A yogini at large

July 5, 2026

ONE OF A KIND

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” — Dr. Seuss

There’s a part of me that is procrastinating on today’s relatively arbitrary tasks, such as planting the last three pineapple keikis, taking the compost up to feed the chickens, getting my swim in before dinner. And finishing my blog. While I’m procrastinating on all the aforementioned tasks, I get up intending to rinse out my smootie cup and buy some avocados.

So, after procuring three avocados, two baking potatoes and a small bag of truffle chips 😜 (the only kind they had) I’ve set my alarm for exactly two hours in which to continue this magnum opus of a blog post.

I think I’m still partially in a food coma (in a partial food coma?) after indulging in too much 4th of July fare at the annual over-the-top dinner buffet. And possibly the free-flowing champagne. I overheard a friend saying in the locker room yesterday morning, “I have a date with a foot-long hotdog and a brew”, referring to lunch at the family field day, and it struck me as something Mae West might say. Without the raunchy overtones that made her famous.

Fast fact: by 1935 West was the highest paid female actress in the U.S., and the second highest paid American, next to William Randolph Hearst.

Thoughts of overindulging in general, and Mae West in particular, segue into what my personalized blue zones project is suggesting to me: embrace your uniqueness, your individuality. To the point of capitalizing on your flaws. “Instead of hiding quirks or physical traits that didn’t fit the rigid societal norms of her era, West leaned into them. She famously instructed, “Cultivate your curves — they may be dangerous but they won’t be avoided.” She refused to dilute her bold personality, stating, “I’m my own original creation.” (AI Overview)

To me that’s all part of the creative process. I can’t count how many arts and craft projects (or even recipes) I’ve salvaged by leaning into irreversible “mistakes”, often pulling off a one-of-a-kind “masterpiece”.

Think about it. What’s something you least like and therefore least value/appreciate about yourself? One of my regrettable flaws might be what our kids call my verbal Tourette’s. My habit of speaking without thinking. Easily one of the hardest things to take back is the spoken word, sometimes intended to be funny but falling flat, or being meant privately but, regrettably, overheard. How would it feel to give oneself a “get out of jail free” card after making such an embarrassing faux pas? And not censure oneself forever thereafter. I’m not advocating being crude and unmannerly, or disregarding others’ feelings, just being less hung up one what other people think, or on meeting some arbitrary social criteria. Less with-holding of my spontaneous comments lest they cause offense.

I once won a trophy for “best line” in a theatre improv show in which I was pulled from the audience to participate in an unrehearsed skit. When the flustered “secretary” asked what it would take to buy my silence about her inter-office affair, I popped up with: “I’ll take that mickey you’ve got hidden in your bottom-left-hand drawer” to peals of laughter from an audience who hadn’t anticipated such a crack coming from a “little old gray-haired lady”. There might’ve been some nepotism involved, our son was part of the regular cast, but still…a high moment that I remember to this day. (As I recall, the trophy was a repurposed junior league baseball, or amateur golf trophy, but that didn’t diminish my sense of accomplishment).

I guess what I’m saying is that we can’t take ourselves too seriously, or hew too closely to whatever conditioning tells us to mind our p’s and q’s. Whatever that means. In both junior and high school I had a major rebellious streak, and am beginning to like that iteration of myself better than the stodgy perfectionist I later held up as my role model. The fact that “the rebel” would never have been accepted in university in this competitive age, having eschewed math, history, and any form of authority, she did have some uniquely colorful things to say. So I’ve decided to include a little more Mae West and a little less Emily Post in my vocabulary, (if not in my actions). Anyway, with all the scandalous behaviors being tolerated on the world stage these days, Mae West seems anachronistically tame.

P.S. It is seven minutes before my alarm goes off and I’ve already got a draft blog. Heigh ho, heigh ho, to the pool I go! In seven minutes.

June 29, 2026

RESTORING THE PEACE

“If you’re looking toward the future but your faith in your ability to succeed is wavering, you will benefit from finding and listening to your true inner voice. You can connect with it by remaining relaxed and alert, while listening carefully. If you have trouble distinguishing your true voice from the others, meditation may be helpful. You may hear many voices as you meditate, but the one you should pay attention to is the one that speaks to you with love, understanding, and compassion. It will bolster your spirits and urge you to go after your dreams. And it will never cause confusion, remind you of past mistakes, or cause you to doubt yourself.”

(Daily Om blog: “Speaking Your Truth”, June 24,2026)

I had something of a minor epiphany when I read the above quote, and in particular, the phrase “[Your true inner voice] will never cause confusion, remind you of past mistakes, or cause you to doubt yourself.”

By contrast, I have referred to the inner voice that causes me the greatest grief as my maniacal roommate, per Michael Singer’s Untethered Soul. Singer exhorts us to detach ourselves from this inner critic, to see it for what it is, just one of many inner voices or personality aspects that compete for attention or dominance over our thoughts and actions.

Daily Om offers this antidote:

“As we move through life, we get mixed messages from the various aspects of ourselves. Some of our voices, such as the naysayer or saboteur, can speak so loudly that they drown out the voice of truth. Listening to your true inner voice — often the voice of understanding, support, and self-assurance — can help lessen and even resolve internal conflict.”

The Daily Om blog would probably have flown under the radar if I hadn’t just confided to a friend that most of my waking life is spent dealing with this inner critic, this cranky child in the back seat that has an opinion about nearly everything that crosses my path. Especially about my blog drafts.

Do I have to listen to that whiny child? Why do I even have it? It makes sense that we humans would have an inner aspect invested in keeping us in line, in earning the acceptance and the approval of our tribe, without which our survival is at risk.

But it also “rings true” that, if I am ever to fulfill my potential, if I am ever to know when my true inner voice is speaking, it must be when I get a feeling of relief, of equanimity or complete inner agreement, such as I had when reading Daily Om. I do believe that my intuition, if you will, gets drowned out more than I realize. Given that I’m now more aware of this dynamic, it has become part of my Blue Zones lifestyle to more consistently listen to the voice of understanding, support and self-assurance. So what is speaking when even the doubter, the cynic, the judge, or the inner couch potato listens, and consents to follow?

I googled the latter question and read “when your heart speaks and the rest of you listens, you achieve alignment…a profound state of inner harmony where your core desires, thoughts, and physical actions synchronize, removing internal conflict.” But how does one consistently achieve this enviable alignment?

I decided the best way to achieve such a state of inner harmony would be to watch my thoughts more closely. Maybe not all the time, but occasionally throughout the day I would listen to whatever inner voice has the floor. I’ve already tried it a few times and found it quite revealing. Instead of trying to tune out whatever voice is speaking, I’m beginning to realize that I can dialogue with these inner aspects and, just as a whiny child calms down once acknowledged, so too I can restore a greater sense of harmony when I respond proactively to what the voices are wanting. In sum, the kinder I am to my inner complainers, the more cooperative and helpful they will be to me.

Who knew what a little inner peacemaking could do!

BLOG 163
June 22,2026

THE ROAD…

Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.

Alice: “I don’t much care where —
The Cheshire Cat: “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

One of the little excitements of my day is when I see a hummingbird darting in and out of the container plantings on our fourth floor deck. Our condo lines up with some of the taller trees along the Ambleside sea wall, giving us a bird’s eye view (pun intended) of the local avian world — generally crows and seagulls, whose activity consists mostly of dropping seashells or worse on our outdoor furniture. So you can see why a hummingbird visits are a welcome attraction.

This is the first year we’ve intentionally planted flowers known to draw hummingbirds (and bees, inadvertently), such as scarlet sage, petunias and firecracker plants (that I thought were fuscias but which still do the trick). So as I said, it’s a great event to spot one of these ruby throated friends. This morning there were two hummers darting in and out of the scarlet sage, but not, I note, amiably. One or the other would drive off the intruder quite aggressively, which bears out what I’ve read on the internet. Hummingbirds are extremely territorial, known to dive bomb bees, and even bigger birds that get too close to a food source. All this I observed while chanting by the window this morning, and reflecting on the question: “what are my next steps?”

For what it’s worth, my intuition or subconscious offered what I’d read somewhere previously: “if you don’t know where you want to go, any road will do.” Duh. I realized that nothing and nobody is going to magically spell out my next steps, perhaps on a steamy bathroom mirror, or know better than I what I might reasonably hope to achieve with the time left to me.

Bearing in mind the example or legacy I wish to leave for my family, I researched what criteria were required for creating a version of the “Blue Zones” in my own “back yard”. Researched by Dr. Michel Poulain and Dr. Gianni Pes, and popularized in media by Dan Buettner, the Blue Zones were a handful of world regions where people are said to live exceptionally long lives. As the list of original regions expanded, the question of what causes extreme longevity in these places remained. Was it a matter of genes? Or exceptionally healthy life habits? Ultimately, nine criteria were identified:

“The “Power 9” are nine shared lifestyle habits and principles identified by demographers and researchers in the world’s “Blue Zones” (regions with the highest concentrations of centenarians and longest life expectancies).

“These principles focus on building healthy, natural environments and social structures rather than strict diet or fitness regimens.” (AI Overview)

Of particular interest to me was:

“Sense of Purpose: Knowing “why you wake up in the morning” can add up to seven years to life expectancy”. A further pair of principles sequel nicely into my idea of legacy:

“Loved Ones First: Placing family as a priority, including keeping aging parents/grandparents nearby and committing to a life partner…and

“Right Tribe: Cultivating and maintaining strong social circles that support and encourage healthy behaviors.

With a view to cultivating and maintaining strong family and community bonds, I asked myself what seeds I have already cultivated in my life? Who and what am I now hoping to attract? For example, being relatively new to West Vancouver, I want to attract friends with common interests. So how might I do that? In what ways might I better engage with my surroundings? Join a fitness group? A choir? A charity? And do I really want to, or am I just trying to fill my dance card so I’m not forced to be alone with my monkey mind? And in the event that I find answers to these questions, or at least devise strategies to meet my perceived needs, how am I going to set goals and track my progress?

One thing I know for sure is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. For the moment it is sufficient to know that researching the blue zones is giving me a sense of purpose, as is sharing my discoveries with my valued blog ohana (especially those of you who bother to read it!!!)

More to explore…

Blog 162
June 11, 2026

SPEAKING OF…

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
(“Cool Hand Luke”, Film 1967)

The above iconic line was delivered twice in the film “Cool Hand Luke”, first uttered by a cruel prison boss, and a second time by Luke himself, pushing against the authorities to his last breath. In fact, the entire film pivots around just how far off the rails communication can get between adversarial parties.

Communication has been topical for me since a misunderstanding with a loved one reminded me just how alienating my own way of expressing my ideas can be. My motto, “you must ask for what you really want” is not always compatible with other styles of communication — or not communicating — as the case may be.

But there’s another, equally important facet of communication that has to do with the stories we tell ourselves. It’s too easy to figuratively crawl under a rock and tell myself just how unfair or insensitive another person has been, without taking time to reflect on their message and learn something about myself, perhaps a hard truth that can be embarrassing to my ego.

Swami Radha writes:

“Communicate within yourself well. If you learn to communicate with yourself, you will also communicate well with others. The communication between your mind, even your doubting mind, and the Most High in yourself, is a very fruitful and rich communication. Don’t choke it.

“In other words, in your communication even with your most beloved, be honest. But you can’t unless you are first honest with yourself. How much do you want to give? How much are you really trying to get? Unless you know where you stand, on which end of the pole, you cannot meet with your beloved, whether it’s a human being or the Divine. You cannot meet in the middle, in the centre, unless you know who you are.
You do not find yourself by going somewhere, by leaving your house, because wherever you go, you take yourself with you.”

It comes with the territory of leading an examined life that, if honest with myself, I am confronted with traits and behaviors that don’t fit with my self-image, or the image I wish to project to the world. In other words, it’s important to acknowledge that, when I’m pointing the finger of blame at someone else, three fingers are pointing back at me. In order to accept this reality, I need sufficient courage and self-confidence to work with what some psychologists describe as my shadow side. In fact, the more perfect I think I need to be, the more power my shadow (aka flawed-human) side has to sabotage me. So there’s obviously a need to balance my self-image with humility, with the courage to admit that, after seventy-five years on the planet, I’m still learning and (hopefully) growing.

In a way, I find this encouraging. Once a certain level of comfort or “worldly” success has been achieved, it’s too easy to fall into a kind of ennui; having no illusions to pursue, or nothing compelling to do. Perhaps it was this ennui (read complacency) that compelled me to expand my horizons, literally and figuratively, in my recent travels. The only drawback being that one does have to come home, eventually. Hence in the last two or three blog-less weeks I’ve been doing a lot of processing. I’ve had to accept my relative insignificance in the whole scheme of things. The world does not revolve around me or my wants and needs.

This is being brought home even more profoundly now, as I resume writing while sitting at the foot of my son’s gurney in the hallway of the surgical unit at VGH. Though he is deemed in urgent need of gall-bladder surgery, he’s been bumped by six other, more urgent-urgent surgeries. (And this not counting the higher priorities that bumped him all day yesterday). Other than elevate my blood pressure or alienate the only people who are in a position to help him to at least get a room, (all the kind of non-starters that my recent lessons in communication have taught me) I am left at the mercy of the vicissitudes of health care delivery in Vancouver, B.C. No better way to find out just how insignificant one can be.

The only viable option available is to count my blessings. One of which is having my husband and Ian’s dad (one and the same) come to relieve me of this ringside seat to a steady parade of people in worse misery than me or my family. And beat a hasty retreat, back to my escapist TV.

Om Namah Sivayah
PS speaking of asking for what you really want, what I really want now is a Pisco Sour.

BLOG 161
May 25, 2026

YIN AND YANG

“You may recognize the feeling — the inner knowing that arrives without explanation. It may come as a tightening in your belly, a dream that lingers after waking, or the sudden sense that you should call someone, take a different road, say yes, say no, or pause before stepping forward. Some call it an empathic or psychic ability. Others refer to it as intuition. No matter the name, it is the same ancient language — the soul speaking from within.”

(Daily Om, May 22, 2026: “Connecting with Your Intuition”)

As I woke this morning I was awed by the massive gray bulk of the église across the street, silhouetted against a deep royal blue sky. Behind the feminine contours of its ancient domes, modern skyscrapers, their sharp angles of glass and steel stretched up like modern day Goliaths, lit from within by the energy of industry.

The contrast, as you can see by the photo, suggests the yin and yang of the human psyche. We are not either/or. We are both/and: reason and feelings, logic and intuition, masculine and feminine, and the challenge is not for one to prevail over the other, but to cultivate the strengths of each, to live in harmony within ourselves and with our surroundings.

From the angle at which I sit, the church blocks out most of the buildings, its copper roofs long-since verdigrised to a nostalgic sage green (spellcheck seems to think “veridigrised” is not a word) and I wonder if it might be metaphorical for how my focus has shifted from the more outgoing pursuits of my youth to the focus on self-growth and evolution of consciousness that now preoccupy my seventies. This inner focus might help explain why my interest in travel waned so greatly since COVID locked us all into our particular bubbles.

Rightly or wrongly, it was COVID’s “isolationism” that prompted our move to the condo, with its incumbent clearing out of years-old memorabilia, souvenirs of trips taken decades ago, a file cabinet unopened since I know not when, textbooks and course materials from my years of studies in yoga and transpersonal psychology. Things I meant to revisit and never did. Now shredded and forgotten once again. A type of material catharsis or rite of passage between my old life and the new. What prompts one to make certain moves that alter, however slightly, the course of their lives?

If not intuition, what prompted me to break out of my comfort zone, to do the thing I thought I couldn’t do, as Eleanor Roosevelt would say, and get on a plane to Europe after a multi-year hiatus?

While in France we rented a car to tour around Bergerac and Cognac, and most challengingly, to drop our daughter and grandson off in Bordeaux to catch the train to Paris for their flight home. We hadn’t counted on the GPS navigation being in French. It wasn’t the language barrier so much as her obscure obstructions that stumped us time and again. We eventually learned that “Tournez à gauche” meant stay in the left lane and the actual turn would come shortly. One wrong turn landed us in a construction maze at the train station, glad that we’d allowed plenty of time for just such enervating screw-ups.

While we’d long-since backed up our car’s GPS instructions by using the Waze app, when it came time to return the car, Jim announced that he’d figured out what the French navigator was saying, and, sure enough, we breezed into the rental return without deviation.

Cultivating one’s intuition is also a matter of learning how this inner navigator, or soul, speaks. As Hollis explains, we set up our own “language barrier” by needing proofs, guarantees, incontrovertible evidence regarding our next steps. Fear and lethargy being chief among these inner saboteurs. Needing to know how everything was going to work out — and imagining worst case scenarios — nearly foreclosed on my going away in the first place.

Now my intuition tells me that I’m about to embark — or already have — on another transition, perhaps less tangible or overt than traveling or moving to a condo, but a new chapter nonetheless. By simply resisting what resisted in me, I broke through the force field of habit and complacency and am now primed to let my intuition guide me.

To heck with certainty. It’s the road less traveled for me! 🦩

May 17,2026
BLOG 160

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

“…does our encounter with the rich mystery of life repeatedly call upon us to reframe our understanding of self and world? If it does not, I submit that we are less linked to certainty than stuck in constriction, locked into an emotionally contained, imaginatively stunted partial view.”

(James Hollis Living an Examined Life)

My reason for coming to Europe was very much to liberate myself from a potentially “constricting, emotionally contained and imaginatively stunted” POV. But, with a steady flow of novel stimuli it’s been hard finding time to marshall my thoughts, let alone formulate them into a semi-coherent blog. By the end of this trip we will have stayed in four different places, or five if you count the second time in Paris, after visiting two very different towns in the southwest of the country. Or somewhere else. Each change creates a kind of jet lag wherein my psyche, the part of me that relies on a sense of structure and security, has to begin again. Simple questions become the order of the day: “where is the bathroom?” in the pitch dark of night, or “on which side of the bed do I even sleep?” Or “where did I pack my refrigerated prescriptions that require refrigeration?” Yes, I have meds that need a consistently cool temperature. And God forbid I should leave something essential behind somewhere, bad enough that I lost track of my favorite pajamas somewhere along the way.

Much to feed a compulsive worrier.

And all threat of the latter confusion became a powerful saboteur when I contemplated going away in the first place.

I can attest that certain habits are what keep me grounded, calm, centered; if I do my mantra practice every morning I feel more centered than on transition days when it gets missed in service of catching trains, planes or automobiles. Missing a physical habit, such as my “daily” swim, also takes a toll. Familiar faces/physical places offer reminders of who I think I am, at least in those specific contexts. In other words, in travel, being “out of my depth” or “in over my head” takes on a very tangible reality. A reality I am currently facing as I begin a new day in yet another unfamiliar place.

I remember seeing the expression of near panic on the face of our then thirteen year old son as he burst into the arrivals hall at YVR after going on a youth theatre exchange to Japan. I watched the relief flood his face as he took in the familiar setting and his eagerly waiting family. “They eat fish for breakfast!” was one of the first things out of his astonished mouth.

At times a part of me also yearns for that relief of familiarity, ie. my “blankie”, which makes it that much more important to have invited a change of scenery into my peaceful, well-regulated (aka rut of a) life. Yet I know if I were to instantly teleport myself back to Vancouver, I’d soon wake up with that nagging feeling that something is missing. With the restlessness that suggests there’s more to be done, more to explore in my one precious life, as Mary Oliver wrote. Or, as Hollis put it:

“…were there no psychopathology, no restlessness of the soul, why would we ever question these received, limited, fractal frames?” In simpler terms, why question our comfort zone?

And he continues with…

“Yes, we know that having to reframe our concepts, practices, understandings, and even values generates anxiety, but a mature spiritual position will oblige us to tolerate more anxiety than we wish. An authentic journey will ask us to embrace contradictions, suffer ambiguity, and not fall into either-or thinking, which is so characteristic of the immature or the frightened mind. A mature spirituality will be one in which we encounter more mystery than is comfortable. After all, the things we can understand, tolerate, fixate in concepts are surely not the mystery. The mystery will always transcend our desires for clarity and certainty. But how much of that can we tolerate?”

As I write, I watch the ebbing tide reveal the banks of oyster beds that carpet the floor of the Bay of Biscaye. The tidal swings here are so extreme that the water begins by lapping against the retaining wall of our hotel and then receding to expose a vast stretch of sand much greater than low tide on Vancouver’s Spanish Banks. As the beach expands it becomes dotted with day-trippers primed with buckets and shovels, prospecting for clams or whatever treasures are otherwise submerged for hours at a time.

Is this what Hollis is getting at when he suggests that we delve deeper into the rich mystery of life, perhaps to discover our true purpose on earth?

Today’s tidal choreography speaks to my question of how much exposure to this “mystery” can one tolerate? It suggests a time of reaping from the sea of consciousness, the ebb tide, and the equally important “flood” tide of rest, of integration, letting things evolve in the unseen, as do the oyster cultivators leave their small charges to spawn and grow undisturbed in the nutrient-rich mud at the bottom of the sea.

With that in mind, it’s time for this little oyster to burrow under the covers and hope my dreams produce pearls of insight and inspiration. Or simply a solid eight hours sleep!

Bon nuit!

May 1,2026
BLOG 159

IGNORANCE IS BLISS

“It’s not about what it’s about.

“What you see is a compensation for what you don’t see.”

(James Hollis: Living an Examined Life)

On April 28 I wrote in my journal:

“Feeling anxiety about my trip to Europe. So much so that I’m doing little about it. Which compounds the anxiety. I think this is abetted by my binge watching a violent tv show at bedtime. Not sure what my fascination is with this show, except that the bad guys always lose and justice prevails in the end. [While watching] I looked up suggestions for what to wear in Paris in the springtime and believe ideas are percolating in my head even as I try to escape into mindless tv.”

For all my efforts at developing self-awareness, autonomy and personal authenticity, the above journal entry (and my general state of anxiety) is embarrassingly revealing. It reveals that I am as much a prisoner of my conditioning, or hostage to the old programs wired into my psyche, as I have ever been. At best I can observe my behavior with the relative detachment offered by journalling, and try to make independent choices based on what I know of myself in any given moment. Right now I know that I am ruled by the aspect that lives in fear of getting it wrong, in this case, compared to the notoriously fashionable Parisian women. None of whom know me. Will ever notice me. Or likely ever see me again. So who or what is driving me to create a “trousseau” of a wardrobe that I’m too panicked about to even pack?

If it’s not what I think it’s about, then what is this about? I imagine that what I wear could be some form of compensation. What better cover for insecurity than to dress impeccably? So I googled: “Why do I think I have to dress to impress?” and this is what came up:

“Dressing to impress is often a way to boost confidence, feel worthy, or secure social acceptance and validation, according to Fashion Is Psychology”… “It is a way to present an idealized social self, signaling competence, respect, and self-worth to others. It may also be a way to “trick” oneself into feeling in control.”

Ah, now we’re getting there! Travel brings up so many unknowns that I feel vulnerable in the extreme. Especially in the current socio/political climate. And with a body that isn’t what it used to be. Walking any distance is difficult for various reasons. Jet lag knocks me back far worse than in the past. Different languages and currencies, and navigating airports and train stations are all intimidating. So why the heck am I doing this???

Because my current level of anxiety is telling me I’m getting too set in my ways. My brother once famously quipped to his bouldering buddy who wanted his “blankie”: “It’s important to scare yourself once in a while.” And of course Eleanor Roosevelt offered: “You must do the thing you think you can to do.” Biking in the Lavaman relay was last year’s scary thing. This year its resisting what is resisting to travel, in me. Preparing for this trip, while simultaneously studying Hollis, has shown me things about myself of which I’d been blissfully unaware. It’s pretty hard to change a habit if I don’t know I have it. Hollis offers this:

“Under each stuck place there is a wire, so to speak, that reaches down into the archaic field and activates a field of anxiety of which we are largely unaware but that has enough power to reinforce whatever complex has been holding the line against change.”

So now I know, as G.I. Joe would say, and knowing is half the battle…

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of leading an examined life! From Paris, no less!

April, 2026

BLOG 158

ROUND 2

“Ironically, psychopathology is one of the signs of the larger imagination of the psyche, or soul. If we had no soul, that is, had no organ of meaning, our adaptations would be our reality. But the soul protests and registers its protest through our body, our troubling dreams, our affective invasions, such as depression or our addictive, anesthetizing self-treatment.“

(James Hollis Living an Examined Life)

The above passage reminds me that I am on an evolutionary or soul journey. And that some of the ways my body, emotions or mind “act out” are not to be suppressed or ignored, or even modified to better keep me in line, but rather to be taken as the soul’s protest against not living up to my potential. That is, the potential to be a fully evolved, enlightened human being.

James Hollis suggests that the “soul” is synonymous with our “organ of meaning”. Moreover, the “adaptations” he writes about are most likely an individual’s attempts to tick all the boxes, to survive in the world and in one’s own eyes, according to a script that has been dictated, largely by external influences — institutions, authority figures, media, etc. and only tweaked by the individual’s particular circumstances. In other words, most of us have “drunk the Kool Aid” from a very young age.

I find it reassuring and motivating to consider the part of me that asks questions, studies, chants and reflects on life events to be aligned with my soul, the aspect that has never been content with pat answers, or satisfied with the status quo. But I’d be guilty of hypocrisy if I said it didn’t matter to me whether I was liked and accepted, appreciated, even admired and respected by the people around me. We are, after all, social animals, and fear of rejection by our particular tribe is a dominant factor directing our lives.

Like a protective parent, a part of me monitors what I think or feel, do or say to ensure my behavior aligns with that of the “tribe”, or, as Hillevi Ruumet puts it, the social matrix into which I was born. To see my discomfort with or suspicions re: the status quo as protests of my soul brings up some interesting questions.

Hollis frames his questions as follows:

“While most of modern psychiatry and psychotherapy prefer to work around these protests and thereby drive the internal conflict deeper, the psychodynamic understanding of symptoms, dreams, and behavioral patterns is rather to ask: Why have you come? What is it you are protesting? What is the desire of the soul (as opposed to the desires of my environment, my complexes, my history)? These questions do not bury the issue, try to bypass it, or medicate it into numbness, but rather approach the soul with dignity and ask, as we might of any stranger who knocks unbidden at our door, “Why have you come? What do you want? How might we converse?”

And these, my friends, are the six million dollar questions. Actually, the first of many. Should we choose to ask them, we usher in what Hollis calls the second half of the journey:

“The second half of life is not a chronological moment but a psychological moment that some people, however old, however accomplished, however self-satisfied in life, never reach. The second half of life occurs when people, for whatever reason — death of partner, end of marriage, illness, retirement, whatever — are obliged to radically consider who they are apart from their history, their roles, and their commitments.”

I suspect the second half of my life began in my mid-thirties, first with the loss of a loved one, the serious illness of a child, followed by the loss of our income, our home, and a break from the security and certainty of life as I’d known it. Looking back I can see a grand design in all that happened. Two major moves and the acquaintance of a spiritual seeker set me on a different trajectory. One I am still trying to honour with what T.S. Eliot calls just enough “light to secure the next foothold”. The light cast by Hollis and a host of teachers who have gone this way before me.

Now how to get off this heavy jag with some levity. How about I promise to go lighter next week? Tomorrow is Monday, and this is all I’ve got.

April 19, 2026

APPLES AND ORANGES

“We are living in a material world,
And I am a material girl…”

(Cindy Lauper)

After three months of establishing a satisfying routine in Hawaii, I resisted returning to West Vancouver for fear of having nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to meet. The opposite ended up happening. Since landing on Tuesday I’ve been swept up in a flurry of activity — physical workouts, medical appointments, year-end grandkids events, an unanticipated funeral (as I suppose most are!) that, combined, have left me reeling. So, on a solitary Sunday morning, I sit, regrouping and reflecting on my first week back in B.C.

For starters, I note how unnecessary my anticipatory anxiety has been. Rather than fearing having nothing to do, the reality is I have planned almost more than I can handle. But I’m starting to register the difference between keeping busy for business’ sake, (aka apples) and doing things that add value in some way (aka oranges). I also register how averse I am to doing nothing, to waiting for the bread to rise, which is what it takes to await inspiration or cultivate the imagination. I hear my mother’s admonition that “an idle mind is the devil’s playground”. Fear seeps into idle moments and stirs a fierce desire to escape its grim litany by any means.

In rereading James Hollis’s Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the second Half of the Journey, I resonated with this simple message: “Life’s two biggest threats we carry within: fear and lethargy…Fear says, “The world is too big for you, too much. You are not up to it. Find a way to slip-slide away again today”…While “Lethargy says, “Hey, chill out. You’ve had a hard day. Turn on the telly, surf the internet, have some chocolate. Tomorrow’s another day.”

These are the same kind of messages that have sabotaged my good intentions re: blogging. When a friend asked me to collaborate on a study group focusing on the second half of the journey, I was inspired to resume blogging as an adjunct to our studies, as a way to expand on the themes Hollis is discussing, while at the same time restoring something that has given me a sense of value, of purpose and meaning, namely leading an examined life. Blogging served to focus my thoughts and studies on the big (and many small) incidents and issues that arose in my life. It helped me get my head around confusing or contradictory information, and prioritize what actually pertained to me, as well as discern what I could reasonably hope to achieve.

I’ve learned that my inner “material girl” (closely related to my maniacal inner roommate) can distract me with the equivalent of the telly, internet and chocolate, letting this too-big world pass me by, or, by contrast, enlist my inner spiritual seeker to take an active role, doing what I can, with what I have, where I am. And contribute to the collective well-being of the people/world around me.

After a nine month hiatus, to resume blogging has been, for me, an enormous test of will. A combination of fear that I’ll have nothing worthwhile to share, combined with the seductive power of lethargy was almost overwhelming. I find I am not alone, as Hollis writes:

“While it is natural to expend energy on managing our fears, the magnitude of this effort on a daily basis cannot be overemphasized.

“On the other hand, lethargy takes so many seductive forms. We can simply avoid tasks, stay away from what is difficult for us, find ways to numb our days through the thousand soporifics and analgesics the world provides…”

Welcome to my life…

P.S. Please pass the remote and the peanut butter cups.

Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026

THE FIVE YEAR PLAN

“We all enter situations where something irks us, and for a couple of days we may have all sorts of mental conversation about it. If you can put these insignificant things aside without being disturbed in your peace, your sense of harmony and your sleep, you will have taken a great step toward conquering yourself. Many of the things which bother us are very insignificant. We give them a big importance from our sense of perfection, but most of the time our idea of perfection is insignificant. It really doesn’t matter.”

(Swami Sivananda Radha: Time to be Holy, Ch. 34)

 What I needed, as I sat down to record this blog, was an antidote to the kind of toxic emotions that come up unbidden when something upsets my inner equilibrium. Something was done that got me triggered, and, once triggered, I have a hard time, as they say, getting the horses back in the barn. One comment, one gesture, and suddenly the whole herd is off and running: old injuries, fresh outrage, the familiar inner script about being misunderstood or disrespected.

Sensing a need to dissipate that uncomfortable energy, I went straight to the pool. For the next half hour or so I tried to release whatever energy was pumping through my body, and prompting all kinds of snappy comebacks — things that I wanted say or do that might convey how deeply offended I’d been. Stroke after stroke, I could feel the arguments composing themselves in my head, all the clever ways I could put the other person in their place, let them know just how inappropriately they had behaved.

As I continued swimming, I suddenly had the epiphany: what might happen if I fast forwarded to five years from now? Would any of this matter in the least? This thought cast a whole new light on the present. It was as if the sun had come out. It probably did — we’ve had a cloudy day — but nonetheless, I was struck by the idea that if I could just transport myself to a future time when this petty little irritation was long forgotten, then I could save myself the time and energy that went into wanting to express my indignation or my hurt feelings or whatever emotions were prompted in the moment. Just that single shift — five years out — and the whole drama shrank to size.

Since then — and this strikes me as miraculous — I have not given it another thought. The mental replay stopped. The speech I was rehearsing simply evaporated. And the best part? I have no lingering energy around it. No simmering, no tightening in the chest, no imaginary re-litigation of the scene while I’m supposed to be doing something else. Empty space where the grudge was starting to build.

I believe that this shift is credit due to the teachers and the teachings that taught me to at least count to 10, taught me to take ownership of my thoughts and feelings, my reactions, and be responsible for the trail that I leave. These tools come from years of studying Eastern psychology, philosophy, and spirituality, Western psychology, all kinds of resources that people have shared throughout the ages. Because guess what? ALL of us  have moments that severely challenge our best intentions. Times when we want to believe or feel or do or say things that are absolutely NOT our ideal behavior. The point of all the years of spiritual study and practice is not that we never get triggered; it is that we learn, little by little, how to steer ourselves back toward the enlightened, compassionate and understanding people we have the capacity to be.

So this is my offering today: the five-year plan. Think about anything that might have you triggered at this moment, or has been a recent trigger — and ask yourself, five years from now, is it really going to matter?

PS If that doesn’t work, try remembering what you were thinking, feeling, doing or saying five years ago. Not much there, huh? So we know the five year plan works. We just have to play it forward! 

Sent from my iPhone