A yogini at large

June 30, 2025

OUT ON A LIMB

“Wisdom begins when you realize you don’t know what you think you know.” (Socrates)

The other morning my quiet time was disturbed by a minor ruckus in the nearby Jatropa tree. What I first took to be a particularly clumsy mating dance turned out to be two fledgling sparrows trying to get a foothold on the tree’s spindly limbs. That accomplished, they settled their puffed-up feathers for a few minutes before launching on a wobbly course to the rooftop opposite, and thence out of sight. A few minutes later I spotted a third fledgling hopping around nervously on an adjacent roof beam, seemingly working up the courage to dash to the same tree. Which it did, momentarily. And, after similarly gathering its composure, suddenly darted off in the direction of its feathered friends.

This little scenario got me thinking of the stops and starts on the spiritual journey — how one flounders around, hopping from one tract or thesis or teacher to another, searching for a spiritual home. It has lately been easier to track my own spiritual trajectory by rereading passages from the memoir I wrote a few years ago, and that a friend recently returned to me. After skimming over a few chapters, my first observation was: “If I had to write this again, I wouldn’t.” Then, rather than be embarrassed for having committed to print what was really just a passing phase in a lifelong process, I gave myself kudos for admitting that I no longer know what I thought I knew!

The thing that best sums up where I see myself today, some four decades after starting my spiritual journey, is a comment David Brooks makes in his “Moral Bucket List”. He describes an end goal on the road to character as having “achieved a settled philosophy about fundamental things.” In terms of my own philosophy, I’ve learned that tolerance, acceptance, compassion and understanding go a long way to keeping me balanced and happy.

I’ve learned to trust my inner compass. To place greater value on time spent with friends and family than on personal goals and achievements. (Though I’m inordinately proud of having biked in this year’s Lavaman relay…) Meaningful dialogue means a great deal to me. But I’m also better at enjoying my own company.

More importantly, I’m not so in thrall to my big important story. I’ve just begun to understand what Socrates meant by: “Wisdom begins when you realize you don’t know what you think you know.” Unbeknownst to my ego, I’ve made a shift from wanting to teach what I know to wanting to learn what I don’t know. Ruumet calls this the “apotheosis of the ego.” It is a time when so much of what mattered to me when I was younger — particularly how I was perceived by other people — no longer motivates me. I no longer daydream about being a famous artist and/or influential writer. Instead, what now motivates me is to start my day in a mood of keen attentiveness and profound gratitude.

Most days begin with a journal entry, jotting down whatever thoughts or feelings come to mind as I’m waking — sometimes I’ll also analyse a dream — all in an attempt to start my day with maximum clarity. Then I chant the mantra that was given to me in 1993 by Swami Sivananda Radha Saraswati, to dissipate any residual emotional energy. Not many people I knew in the early ‘80s were “into” the things that intrigued me; Kundalini and Dream yoga, Vedanta philosophy, Buddhist psychology, and other esoteric teachings. The latter disciplines and practices better prepared me for the time we lost most of our possessions, money and sense of security in the economic downturn of the early ‘80s. After losing most of our possessions and money (including the family business) in that downturn, I realized that the truly important things, my marriage and family, were still standing.

This was brought home even more clearly when, at eighteen months of age, our youngest child contracted meningitis and was hospitalized for close to a month. Such a health scare brought my priorities into sharp focus, and now, four decades later (and despite having felt out of step with my surroundings for much of that time), I’m reaping the benefits of having committed to a spiritual path for the better part of my adult life. As twenty-one of my nearest and dearest gather to celebrate my 75th birthday, I look around with wonder, and immense gratitude for all the experiences we’ve shared, all the hills and valleys we’ve surmounted, all the ways I’ve learned to live more consciously in the context of family and community.

Socrates also said: “The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.” I did not win the Nobel prize. My face never graced the cover of Time Magazine. My paintings didn’t break records at Christie’s. I was never featured in O magazine, nor hosted my own TV show. And I never had huge crowds paying blind homage to me.

Thank goodness for small mercies.

And Happy Birthday to me!

June 23, 2025

GOING WITH THE FLOW…OR NOT

“There really isn’t anything or anyone absolutely bad or negative, and nobody benefits from your effort to understand that, except you. It helps to remember that each one of us is not an island, and that we have our seasons, and our ups and downs. Life is not just a straight line. It’s a wave. Sometimes you are on top of the wave, sometimes you have to go to the bottom, and then you have to make sure you have enough momentum to come up again on the other side.” (Swami Sivananda Radha Time to be Holy Timeless Books 2010)

The other morning I experienced a graphic example of the vicissitudes of leading an examined life. Or any life. My swim partner and I set out to swim part way across what I’m calling Jericho Bay, a small scallop of shoreline off English Bay where Jericho Beach is located, and where, on most any day, a handful of intrepid open water devotees (and me, who is a relatively fair weather swimmer) can be identified by the color, shape and size of our “swim buddies”, inflatable sausage-shaped tubes that come in bright colors and stand out against the dull blue-gray of the water.

This particular morning we crossed the entire bay with ease and were pretty chuffed with our performance. Until we turned around. Not having guessed that the current had played a great role in our progress, we found ourselves practically swimming on the spot. With a water temperature of about seventeen degrees (Celsius) one’s strength can get zapped pretty easily. At least psychologically. Thankful that we’d stayed fairly close to the shoreline and could put our feet down if necessary, or indeed climb out onto the beach, we gamely persisted until close enough to scramble up the sand, grab our towels and scurry back to the showers. Not gonna lie, I’m extremely grateful to have access to a hot tub and steam shower (please don’t judge me) to raise my core temperature, and while doing so, contemplate first world problems with whomever happens to show up in the hot tub.

Spiritual life is very much like the push/pull of the currents along Jericho Beach. When everything in my life is flowing smoothly, it’s easy to attribute this ease of well-being to my own efforts, my degree of enlightenment. When the tides and currents of life’s events seem to turn against me, maintaining any degree of equanimity is not so easy. At times like these I at least have my spiritual practices to fall back on, and what Swami Radha calls my spiritual bank account to draw from.

Not surprisingly, cold water swimming is also part of this spiritual bank account, teaching me how to literally and figuratively keep my cool when my inner maniac is screaming at me to cut and run. The research tells us that there are several voluntary and involuntary reactions that can be triggered by uncomfortably low water temperatures. The urge to dunk-and-dash-for-shore is a pretty universal (and highly compelling) reaction. Simply being able to resist this urge for a few minutes or longer builds resilience that can be recruited in other situations from which our gut reaction is to escape. Post haste.

To be able to stay with any unpleasant sensation or awkward situation is a powerful tool for controlling our emotions, our fight or flight mechanisms. It gives us the “staying power” that enables us to choose what we are going to do versus being run around by our less-evolved personality aspects.

Pema Chödrön says as much in her guide to meditation. In Six Kinds of Loneliness she describes it thus:

“Meditation provides a way for us to train in the middle way—in staying right on the spot. We are encouraged not to judge whatever arises in our mind. In fact, we are encouraged not to even grasp whatever arises in our mind. What we usually call good or bad we simply acknowledge as thinking, without all the usual drama that goes along with right and wrong. We are instructed to let the thoughts come and go as if touching a bubble with a feather. This straightforward discipline prepares us to stop struggling and discover a fresh, unbiased state of being.”

It is this fresh, unbiased state of being that I associate with true enlightenment. Nothing more esoteric or complicated than that. It’s not a one-and-done laurel leaf crown, or an unlimited get-out-of-jail-free pass. It’s a state that we maintain through daily practice and study that remind us we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Or, as I wrote in last week’s blog, it’s about re-minding myself, time after time, that I’m not the fish, I’m the pond.

June 16, 2025

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

“The Illuminator ideal begins with a different understanding of human nature. People are social animals. People need recognition from others if they are to thrive. People long for someone to look into their eyes with loving acceptance. Therefore, morality is mostly about the small, daily acts of building connection—the gaze that says “I respect you,” the question that says “I’m curious about you,” the conversation that says, “We’re in this together.” In the Illuminator model, character building is not something you can do alone. Morality is a social practice.”

(David Brooks How to Know a Person)

As I write this entry I am mildly distracted by the comings and goings of marine traffic in the adjacent English Bay. In particular, I see a tugboat pulling two barges, one behind the other, with the last one sporting some complicated crane-like equipment. Who knows where they’re going or where they’ve been, but it’s a sure bet they’re headed where they’re very much in need. I have a fondness for these feisty little marine workhorses from having read Timmy the Tug books to our children when they were little. Quintessentially West Coast, “they tow and push barges, assist large ships in navigating coastal waters and harbors, and supply various industries with materials and goods. They are essential for moving resources and connecting communities in a region heavily reliant on water transportation”. (AI Overview)

The tugboat might make a good symbol for Brooks’s Illuminator model. Tugs serve to weave connections between, and fulfill the needs of, an otherwise scattered coastal community. They make it viable to live a relatively modern, productive life in otherwise remote locations. A friend of ours operates a successful destination restaurant that can only be reached by boat. We take the ferry there in the mid afternoon, enjoy an early dinner, get back on a ferry shortly after 8:00 p.m. and are home and in bed by 10 or 11. But I digress.

That people have “humanized” tugboats by giving them names and personalities makes it less of a leap to see Brooks’s Illuminator in a similar analogy. The Illuminator brings empathy, encouragement and acknowledgment to people who, for whatever reason, are feeling disconnected from and alienated by the relentless demands of our productivity-oriented society. One that sees us more and more isolated in our dependence on technology, with only our cell phones, computers and laptops for company.

More significantly for me, the Illuminator sets a different example than what I believed to be the prevailing, if not the only model of a spiritually developing or evolving seeker. Brooks describes this preexisting model in terms of the renunciate or pilgrim who “retires” from society to focus on self-transcendence and, ultimately, divine union (whatever that may be):

“This moral tradition, like all moral traditions, begins with a model of human nature. We humans are divided creatures. We have these primitive, powerful forces within us—passions such as lust, rage, fear, greed, and ambition. But people also possess reason, which they can use to control, tame, and regulate those passions. The essential moral act in this model of character formation is self-mastery. It is exercising willpower so that you are the master of your passions and not their slave. Developing your character is like going to the gym—working through exercise and habit to strengthen a set of universal virtues: honesty, courage, determination, and humility. In this model, character building is something you can do on your own.”

By contrast, Brooks proposes: “In the Illuminator model, character building is not something you can do alone. Morality is a social practice.”

Though this distinction may mean nothing to you, it has come as quite the epiphany to one such as me, who has been steeped in the earlier model of character-building — as self-transcendance or mastery — since discovering the eastern teachings of Kundalini yoga and Vedanta philosophy three-plus decades ago. From Henry James’s: “Know thyself and it will set you free” to St. John of the Cross’s “dark night of the soul”, character development and therefore evolution of consciousness has centered on an individual’s solitary struggles to tame their lower nature, dominate the primitive, powerful forces that limit one’s ability to truly see, care for and be an asset to the greater community.

The Illuminator’s task, as I understand it, is to take the unique skills and abilities one has acquired throughout their life journey, their aptitude for meeting not only their individual aspirations and needs, but for fulfilling their potential as self-realized human beings, and then channeling these qualities into helping, guiding, steering, supporting and companioning their fellow human beings:

“Being an Illuminator is an ideal, and one that most of us will fall short of a lot of the time. But if we try our best to illuminate people with a glowing gaze that is tender, generous, and receptive, we’ll at least be on the right track. We will see beyond the cliché character types we often lazily impose on people: the doting grandmother, the tough coach, the hard-charging businessperson. We will be on our way toward improving how we show up in the world.”

If I didn’t have raging allergies to smoke and hay fever I’m sure I’d show up in the world a whole lot perkier…

June 9, 2025

THE INMATES ARE RUNNING THE ASYLUM

“At bedtime the eight year old told me his teacher said think of your mind like a pond full of fish and each fish is a feeling. Try to be the pond, not the fish.”

(Meghan K. Stack @Megankstack)

The title of this blog popped into my head as I pondered the strange behavior I’ve been witnessing recently, both globally and locally. Who put that lunatic in charge of our great southern neighbors? This blog is not a political column so please erase that last comment from your brain. I might do it for you by editing it out. But for now I’m just giving my thoughts free rein. And my thoughts take me to a comment David Brooks makes in his chapter on Illumination:

“You may find the whole idea of God ridiculous, but I ask you to believe in the concept of a soul. You may just be chatting with someone about the weather, but I ask you to assume that the person in front of you contains some piece of themselves that has no weight, size, color, or shape yet gives them infinite value and dignity. If you consider that each person has a soul, you will be aware that each person has some transcendent spark inside them. You will be aware that at the deepest level we are all equals. We’re not equal in might, intelligence, or wealth, but we are all equal on the level of our souls. If you see the people you meet as precious souls, you’ll probably wind up treating them well.”

It appeals to me to use Megan Stack’s imagery of the fishpond as a starting place for seeing the people I meet as precious souls, versus the kind of judgments my inner fish toss off about these same folk. And, since charity begins at home, I’m developing a more tolerant attitude towards the personality aspects that swim in my mind, pretty well all the time. This can be particularly challenging when one or more of these aspects play on my emotions — my fears, my needs for safety and security, acceptance and inclusivity — that make this inner fishpond an inhospitable place to swim.

In fact, much of how spiritual practice has served me over the years has been as a sanctuary, or asylum, from the more debilitating thoughts and feelings that, if unexamined, can drive me to knee-jerk actions or speech that I later regret. My journal is the first line of defense against such impulsiveness. Which is how the topic of this blog first came up. I’d been reading political commentator Heather Cox Richardson’s daily “Letters from an American” and wanting to crawl under a figurative rock. I wondered how the world could possibly recover from the insanity such a man and his supporters could unleash. And dreading where all of this insanity is leading.

But can he/they do any more damage than an uncultivated imagination that sees insult or injury behind every tree? Or worse, sinks into the mud of boredom, futility or self-pity? Once I register these pond-polluting feelings in my journal, I switch to mantra chanting or balanced breathing as the count-to-ten pause I need to restore my equanimity. For reinforcement or guidance I turn to any number of inspirational readings that offer a radically different POV. I find Pema Chödrön is particularly helpful in restoring my objectivity. In When Things Fall Apart she writes:

“To think that we can finally get it all together is unrealistic. To seek for some lasting security is futile. To undo our very ancient and very stuck habitual patterns of mind requires that we begin to turnaround some of our most basic assumptions. Believing in a solid, separate self, continuing to seek pleasure and avoid pain, thinking that someone ‘out there’ is to blame for our pain – one has to get totally fed up with these ways of thinking. One has to give up hope that this way of thinking will bring us satisfaction. Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there’s anywhere to hide.”

Her antidote is meditation. Stepping away from all the agitating mental/emotional stimulation of our very important story lines and just sitting with whatever is happening internally. Instead of “jumping up and running” she advocates:

“With cool loneliness we do not expect security from our own internal chatter. That’s why we are instructed in meditation to label it “thinking.” It has no objective reality. It is transparent and ungraspable. We’re encouraged to just touch that chatter and let it go, not make much ado about nothing”…

Having experimented with “cool loneliness”, I’ve come to realize the futility of trying to contort myself, or my surroundings, into an ideal of how things should, could, would or ought to be. Accepting a certain amount of insanity within and around me allows space for everything to unfold according to its own destiny. Such acceptance settles the pond of my mind into a reflective space that is more profoundly at peace with “what is”. And I may one day see the precious soul in the persons who agitate me most greatly.

Chocolate peanut butter cups help with this. Also Stanley Cup hockey. Go Oilers!

June 2, 2025

NEEDS MUST

“We are often blind to how much we are changing. The psychologist Daniel Gilbert has a famous saying about this: “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they are finished.” We are also often blind to the fact that a change in life circumstance often requires a renovation of our entire consciousness. As Carl Jung put it: “We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” (David Brooks How to Know a Person)

The above quote was to be the theme for this week. What follows is the first thing I wrote this morning:

I’m in panic mode about having to both write my blog and entertain company this evening. Not “having to”, wanting to. I register a marked change in my confidence to entertain. Even though I bought all this food, I worried that I wouldn’t have time to cook it. Or that I wouldn’t have enough, after all, to serve to company. Or why I reneged on my original idea and asked the others to bring things. Well I’ll do my light invocation — let go and let God.”

So it was that I headed out to drive my grandson to school; my head spinning with things to do, and a body jangling with high nervous agitation. To add to the confusion I opted for an unfamiliar pool, where I missed the memo about circle swimming (vs going side by side) and swam into the swimmer with whom I was meant to be sharing the lane. He was not impressed. Curtly cited the rules and huffily carried on his way. This almost drove me out of the pool after only completing a fraction of my swim. It took great fortitude to JUST PLOW ON. Throughout the swim I endured an incessant dialogue between my maniacal roommate and the calm, capable person I wish to embody.

By the time I’d finished my laps I was still trying to problem-solve a problem that was mostly in my head. Ironically, everything was in hand but for the “me” who was caught in a vortex of panic, which drove me to the grocery store, where I doubled down on the amount of food I’d planned to serve, and came home laden with more groceries than I knew what do do with, and more ambitious plans than I had time to execute. And this doesn’t include the things I asked the others to bring when I woke in that state of high anxiety.

Can you tell I haven’t entertained in a while?

Somewhat belatedly, Brooks’s message hits home: “We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning…” If yesterday’s shopping spree at the farmer’s market represented life’s morning, by the time I registered what I’d bitten off it was —figuratively speaking — very late in the day! The irony is that my cleaning lady just came to my aid, and while I scramble to order my thoughts in this blog, a Mexican chicken casserole is materializing in the kitchen. With marginal help from me.

Let go and let God, indeed.

My point is that, so long as I am ruled by an old personality aspect that thinks I’m no longer “up to” whatever I feel inspired to do, I will compound the actual effort required to finish it with the stress of self-doubt and second-guessing.

Brooks expands on his theme with:

“Periods of transition between tasks can be rough. When you’re locked in a task, you’re embedded in a certain mindset. When that mindset stops working for you, you have to let it crumble inside you. “All growth is costly,” Kegan writes. “It involves leaving behind an old way of being in the world.”

The “old way” that I want to leave behind is the conditioned ego that thinks it’s all up to me, that I am a solitary entity who is independent from the world around me. Being able to surrender this overarching sense of responsibility allows other people to help me. Together we create a sense of collaboration and community. Together we shoulder the burdens of defeat, the joys of achievement, and the work of learning to live through transitions with grace and grit.

Or collectively vow never to entertain again…🤔

May 27, 2025

THE AFTER PARTY

“It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?” (David Brooks The Moral Bucket List)

While I explored other topics for this blog, I found I couldn’t concentrate for having just attended a celebration of life for the kind of friend whose eulogy virtues shone more brightly than his résumé virtues. At least at first glance. Which is not to say he was a saint. I wish he’d been there to hear the choice comments made by longtime friends who turned what could’ve been a somber occasion into a roast as much as a wake. Our first hint was a sign at the highway turnoff to his rural driveway, where big blue balloons adorned a sign indicating “Mark’s After Party”.

Along with a broader picture of the person we’d only known in a particular context, my takeaway was a profound appreciation for what Brooks calls the eulogy virtues. Here, clearly, was a person whose priorities were well and truly in order: family first, friends —especially those in need — second, strangers-who-became-friends, third, then everyone and everything else. Maybe lastly, for good or ill, himself.

Swami Radha puts great emphasis on the kind of selflessness that characterizes our friend, though he would never see himself from such a yogic perspective:

“THE GOAL OF YOGA is to achieve true union with the Light – knowing that the Light is within, and acting on that knowing. My Guru, Swami Sivananda, used to say that selfless service was the way to achieve this. “Selfless service will make you divine,” he would often say. He would tell people to concentrate on that instead of intellectualizing about concepts like liberation, the Absolute, or atman. The Bhagavad Gita says the same thing too, over and over – selfless service is the way to the Divine.”

While the Eastern teachings extol the virtue of humility and selflessness, I’m pretty sure that’s not the message most of us got in the West. Here, the emphasis has been on “résumé success, with the eulogy virtues being a byproduct at best. Brooks’ makes this observation:

“But if you live for external achievement, years pass and the deepest parts of you go unexplored and unstructured. You lack a moral vocabulary. It is easy to slip into a self-satisfied moral mediocrity. You grade yourself on a forgiving curve. You figure as long as you are not obviously hurting anybody and people seem to like you, you must be O.K. But you live with an unconscious boredom, separated from the deepest meaning of life and the highest moral joys. Gradually, a humiliating gap opens between your actual self and your desired self, between you and those incandescent souls you sometimes meet.”

For me, the goal of selflessness is less lofty, and could even be considered self-serving. It is the experience of freeing myself, however temporarily, from my maniacal roommate, the ego or devil on my shoulder who demands I be and do more that looks like the “desired” model of success than what my actual self represents. Attending my friend’s celebration, I was encouraged to see how my values aligned with those of the recently deceased, and what that had meant to other people. It gave me a sense of how satisfying it must have felt for him to suspend self-interest in the service of family and friends, and even strangers in need who became part of his extended family. Speech after speech revealed what a stellar human being he had been, showing how capable he was, despite some seemingly “unenlightened” qualities, of loving and being loved.

Surely that is successful enough for anyone.

May 19, 2025

A ROOM WITH A VIEW

“Imagine your brain is a two-storey house. Of particular importance in the ‘upstairs’ brain is the frontal lobe, specifically the region [cortex] just behind our forehead. This is responsible for our executive functioning skills – our ability to focus, plan, prioritise, reason and make rational decisions. It also helps us to become more self-aware and aware of others.

“The ‘downstairs’ brain’s limbic system is responsible for some critical functions that keep us alive (like breathing and regulating our heart rate) as well as our impulses and emotions [our fight, flight or freeze impulses]. Between the ‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’ brains is a connecting ‘staircase’. This is the network of neurons and synapses that carry information up and down, to and from the different parts of the brain. Both areas of our brain need to work together for us to function well. However, young children’s ‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’ brains often struggle to work together.” (drdanseigel.com)

That’s my struggle, too.

I woke this morning with the image of a big yellow garbage chute attached to an under-construction building that I’d seen in passing when driving to the West Side. I thought of how useful it would be to have a convenient way to dump the unwanted garbage that clogs the staircase between my upstairs and downstairs brain on a regular basis. It made me think of the terms “panic room” and “safe room”, with the panic initiated in the downstairs brain trying to clamor for the safety of some logical explanation in the upstairs brain. The terms panic room and safe room are often used interchangeably, but the physical sensations stirred by the mention of a panic room versus a safe room are polar opposites, as are the thoughts or emotions generated in association with each space.

Panic room best describes the headspace I found myself in after having shared some sensitive aspects of my spiritual journey with a relative stranger, and then thinking better of it. Of course these “second thoughts” ambushed me in the wee hours, with a waking dream of being censored by a brahmachari, a psychiatrist, a reverend, and a therapist. All the things I am not, and which a part of me deems prerequisite to sharing with others the lessons of my lived experience.

What to do with these inner saboteurs?

There’s an expression that was part of the worship service at Yasodhara Ashram in which we passed our palms over a candle flame while mentally repeating: “May the oil of ignorance be burned in the fire of wisdom.” It reinforced the intention to be the master of one’s thoughts and actions by rising above one’s conditioned, knee-jerk reactions to a higher ‘level’, one informed by studying any of the wisdom traditions and applying them to daily life. Seeing that yellow garbage chute as the flame, the idea presented itself to drop any such unworthy thoughts into the incinerator of honest reflection and self-awareness, so as to not have them cluttering up my life and sabotaging my best efforts.

These days most of my efforts go into trying to raise my own consciousness and that of the people around me from one of need-and-greed-self-centeredness to the more altruistic perspective that ‘nobody wins unless everybody wins’. Not only do I have a right to do that as a free and independent thinker, but I believe it is my duty to grow ever more self-aware, and share anything that might mitigate what pundit David Brooks calls “this age of gradual dehumanization”.

Sometimes it helps to step away from our usual preoccupations and create a space — a safe room, as it were — in which to read, reflect, practice meditation or mantra, and generally open one’s mind to a bigger picture in the ‘upstairs brain’. Consider it a room with a view, one in which we see ourselves more clearly, courageously and compassionately. And then do the favor of seeing others with the same patience, tolerance and acceptance that we would have them extend to us. In this way we take another step up that staircase from the lower instincts of competition and greed in the downstairs brain to the upstairs brain of our true humanity. A hard but worthwhile climb, indeed.

Whew. This calls for some chai and popcorn. 🍿

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May 12, 2025

THE ART OF SEEING

“I’ve come to believe that the quality of our lives and the health of our society depends, to a large degree, on how well we treat each other in the minute interactions of daily life. And all these different skills rest on one foundational skill: the ability to understand what another person is going through. There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood. That is at the heart of being a good person, the ultimate gift you can give to others and to yourself.”

(David Brooks: How to Know a Person, Random House, 2023)

Walking through our parkade not long ago, I automatically waved to the driver of a passing car, though I couldn’t see who was driving behind the tinted windows. Figuring that anyone using the same parking level was at least a passing acquaintance or possible neighbor, my immediate reaction was to wave in the polite but distant way that we pass fellow condo dwellers for years with no real recognition or acknowledgment.

I began to think of that passing car as a metaphor for the facades each of us present to the world, seldom allowing anyone to see behind our “tinted windows” to the cares and concerns, thoughts and feelings that are driving our observable behavior. This thought compelled me to delve into Brooks’s book (that I had been given a couple of years ago but hadn’t opened, thinking I am sufficiently adept at getting to know people). According to Brooks, that just ain’t so:

“I probably don’t know you personally, but I can make the following statement with a high degree of confidence: You’re not as good as you think you are. We all go through our days awash in social ignorance”… and… “How often in your life have you felt stereotyped and categorized? How often have you felt pre-judged, invisible, misheard or misunderstood? Do you really think you don’t do this to others on a daily basis?”

Busted!

This insight came as I was beginning to acknowledge a need for a greater sense of belonging and community now that I’m back in the city. My husband’s and my peripatetic lifestyle sees us being away for months at a time from the new-to-us neighborhood of West Vancouver. Often, when I return — as we did in late April — I experience a kind of disorientation that seems to have increased with age, and which can trigger the sort of existential crisis that I mentioned in an earlier blog. I have to work harder to reconnect with old friends, and/or make new ones, to create a sense of structure and purpose that set the camber of my waking life. Hence Brooks’s words came at an opportune time:

“The real act of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete social actions well: disagreeing without poisoning the relationship; revealing vulnerability at the appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to end a conversation gracefully; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to let someone down without breaking their heart; knowing how to sit with someone who is suffering; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another’s point of view”.

I find it reassuring that Brooks’s book came to my attention when it did. It reminds me of the adage: “Seek and you will find; ask and you will receive; knock and the door will be opened for you.” It was encouraging to learn I’m not the only one to register a need to see and be seen, or who perceives a certain urgency to counteract what Brooks calls “this age of creeping dehumanization”.

Now to leave the relative isolation of blogging and head outside for my afternoon tea break. Repopulating the neighborhood, one chai at a time.

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May 5, 2025

What’s it all about, Alfie?

“In 1844, Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “Whoever has learnt to be anxious in the right way, has learnt the ultimate.” This expresses the idea that existential anxiety goes beyond fear about day-to-day troubles.” (verywellmind.com)

This morning’s sunrise lights the residential buildings across from me in high relief against the dark hills and lush greenery of spring in B.C. The ocean, often turbulent due to wind and/or swinging tides, is a sheet of silvery glass, reflecting the hulls of the freighters anchored in English Bay. This is an apt metaphor for how I wish to start my day — as a mirror that reflects the beauty and tranquility around me. Too often this idyllic peace is disturbed by the wailing sirens of emergency vehicles roaring by on Marine Drive. The sirens are probably the worst feature of our move to the condo in West Vancouver. But, just as we cannot have light without shadow, so too one cannot live in community without having to deal with the things that disturb one’s equanimity.

Sometimes this “disturbance” reaches the epic proportions of an existential crisis. Whereas general or free-floating anxiety may be triggered by having too much stimuli, too many choices or, conversely, not enough to constructively occupy one’s mind, the existential crisis goes beyond these garden variety worries into questions of meaning, choice and freedom:

“Existentialism postulates that we have this anxiety or angst because there is no “right” path and no guide to tell us what to do. In essence, each of us must make meaning in our own lives. If this responsibility feels too great, we may retreat into ways of behaving that shield us from this feeling of anxiety.” (Ibid)

What encouraged me when researching “existential crises” (can you tell I’ve had a challenging week?) was Kierkgaard’s assertion that to have learnt to be anxious in the right way is to have learnt the ultimate. Now to figure out what he meant by that.

I read:

“Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that explore the human individual’s struggle to lead an authentic life despite the apparent absurdity or incomprehensibility of existence. In examining meaning, purpose, and value, existentialist thought often includes concepts such as existential crises, angst, courage, and freedom.” (Wikipedia)

Well, yes. I get that. But what has it got to do with learning the ultimate?

Kierkegaard coined the term “leap of faith” to describe how one has to figuratively leap over the emotional and psychological boundaries of logic and reason in order to enter the ineffable mystery — the ultimate reality — that some call God. As Father Cavanaugh said to Rudy in the film by that name: “Son, in thirty-five years of religious studies, I’ve come up with only two hard, incontrovertible facts; there is a God, and, I’m not him.”

Perhaps to be anxious in the right way is to know that there is a God, and that we are not her/him/they/them/it. To have a holy fear, then, is to experience a fear not of punishment or dread, but of awe, wonder and respect for a power much greater than oneself. The existential crisis comes in when this humbling reality dawns on the ego that has heretofore been “King of the road.” And stubbornly refuses to give up its throne, to “let go and let God.” Such as I am about to do now because I fear I’m in over my head.

Goodnight and God bless.

April 28, 2025

GOOD, BETTER, BEST?

“Nourishing ourselves on the very inside of our being helps us to cope with the complexities and uncertainties of life, the helplessness we feel when we can’t control world events. There are too many power structures. We cannot fight them all at once. They have been on Earth since humans started walking around trying to expand their territory, conquering other countries. It has always been the same. Perhaps the methods of war, politics and economics have changed, but the basic elements have always been there. People have wondered what they can do about their helplessness, and how they will survive, and where they will go from here. But often it is not until we are so hurt or feel such a sense of helplessness or emptiness that we begin to think deeply.” (Swami Sivananda Radha YOGA A PATH TO AWARENESS Timeless Books 2016)

On the window sill across from me is a framed group of twelve photos that were taken in 2014, featuring members of our daughter’s family on travels or doing activities that used to be easy for me to accompany. Eleven years ago. When I could wrangle grand-babies, hike, travel, and ski etc. with ease. Now even the steps up to the cabin in Whistler cause me difficulty. These realities comprise a different kind of growing pains, aka aging, hormonal changes, physical infirmities and the above-mentioned sense of insecurity as the external world spins around, through and past me.

As often happens when I find myself going down a rabbit hole of “catastrophic thinking”, I remind myself to expand my sense of things. Beyond the framed photos, I see the outdoor landscape undulating down the hill, crossing the lake, climbing the craggy, tree-clad slopes of Armchair Glacier, while the sunrise peeks over the surrounding mountains. But for degrees of winter or summer snow cover, the mountains offer a sense of perennial strength and permanence that put today’s problems in perspective. I ask myself “Five years from now, how much will this, or that, really matter? And if it does, what can I do about it in this particular moment?”

In the meantime, nourishing myself on the very inside of my being seems like a reasonable strategy, as I subscribe to what Swami Radha suggests below:

“Sometimes on an individual level, we can also have what I call “silent revolutions”. The silent revolution is when you change on the inside, taking a new look at life and who you are. You may decide that life has to change, but you can’t change the world. So what can you change? Only yourself, and you might be able to help change others — awakening them to the need for greater awareness. You can sharpen your intelligence. You can even cooperate with your own destiny. You don’t have to wait until life breaks you down in pain. Pain is a great teacher and for some it is the only teacher. But life doesn’t have to be that way.”

For me, the aim of a silent revolution is to increase my awareness through the use of yogic tools. One of the most effective “tools” is Swami Radha’s liberal use of continuous query. Also known as the Socratic method, it involves engaging in a dialogue with self or others through a series of questions. Its aim is to explore our underlying beliefs and challenge assumptions in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of what makes one tick. It encourages critical thinking, logic, and reasoning as students are prompted to evaluate their own arguments and beliefs.

Even a simple question such as “how am I feeling right now?” can lift the needle from the rut of our constant, run-around thoughts and touch more into our emotions, perhaps assigning them feelings words that we can then work with, such as I used to describe the insecurity and vulnerability I was feeling this morning after pondering how much had changed in the last decade. And reeling from reading a newsletter on world affairs.

On such occasions, it helps to ask myself: “What is happening here? How do I know this is so? If it didn’t have to be this way, how else could it be?” The point is to not get caught in mechanical patterns of reacting vs responding to whatever is going on. Any chapter in any of Swami Radha’s writings is peppered with such questions:

“How am I imprisoned by mechanical reactions and untested beliefs? How can new decisions be made? What is it I want to do now? Where do I want to go from here?”

Through steady, methodical self-questioning and honest, thoughtful answering we gradually liberate ourselves from the mental/emotional reactivity of our old mechanical habits and social conditioning. With ever-increasing awareness we have ever greater agency to make inner and outer changes.

As Gandhi would say: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world today.”

Now is a good time to start.