A yogini at large

Blog 167

“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
(William Ernest Henley, excerpt from “Invictus”)

“The purpose of life can only be participation in our own evolution, which we can do consciously. When we do this consciously we experience much less pain. Of course it takes time. When you make the decision, everything does not just drop away. Any teacher can only point the way and offer a map of how to get there. But the map itself is not the way, which is often forgotten.” (Swami Sivananda Radha, Time to be Holy)

I left the ashram community a dozen years ago, after it being a major focus for over two decades. The break was clear and final. I’ve never been back. But in another sense, and an important one, I’ve never left. I never left the teachings behind because I believed then, as I do now, that the purpose of life is to consciously cooperate with my evolution. When we were displaced from Alberta in the early 80s, I floundered to make sense of the unprecedented changes in our circumstances. Taking a deep dive into the Kundalini system of Vedanta Yoga, I was able to see purpose in the many shifts and losses we experienced in those early years of raising a family, and thereby re-established my priorities accordingly.

For whatever reason, flashbacks from those vulnerable times have been revisiting me recently, and with them, reminders of how my inner journey started close to four decades ago, when I was introduced to the works of Swami Sivananda Radha Saraswati. Swami Radha described her book Kundalini Yoga for the West as a “foundation for character building, courage and awareness”. And indeed it has been the basis for a lifetime of self-study, of being my own laboratory, that I’m now appreciating more and more each day, as questions of meaning and purpose arise more frequently, or perhaps more urgently.

I’m aware that I can bump along for months without taking a long view of my time spent on planet earth. Though I claim to be leading an examined life, I occupy much of my waking hours with the business of self-maintenance, homemaking, socializing, eating, exercising, getting and spending (as Wordsworth would say) without a clear sense of what I’m trying to achieve. Sometimes an injury presses pause on this rota of activity. Or a few bleak days of rain and gray, such as we’ve been experiencing lately, prompting me to pass the time rereading several-years-old-journal entries in search of inspiration. Which is how I came up with today’s quote from Swami Radha, recorded on February 22, 2022. (I think a numerologist might have something interesting to say about the date).

At any rate, my search netted a reminder that I do have a purpose, beyond all the seemingly more superficial (though necessary) ways that I occupy my time. But this purpose is not the search for a pre-existing, one-size-fits-all meaning that I once thought it was. That would be, as Swami Radha cautioned against, confusing the map with the destination. Author and therapist Eric Maisel advises moving away from the role (that I assumed for much of my time at the ashram) of a passive “meaning seeker” and stepping into the role of a deliberate “meaning maker”.

“He teaches that meaning is an evergreen, renewable resource that naturally fluctuates, requiring individuals to construct purpose through daily engagement, values, and creative acts.” (AI Overview)

In other words, the responsibility for living a “purpose-full” life falls to me. I am indeed the master of my fate, and the captain of my soul.

As are you, of yours.

ADAPTABILITY

BLOG 167
July 18, 2026

KINDNESS, HOPE, POSITIVITY (OOPS) POSSIBILITIES!

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
(Alexander Graham Bell)

On July 18 I wrote in my journal:

“I have to write a blog about the ability to adapt, because I suck at it.”

Here’s why. On Thursday a member of the company’s IT team did me the great favor of coming over to West Van to set up my new iPhone. In the process I unearthed the new iPad version that I was given months ago and ignored because the only thing it did differently, as far as I could see, was require a different charging cable. The kind I could never seem to find. I resented all this new technology that was dragging my block-of-concrete-feet into the “next generation”. I felt played by the gods/demons of progress. So I went from an IPhone 13 to a 17. New cable and all.

And then I lost it. Literally and figuratively. Couldn’t find my new phone anywhere, despite the “FindMy” app indicating that it was at my exact address. As I ran around in progressively agitated circles, it was my saintly husband who figured out where it had to be, in my car, five floors below me, in the parkade of our building.

Needless to say, my positivity journal, (which I realized in retrospect was supposed to be a possibility journal, in line with the Chautauqua lifestyle blurb I included in the last blog) wasn’t very positive that evening. Or bursting with possibilities, except maybe finding ways I could permanently dispose of all my technology. And perhaps move to the Falklands. Or some as yet undiscovered/unmodernized tribe in the Amazonian jungle.

But time passed, and once I’d simmered down, I continued pondering ways to bring kindness, hope and possibility/positivity to my surroundings. Enter a juvenile crow that got trapped on our balcony, for lack of the wits to turn around and see the endless escape routes right behind it. It had indeed been thusly “trapped” for a couple of days, we realized, and that the loud ruckus of swooping and darting crows nearby had been created by its frantic parents.

By the time we spotted it, it was banging futilely against the glass railing of the balcony and had badly frayed its tail feathers from rebounding onto the deck. As best we could, we moved any furniture blocking it from seeing its route to freedom, even creating a makeshift ramp it might launch from, while a small battalion of its friends and relatives squawked and swooped in their defensive manœuvres.

Finally I had the bright idea to scoop it up with a broom and lever it over the railing. Jim gently wielded the broom and in seconds we’d liberated our otherwise annoying and unwelcome feathered “friend”. If the latter adjectives weren’t clear enough, let me state for the record: we don’t like crows. Not at all. I once broke a glass panel of our railing by throwing a rock at one particularly cheeky nuisance. But who can resist a shot at heroism?

In one fell swoop we had lived up to the Chautauqua motto of kindness, hope, and possibility. A teenaged crow had lived to fly another day, battered tail feathers and all. And I was reminded, as per Alexander Graham Bell, or another, proactive variation that AI offered on the same topic:

“When one door closes, find another. And what if there isn’t another door? Then you try a window. And what if there’s not a window? Then you find a sledgehammer and make a window.”

Aum Namah Sivayah

July 15, 2026

“This is a place where life feels full of kindness, hope and possibilities; a place where we remember how to slow down and engage. We invite you to experience the incredibly unique Chautauqua lifestyle and achieve your highest potential.” (Chautauqua Institution)

I started this week’s blog with the above quote, and wish below:

“Kindness, hope and possibilities are all things I wish for myself, and the world, on this my 76th birthday. While there is more to say, it’s now past my bed time. So I’ll pick up where I left off tomorrow. Inshallah.”

Wednesday

It might’ve been somewhat naive of me to think I could concentrate on blogging on a travel day, aka Tuesday, though it called for little more exertion than getting up and down from an airplane. Though a previous two day lay-over in San Francisco, fitting in an early Tuesday swim (and thereby missing breakfast), hastily re-packing, and finally, trekking through the thousands of miles of airport hallways at YVR that evening, do qualify as demanding of energy. Whew!

Happily, our bags and ourselves made it home in one piece, and what remains today are the positive feelings generated by all the well-wishes I received from a community that echoes the proffered lifestyle at Chautauqua (from whence my brother’s greeting came). As I savor these heartwarming feelings I can’t help wondering how much of my self-esteem hinges on what I habitually imagine others are thinking or saying about me. Is it normal to assume the worst when it comes to one’s self perception? Is that what prompts the strenuous efforts one makes to be liked and accepted? Maybe even admired and respected?

Swami Radha writes about this tendency in her chapter on Evolution and Maya:

“That desire to survive is why you try to please, why you are “nice.” You want to be accepted. You want to be heard. You want to be listened to. You want your remarks and contributions to be appreciated. To achieve that, you will go through many complicated mental-emotional dances.

“But that kind of survival in the family, in business or in a group of friends is not satisfying. You want to survive also in your own mind, in your own judgement, in your own criticism. The idea in your mind of what you should be is a very complicated thing in itself. That you should be beautiful, intelligent, wise, six feet tall, have this nose or that colour of hair, these are all very primitive ideas, but they are very, very powerful.”

While browsing at an airport bookstore I spotted a title à propos of Swami Radha’s comments: “Don’t Believe Everything You Think”. Once we start to believe what we think, however negative/erroneous it might be, we create a self-fulfilling prophesy and generally perpetuate our own misery. A closed loop if ever there was one.

So, along with other Blue Zones adaptations I’m bringing into my 76th year lifestyle, I’m determined to keep a positivity journal, making a daily note of the good things I experience, and finding creative ways to perpetuate positivity.

Aum Namah Sivayah

BLOG 166

July 13, 2026

“This is a place where life feels full of kindness, hope and possibilities; a place where we remember how to slow down and engage. We invite you to experience the incredibly unique Chautauqua lifestyle and achieve your highest potential.” (Chautauqua Institution)

Kindness, hope and possibilities are all things I wish for myself, and the world, on this my 76th birthday. While there is more to say, it’s now past my bed time. So I’ll pick up where I left off tomorrow. Inshallah.

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!