of storehouse consciousness, the other is I think some link between the first 6 and the 8th. A lot on the sense consciousnesses. That, I could kind of work with. Then we also worked with the other three consciousness a little bit. I know for me, what worked well for me to connect with my meditation practice was sight and sound. I had a lot of trouble with taste and smell. And touch was somewhere in between there.

Touch is something that actually I worked a lot with. There were some people there who were regularly touching me. I know this is an area which I have difficulty with. I rarely seek out touch, at least not in a healthy way. And when I do get in a situation where touch becomes something important in the communication I tend to get very confused. I know in recent memory I've had situations where the touch I felt was conveying a lot of loving and careing, but in the end it seemed like that was either overrulled by some other thing, or I was mistaken. I'd like to believe that something changed, that while that careing didn't go away, something came up that caused the person to choose to bury it. Maybe conciously, but most likely not conciously.

I also find that while I can express trust on certain levels easily (like falling backwards into a person's arms and trusting they will catch me before I hit the floor (no, I've never hit the floor doing this, but sometimes come very close)), but on the emotional level, trusting my feelings, especially my feelings about what another person is feeling towards me is really poor. Sometimes I find myself feeling that the person feels exactly as I do, and really finds me someone they would like to have a lot of contact with. Other times, I don't trust that the expressions of affection that I receive from them are really because they feel that way.

Then I really wonder what it is that makes this matter, and I realise that it is probably ego, and my way of looking at the world in very dualistic ways. That the world, or a situation, or whatever is either one, or it's another. The world is either black, or it is white. Or maybe the world is full of evil, or it is full of love. The or of these two things, is an exclusive or, that is, it's one or the other, but not both.

I know I've said a lot. I'm not sure I said a lot about what it was that really was why I wanted to write this. I guess it's hard at times.

That will be it for tonight.

Jessica