This is a picture I took in Bristol some time ago. It's a nice reminder of where up is :-)

Travelling the Zen way is all very well if you're a Tibetan monk walking barefoot in the sunshine with a thermos of tea-and-yak-butter on your back. Travelling the railway is a different story, especially when you discover that no trains are running to any of your destinations, your nose freezes off and your shoes begin to leak. That's Zen on a rainy Dutch day for you. Today's universal lesson: we all go back to where we came from, it takes a lot of detours and you end up with a runny nose.

But AT was cool again; I have been thoroughly rebuilt, at least that's how it feels. My shoulder was giving me a hard time again, after some weeks of relatively good behaviour, so we worked on that part a bit. (Note to self: not much news in words, but check previous weeks for reminders. Out, from sitting bone, renew directions upwards all the time, not just once, and include shoulder as part of back. Remind myself in situations like computer work and sport, don't go autopilot). Lots of talking and new sensations, so I won't attempt to catch too much in words. Also got proof that directions can travel through wooden sticks.

Back in university, linguistics students like me faced a choice that would determine our later career: scientist, translator or teacher. My MA thesis almost gave me a nervous breakdown, because I got extremely bored with the futility of my research topic, so scientist was no option. I took courses in didactics and educational science, and taught Dutch to foreigners for a while, but I couldn't see myself teaching the basics of English to classes of obnoxious children for the rest of my life. Most of my family members teach, so of course I couldn't become a teacher too. Instead, I became a translator, and later on, a manual writer. I love writing, I like explaining things, so it wasn't a strange choice.

But in the last two weeks, I've been a teacher once more, for a group of professionals in my company. Rather than teaching them factual knowledge, I was asked to support them in becoming trainers for other professionals. This meant that I'd give information about effective communication and presentation, about what information processing does to a group of people and more things like that. And rather than giving them this knowledge on a plate, I was asked to let them discover it for themselves. And I found that I really liked it. It's great to see someone all of a sudden discover something that didn't make sense to him earlier. And it's great to see this happen just by asking some questions, or making a remark.

It also gave me lots of stuff to ponder over, like how I interact with other people, how it makes me feel, and how I can remain myself, even when I'm facing a group of others that don't necessarily have the same goals, interests or perspectives. From that point of view, it has been an extremely good learning situation for myself too.

I guess I can see myself teaching in the future sometime. But I'm not sure what.

"Venerable Teacher, should one spend all of his time and energy in quiet sitting meditation in order to remain above all worldly conditions and maintain empty-mindedness?"

"Kind prince, one who spends all of his time and energy in quiet sitting meditation for this purpose is only fixing his mind in a certain, narrow way. This is not empty-mindedness, but only narrow-mindedness. Such practice does not lead one anywhere, much less to becoming an integrally virtuous being."

"The practice of whole-mindedness, you see, is not the practice of stiffness. What is stiff belongs in the company of the dead, whereas what is supple belongs in the company of the living. The mind should be like water that is always flowing smoothly. One should not designate a specific time or place in which to practice empty-mindedness, but should practice mental unassertiveness in all aspects of life, the essential as well as the trivial."

Wonderful lesson today; managed to make my directions more detailed, more stripped of any doing, and quite easily found and maintained a connection between the bottom and the top of my spine by using my inner eye. I wasn't too sure about what inner eye is for a while, because I confused it with looking inside. I think I'm getting the right idea now. D. explained staying backwards and head-neck-back relationship by having me put my hands on his head and back -worked really well to 'see' this on someone else, especially because it really hit home the fact that it's a relationship, not a posture.

Four years of AT, and I'm not bored yet. On the contrary, I can't remember a time so full of discoveries and new things to learn as the last couple of months. And the good thing is that this will not stop -ever, because the more consciously aware I become, the more things I notice, and the more opportunity I have to experience things, learn from them and deepen my understanding of them in relation to me.

The only pity is that I cannot find the appropriate words to indicate this apparent shift that I'm going through right now. I would like to express the increasing amount of detail that I experience in directions, in my ability to notice things in myself and others, the profound effects it has on me as a person, with words that are equally detailed, equally rich and equally emotionally moving. But I find this very hard to do, even though I work with words on a daily basis. I guess this calls for a completely different way of writing. Or perhaps just plain silence.