Author: bondjanet

June 10, 2024

SMALL CHANGE

“When we draw a line down the center of a page, we know who we are if we’re on the right side and who we are if we’re on the left side. But we don’t know who we are when we don’t put ourselves on either side. Then we just don’t know what to do. We just don’t know. We have no reference point, no hand to hold. At that point we can either freak out or settle in.” (Pema Chödrön Six Kinds of Loneliness)

One thing about reaching an unprecedented situation or life stage is that, by virtue of its being unprecedented, one is at a loss for signposts or reference points from which to get one’s bearings in this unfamiliar territory. As Pema Chödrön well knows, this lack of signposts or certainty can be deeply disorienting. And frightening. I don’t like being disoriented any more than the next person, provided they’re anything like me and don’t go in for change in a big way, but I am seeing a path through this disorientation that offers encouragement and even novelty versus the urge to crawl under a rock until it blows over. The latter might’ve been an option if I thought this aging thing would blow over, but I’m afraid the only way that is apt to happen is one that I’m not too keen to contemplate.

So, on to my novel new idea about embracing versus avoiding change, aging, uncertainty, unpredictability, general unpleasantness etc etc. I’ve decided to let curiosity be my approach, or guide. I suggested to myself that I could start by trying one new thing a day. Not sky-diving or rock climbing, but any small thing that takes me out of my routine. For instance, the other day I wandered down aisles in the grocery store that normally never interest me. I’m an around-the-edges sort of shopper, the produce section, cheese and deli display, the flowers, and occasional chips or dairy forays. While looking for puff pastry from which to make pizza to use up the pesto sauce I made the other day (a first), I spied frozen butter chicken and other Indian dishes that I’ve become more interested in since attending a Sikh wedding, and reading a trilogy of Alka Joshi’s books on the lives of some feisty Indian women. Even this recent reading marks a departure from my usual authors, folks like Alexander McCall Smith or Amor Towles, Elin Hilderbrand and several nonfiction writers . My “curiosity move” of that day was to take home the frozen butter chicken with the intention of finding a recipe for jasmine rice, such as we enjoyed at the wedding, with the addition of a few more green things to complement all the red sauce.

Today’s departure from the norm was learning how to let myself into our condo building using my phone instead of my keys. It worked very well, but the feedback screeching caused by holding my phone too close to the intercom compels me to keep using my keys in future. At least I now know how to remotely admit visitors to our building!

The interesting discovery is how the least shift in my perspective or routine tends to give rise to more and more discoveries; just by doing things that I’d put off indefinitely, like buying better fins to aid me in the ocean swims that are infinitely more rewarding than endless laps of a too-crowded or always-booked pool, net gained energy. (Today I was actually daring to go in the ocean alone, so out of synch was my timing with my usual buddies, but luckily I met up with three other swimmers who, after our swim, even offered to share the lane they’d booked to finish up their distance.

In the process I made two new swimming acquaintances and learned about an event taking place in Kelowna this summer. It would take a great leap of courage for me to swim across Lake Okanagan, (no doubt at its narrowest point) but it’s something to which I will now give careful consideration, versus my tendency to summarily dismiss it as unrealistic: too much training, too many logistics, or too great a leap of faith. That I would even contemplate such a commitment has me wondering what has become of me, and in what other ways am I apt to roam beyond my comfort zone. For leaving my comfort zone is the only way out of what Pema Chödrön calls “samsara”.

“We hear a lot about the pain of samsara, and we also hear about liberation. But we don’t hear much about how painful it is to go from being completely stuck to becoming unstuck. The process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality, like changing our DNA. We are undoing a pattern that is not just our pattern. It’s the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution. We can have whiter teeth, a weed-free lawn, a strife-free life, a world without embarrassment. We can live happily every after. This pattern keeps us dissatisfied and causes us a lot of suffering.”

Making small consistent changes is one way to overcome the attachment to creature comforts (otherwise defined as the devil I know) and limiting beliefs (or fear of the unknown). Besides, who knows what I’ll find on the rest of those mystery grocery aisles?

June 3, 2024

VATA TIME

“You may find it challenging to avoid giving in to the temptation to rush, particularly if you have acclimated to a world of split-second communication with cell phones, emails, and overflowing agendas. Yet, the sense of continuous accomplishment you lose when you slow down will quickly be replaced by feelings of magnificent contentment. Your relaxed tempo will open your mind and heart to deeper levels of awareness that help you discover the true gloriousness of being alive.” (Daily Om, 03/07/24)

En route to the pool shortly after dawn the other morning, I slowed to let a couple of adult geese amble across the road to join what looked like a gosling nursery. At a quick glance there appeared to be over two dozen goslings, just starting to feather out, while a much smaller number of adult birds circulated among them. These I designated the parental geese, still supervising their rapidly growing youths. On the opposite side of the road were what I deemed the slower, senior geese, content to leave “child-rearing” to the younger, more agile birds who could, in a pinch, get out of the way of less mindful motorists. I noticed that this phenomenon only takes place at dawn; later on, as traffic builds the geese wisely head for the beach. Of course, this anthropomorphizing is my way of placing my own “seniority” in the context of another facet of the natural order.

In Ayurveda (think India’s version of Traditional Chinese Medicine) the lifespan of a human being is roughly divided into three stages, or doshas, that are named kapha dosha, or youth; pitta dosha, or middle age; and vata dosha, or old age. (Incidentally, Vedanta philosophy, also from India, divides the human lifespan into four stages: youth or student stage; householder or career stage; retirement or spiritual seeker; and, in ideal cases, the sage or enlightened stage.) Having been steeped in these eastern teachings for close to four decades, I’ve lately been drawn to the latter in search of a context for, and road map through, the unprecedented time of life that I am now experiencing.

Since getting my hip replaced in January (if not before, during the months that I couldn’t bike, hike, do yoga, etcetera) I have had rude awakening upon physical rude awakening. My orthopaedic surgeon’s glib remark that I could expect to resume my previous level — or at least variety — of physical activity at around three months post-surgery, set a bar that I’m not even close to achieving. In fact, rather than the steady improvement I anticipated, I’ve hit one figurative speed bump after another.

I need not elaborate on what are, at best, minor blips on the scale of world problems, yet these setbacks have effected my general outlook to what I deem an unhealthy degree. As I observe the senior citizens (my contemporaries) who populate much of West Vancouver, I register with some chagrin the varying degrees of disability that seem to presage my imminent future. This in turn threatens a mental slide into an “Is this all there is?” defeatism that is potentially more crippling than any physical difficulties.

A first step in getting my mind off this negative trajectory is to simply be curious. In my journal I note what’s happening physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Curiosity gives me the count-to-ten objectivity that I need to calm any “catastrophic thinking” I might be doing. Using a few key words that I remember from Ayurveda in an internet search, I find a wealth of information on the Vata time of life. I realize that few people of my acquaintance have heard of Vedanta philosophy or Ayurveda, but I’m in no doubt that many of us at this age and stage are struggling with similarly discouraging infirmities, and are vulnerable to the negative thinking that we build around these. One pundit calls this double suffering: we have the physical pain of, say, a sore hip, and the mental pain of imagining it never getting better! My particular narrative goes something like: “Will I ever be able to bike again? Should I just sell my bike and take up monopoly? Dominoes? Mah jongg? I don’t have the concentration required for playing bridge, or the New York Times crosswords. Whatever am I going to do?”

This is why it was so encouraging to read the positive spin that Ayurveda puts on Vata time. In Ayurveda, this stage of life sees a silver lining in the physical decline and even decrease in cognitive abilities. Instead of climbing new external mountains and seeking ever greater external achievements, the individual is encouraged to step back from worldly concerns and learn to savour “the true gloriousness of being alive”.

This is not as easy as it sounds, but I am learning to adopt a gentler, more introspective pace. Hopefully more purposefully than those seagulls who go nowhere, slowly. More like the geese who stay on the beach-side of the street!

May 27,2024

MEMORY LANE
…is a dark alley

“Unlike his family, for whom flight is a means to an end, Jonathan treats it as a spiritual quest, and he gradually comes to live by the mantra: “The only true law is that which leads to freedom”. As he flies at ever increasing speeds, he learns: “the gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly.” (Paula Bardell-Hedley, Feb. 2, 2020)

We have a resident seagull, an elderly one, I assume, due to its snowy white plumage and somewhat bulbous shape, though that could just be because it’s now comfortably huddled on top of the outdoor heat lamp looking warily in the direction of our windows, as if knowing one of us will soon come charging through the sliding doors and “run it off the property”. This morning I can’t be bothered, though yesterday we hosed down the heater’s metal shade on a thoroughly rainy day, to rid it of the unsightly remains of the seagull’s “latrine”. Initially I had left it alone thinking a seagull wouldn’t poop in its own roost. I was wrong.

What kind of a mixed message am I sending that our seagull, dubbed Jonathan after his famous antecedent, can watch me watching him while not stirring to chase it from its roost? It’s as if I’m granting it permission to stay as long as it wants. At any rate, having named it Johnathan I’ve anthropomorphized it into something like the little fox’s rose in St. Exuperay’s The Little Prince, and now I’ll have to reread Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, not to find out why a seagull has come into my life, (that’s easy, we have a convenient, solar heated perch from which it can survey its world), but to remind myself of the iconic book that defined the mindset of the ‘70s.

For those of you who don’t know of it: “Jonathan Livingston Seagull is an allegorical fable in novella form written by American author Richard Bach and illustrated with black-and-white photographs shot by Russell Munson. It is about a seagull who is trying to learn about flying, personal reflection, freedom, and self-realization.” Wikipedia

That’s a lot to ask of a seagull. Even the publishers were surprised that the humble novella captured the imagination of several generations, and has sold over 44 million copies since its publication in 1970.

That said, having now finished rereading it, I tend to agree with Bardell-Hedley:

“Jonathan continues to represent for many the consummate symbol of an individual seeking to take control of his or her destiny, leaving behind the hegemonic, narrow-minded community from whence they came. With this I would agree. While I found the experience of rereading Jonathan Livingston Seagull a rather less profound experience than I did in adolescence, it still gladdens my heart, and it served to remind me that the tribe, while ostensibly offering safety and reassurance, can often be petty, cossetting and cruel to those who deviate from the norm.”

What gladdened my heart were the fond memories I recalled of the ‘70s that were perhaps seeded by my recent visit to the iconic Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, founded in 1971, within a year of Bach’s book being published, which I consider quite the coincidence. I could go down a rabbit hole thinking this too is a sign, and I’m sure it is, of something. If nothing else, it comes as I’m reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that my grand-daughter is now the age about which I’ve been reminiscing; she poised to embark on an exciting new life chapter, while I mull over the suggestion of “unfinished business” that may just be at the root of these compelling memories.

This suggestion stops me in my mental tracks. I find myself consuming about a pound of pistachio’s (raw, unsalted, which is why I know they’re a distraction) as I tread carefully over misty memories that are time-altered and subjective. Coming to terms with illusions is a tender business. Though it may once have been “dream worthy” as per the Mamas and the Papas, California is not now the land of milk and honey I believed it to be in the ‘70s. In fact, it never was. For starters, the Beach Boys never even surfed. While Jonathan Livingston Seagull was waxing esoteric, Berkeley students were protesting the Vietnam War, racism, and the subjugation of women. To name a few.

Suffice to say, I’m better off making peace with whatever unfinished business is shading my perception of the present than harboring illusions about how my life coulda, shoulda, woulda been. That strikes me as a good way to go nowhere, slowly.

And, with our ten year old grandson’s baseball game starting shortly, I do have places to go, things to do, and people to meet. Lucky me.

BELONGING

“Most of us pride ourselves on our self-sufficiency. We like to be responsible for taking care of ourselves and pulling our own weight in the world. This is why it can be so challenging when we find ourselves in a situation in which we have to rely on someone else. This can happen as the result of an illness or an injury, or even in the case of a positive change, such as the arrival of a newborn. At times like these, it is essential that we let go of our feeling that we should be able to do it all by ourselves and accept the help of others.” (Daily Om May 16, 2024)

The theme of belonging has been topical for me in the couple of weeks since returning from Hawaii, where I have a built-in family, or Ohana, in the small community that we call our home-away-from-home outside Kona. The fact that half of this Ohana is staff doesn’t detract from the sense of belonging and inclusivity, and Aloha that I experience in Hawaii. It just means I have easy access to conversation and group activity, should I feel a need. Not so in West Vancouver, where I’ve yet to make any new friends or experience the reassurance of having a “tribe” behind me. This perceived lack has generated no small amount of anxiety as I’ve often felt anonymous, outside of family, in this seemingly indifferent city. At least that was the case until yesterday.

I’ve often been asked why I swim on the opposite side of English Bay in our old neighborhood of Point Grey, when there is ocean access right across the street here at Ambleside Beach. And indeed I do see the occasional group of cold water devotees as I walk along the sea wall, but I gravitate to the folks I’ve swum with at Jericho, and the constant I I have come to count on: there will always be someone familiar swimming anywhere from 6:15 to 8:00 a.m. (on weekends) and, even better, someone to chat with in the hot tub.

I think I took this constant for granted until yesterday morning. Unwittingly, I used the wrong anti-fog drops in my swim goggles, and within the hour my eye was an itchy, swollen red mess. There’s nothing like being unable to see out of one’s eye that makes one feel helpless and vulnerable. And not a little impatient and short-tempered! Rinsing it out under the filtered water faucet did nothing to soothe the burning sensation, so one quick-thinking swimmer volunteered to get me some proper eye wash at the drugstore. Others expressed concern and offered solutions from their own experience. One friend even tracked down her brother, an Opthamologist to get his opinion, and a retired emergency room doc urged me to seek help at UBC hospital. Most of the people at the pool got involved one way or another.

Ultimately, a fellow swimmer drove me to Emergency where, over the next couple of hours, the chemically burned eye was flushed with four or five liters of sterile saline solution. Since I was unable to tolerate the too-big eye rinse cup, a nurse volunteered to manually rinse the eye while I held it open with my own hands. Without the drain that’s attached to the eye cup, I was soon lying in a pool of cool water, soaked to the skin from head to waist, while other nurses scrunched blotter-towels around my shivering body.

When they’d done all they could at UBC, the next stop was Vancouver General’s speciality opthamology clinic that keeps a skeleton staff on deck for weekend emergencies. Such as me. The words of Thursday’s Daily Om post came back as I waited anxiously to be seen:

“The first step is accepting the situation fully as it is. Too often we make things worse either by trying to do more than we should or by lapsing into feelings of uselessness. In both cases, we run the risk of actually prolonging our dependency. In addition, we miss a valuable opportunity to practice acceptance and humility. The ego resists what is, so when we move into acceptance we move into the deeper realm of the soul. In needing others and allowing them to help us, we experience the full realization that we are not on our own in the world. While this may bring up feelings of vulnerability, a deep feeling of gratitude also may emerge as we open to the experience of being helped. This realization can enable us to be wiser in our service of others when we are called upon to help.”

Yesterday I learned a great deal about accepting the situation as it was, and setting aside the ego that probably would have gone straight home (if I’d been able to drive) rather than lean on other people. Had I done so, the damage to my left eye would likely have been irreparable.

When all was said and done, I realized that ‘belonging’ has a lot to do with admitting vulnerability, and accepting help and advice from the people around me. Knowing how much it meant to be on the receiving end of so much care and concern taught me a great deal about how to be of service to others in need. And above all, it taught me that however anonymous a part of me may feel, I am not on my own in the world.

Now to light my gratitude candle…

May 13, 2024

GRATITUDE

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch Or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I’m sure there’s a joint somewhere in my body that doesn’t ache, but wherever it is, its neighboring joints are complaining so loudly that the quiet ones go completely unnoticed. Welcome to COVID. Round two. I may never fly again. That seems to be all it takes. No sooner did I post Monday’s blog that I went down for the count. It took about a nanosecond for those two red lines to stand out loud and proud. Well, boldly and unequivocally, anyway. I didn’t need the test to convince myself. I needed it to show other people around me that I was/am deserving of sympathy. As if it wasn’t disorienting enough coming back to reality (albeit a sanitized West Vancouver variety) after four months in the tropics. No, instead I had to have fever, coughs, chills, the trots, with a side of itchy allergy eyes and an alternately stuffy/runny nose. Oh. Did I mention a throbbing headache? And heartburn?

And those are just the physical symptoms. The mental-emotional components? Including an embarrassing amount of “why me?” self-pity? Let’s not even go there. Suffice to say I can relate to Judith Viorst’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I can’t remember how that story ends but I’m imagining it has to do with how Alexander’s day eventually improves. Well, on Monday, MAY 6, I gave myself until Friday to get over COVID. It seemed like the requisite amount of time for this to blow over. As of Mothers’ Day it seems I’m just getting started with dizziness and nausea.

To add insult to injury, I missed my early Mother’s Day tea last Tuesday, which I thought was a great way not to compete with every other mother-daughter combo in the city who, along with their extended families, will be packing out all the brunch/lunch/dinner options in the vicinity. And there aren’t that many.

Which is why it’s a good thing my son gave me a Gratitude Candle (complete with instructions) for Christmas. Instinctively I lit it at the first sign of symptoms. Initially, I’d forgotten the message that came with it but I knew it was something I needed to do to transcend the pity party that was gaining momentum in my psyche. So the other evening, when I opted to blog about my sorry state of being, I fished out the card that accompanied the candle and thought its message was worth sharing:

“This isn’t just a candle, it’s a ritual designed to brighten your day in more ways than one.

“The Gratitude Candle was inspired by the idea of habit stacking. For thousands of years, humans have been lighting candles. Every time we light a candle, we eventually need to extinguish the flame. Blowing out a candle has become an automatic habit. The Gratitude Candle invites you to stack a new habit on top of that one.

“Here’s how it works: whenever you blow out the candle, take that as your cue to think of something from your day that you are grateful for. It’s as simple as that to begin cultivating the research-backed benefits of gratitude in your daily life.”

I’m grateful I don’t have a houseful of toddlers to tend to while I focus on rest and recovery. I’m grateful those toddlers grew up to be stellar adults who produced ten of my favorite little people. I’m grateful I have someone who will do our grocery shopping and bring soup for dinner. And flowers. Grateful for a stretch of gloriously sunny spring weather. (Even if the blossoms make me sneeze). Grateful for advantages too numerous to count. And grateful that I have a blog Ohana to whom I feel accountable for practicing what I preach. Namely, for tearing my gaze off my navel and getting on with my (albeit somewhat circumscribed) Mothers’ Day.

Now, on Monday morning, it’s time to habit stack my chai excursion onto a walk outside, with gratitude for a negative COVID retest.

May 6, 2024

AIR ROOTS

“Make the present moment, the here and the now, into your true home. That is the only home that we have.”
(Thich Nhat Hanh)

After a four month absence it might take me a minute to get my bearings. One of the first things I notice is the blandness of my surroundings. I wake in a bedroom of beige on beige on beige. And white. This was done intentionally to create a feeling of tranquility. And it works, but it’s a far cry from the colour and vibrancy of the Big Island. And that’s as it should be. Life is nothing if not a sea of contrasts.

There’s a large painting across from me — a broad swath of water with sunlight turning it almost white, and next to that, a small painting of dark clouds towering over a hilltop. I’m reminded of the Sea to Sky Highway that takes us to Whistler. And how all these say something about the contrasts that life’s journey consists of. The highs and the lows; times of peace and joy, and times of struggle and disappointment.

The Daoist’s yin/yang symbol also says something about that, but right now the smell of freshly baked croissants is interrupting my “deep thoughts” and I stir myself to track down this heavenly scent.

I tracked the heavenly scent to a trayful of blackened almonds and am temporarily put out that my dear one didn’t rush off to Thierry to welcome me home with chai tea and pastries this morning. Just as well. It’s too easy to lose my train of thought, this morning’s being a reflection on opposites. And perhaps culture shock.

Swami Vivekananda, one of the first Vedanta philosophers I encountered on my nascent spiritual search, exhorted his followers to maintain the alertness one needs to navigate the city while on retreat in the country, and to bring the peace and tranquility of the country into the noise and haste of the city. A person cannot thrive long in either of these environments exclusively. Ultimately we are challenged to cultivate equanimity to forbear with such extremes.

For me that means getting my city mouse back into action. As I contemplate how to do that I spot the orchid plant sitting on my windowsill. It’s finished blooming, but its waxy deep-green leaves look healthy, and a thick air root meanders out from under the foliage.

I don’t know much about air roots except what the name implies; they are roots that stretch out into the air versus digging underground. What sort of sustenance might the air root be looking for? Something not offered by the soil, obviously. If I think of the soil as my accumulated knowledge and experience, I can see how situations might arise for which I’m just not equipped.

In last week’s blog I cited “asking for help” as one ingredient in a possible recipe for creativity. I think of the game show in which contestants are allowed to phone a friend for help answering a difficult question. Sometimes the friend has the answer, but often not. So, not to contradict my advice to recruit help and expertise when needed, I’m also aware that I can only call upon my fellow humans every so often. It behooves me to mimic the orchid, and dig deeper within while also reaching out to what I call my divine committee. I do this by first recording everything I know about the condition I find myself in. Currently I’m bedridden with a combination of fatigue and allergies, perhaps a cold that is not yet full-blown. A feeling of alienation and apathy pervade my psyche. It might not have helped that I cold-plunged in the ocean yesterday, but what can I do about that today?

What comes to mind is the Buddhist aphorism: “Accept. Distill. Rest.” In the internet equivalent of phoning a friend, I browse the latter aphorism and come up with Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching: “Rest in the River”, in Lion’s Roar. He writes:

“Resting is a very important practice; we have to learn the art of resting. Resting is the first part of Buddhist meditation. You should allow your body and your mind to rest. Our mind as well as our body needs to rest.

“The problem is that not many of us know how to allow our body and mind to rest. We are always struggling; struggling has become a kind of habit. We cannot resist being active, struggling all the time. We struggle even during our sleep.

“Only if we know how to allow them to rest can our body and our soul heal themselves.”

The message I’m getting is that my body and mind know how to heal if I can just stay rooted in the present, not overthinking what has happened in the recent past, the various projects I tried to wind up before leaving Hawaii, and not running a narrative about what might or might not happen in my absence. Instead, I opt to go for a walking meditation, repeating the mantra Thich Nhat Hanh offers in “Rest in the River”:

“I have arrived. I am home.
In the here. In the now.
I am solid. I am free.
In the ultimate I dwell.”

The point is that a restless mind and body take me away from my inner healing resources. Only by quieting body and mind, like a pebble resting at the bottom of a river, can I awaken my innate healing capacity. By repeating this mantra as I walk I’m steadily bringing myself back into the present, into my center.

And who knows, my walk might just take me by Thierry for that croissant and chai. I’m feeling better already!

PRIMING THE WELL

“I like to think of the Creative Well as a real stone well, like from the “Jack and Jill went up a hill” story. It’s tall and round and sits in the middle of my brain. It is usually full; not of water but of ideas and characters and premises and worlds. It’s where I go every time I sit down to write. I drop a pail into the well and pull up a bucket of magic.”
(Alysha Welliver in Scribbler blog)

When it came to writing this week’s blog I dipped into the proverbial well and came up with such a mishmash of ideas that I didn’t know where to begin sorting and sifting, trying to distill the essence or nugget of what I wanted to express from the dross of so many burbling thoughts.

One thing that stands out from the jumble is a memory of the enthusiasm and sense of potential that I felt while visiting Berkeley, and particularly while dining at Chez Panisse, the brainchild of Alice Waters, mother of California Cuisine. Not only did Waters spark a revolution in healthy, organic, and sustainably sourced cuisine, (think the farm-to-table movement), she was also inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2017 for her efforts to transform public education by using food to teach, nurture, and empower young people.

Reading about Waters’ multifaceted career motivated me to reflect on other men and women who inspire me, to see what qualities they have in common, and perhaps come up with a recipe for living not only an examined life but one infused with creativity and enthusiasm.

One ingredient in this recipe for creativity has to be a willingness to leave the beaten path, my “known” world, my habitual patterns of thought and action. This doesn’t require exotic world travel so much as an ability to be curious about the world around me. Even the beaten path I take to my chai tea destination is different every day if I’m attentive to my surroundings. The light, the weather, the people I pass on the way vary from one day to the next. I believe that any aspiring writer, artist, photographer, or mystic is challenged to find inspiration and wonder in the “ordinary”. I think of Martha Stewart elevating the domestic (I typoed demonic) “drudgery” of keeping house and feeding a family to the fine art of cheffing, decorating and entertaining. Which leads me to a second ingredient in my recipe for creativity.

Though schedules, structure and self-discipline might seem anathema to the flow of creativity, I believe it is necessary to remove mental and physical clutter if I want to create anything of value. This means organizing my time and setting priorities, determining what I can reasonably hope to achieve in the time available to me (so I can publish my blog on a Monday, among other things).

Rightly or wrongly, I have made a list of items I was compelled to tick off before leaving the island two days hence. It is this to-do list that sits atop any inspiration I might hope to draw from today’s creative well, and that wakes me up at 1:30 a.m. in a sweat of unsolvable (first world) problems. This in turn moves me to a third ingredient of , my creativity recipe. GO PLAY OUTSIDE…preferably in the daytime.

Whether from paralysis by analysis, or a too-long to-do list, when my creativity is blocked I find my mental and emotional well-being are best served by a change of scenery. A brisk walk, swim, bike, hike or paddle expands my sense of things, and shrinks my mental obstacles into insignificance. So here I go!

And now, it’s tomorrow. In fact, it’s getting closer to Wednesday. I woke with a mildly panicky feeling that I had writers’ block, on top of — or snowed under by — things I couldn’t resolve but which wouldn’t give me any peace until they were solved. So much clutter to dispense with. So many balls in the air. But, by this evening, the lion’s share of my to-do list has been done.

Which brings me to a final ingredient in the (as yet incomplete) recipe for creativity: when in need, call for reinforcements. Creativity doesn’t flourish in a vacuum. For each task on my to-do list I recruited (aka begged, borrowed or coerced) people whose expertise far exceeded my abilities. If you’re having a spiritual emergency I’m your person, but for landscape planning, interior design, de-cluttering or personal beautifying, I need people (which, according to Barbra Streisand makes me extremely lucky). And I do feel very lucky. And very relieved to have had help ticking off the mother of all to-do lists, so I can now leave the island with a sense of peace, harmony and ease of well-being. If not enthusiasm and creativity.

(I’m thinking this blog/recipe should have been about productivity, but perhaps that goes hand in hand with creativity. Well, too late now. It’s bed time).

Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

THE PATH

“We must keep growing or, as Jung suggested, we risk becoming caricatures of ourselves.” (Hillevi Ruumet, Pathways of the Soul)

Though I would rather not dwell on this topic, or rather, not on the quote that has been haunting me all week, there is something about its emphasis on the imperative to grow that resonates with my own dedication to the evolution of consciousness, the value of which I sometimes need to prove to myself, just as I need to prove that there’s value in other things, such as blogging, regular exercise and physiotherapy, that a part of me is averse to doing, despite knowing they’re “good for me”. So, in spite of my inner saboteur, onforth I go.

To begin to flush out this topic I investigate the psychospiritual journey from Jung’s point of view. Jung used the term caricature to describe how humans are destined either to follow a progression of psychological and spiritual growth or risk becoming a parody, or caricature of themselves, in which the tasks and achievements of an earlier stage of development become laughable at a later stage. We have seen and heard caricatures of the midlife crisis, in which a man might be said to compensate for a sense of fading masculinity by seeking “fast cars and loose women”. In females the caricature can be observed more literally in the “duck lips” that bely a futile desire to preserve eternal youth, but which only make them the subject of derision and ridicule.

Ruumet expands on her topic:

“There can be no happiness in staying at a stage we have outgrown, because a part of us always remembers what we were called to, and failed transitions can be tragic, even lethal. The depression that accompanies such a failure in someone who has clearly heard the inner call to the next stage but refuses it (often for “sensible” reasons) can manifest across a whole range of psychopathology, have personal and career consequences, and cause “soul loss”.

Ruumet makes a compelling argument for individuals to follow what Swami Radha calls “cooperating with the evolution of consciousness”, but I’m inclined to believe that many of today’s global problems arise from a collective failure to heed this same call, and with equally dire consequences. Before she died of breast cancer in 1984, Rachel Carson, author of the seminal book Silent Spring that propelled the environment into a global concern, noted: “Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself. We in this generation, must come to terms with nature, and I think we’re challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.”

This tells me, on Earth Day 2024, that the future of our planet depends on the emergence of a critical mass of people who recognize the interconnectedness of everything, and who are determined to first do their inner work. Carson’s work is a call to arms as much as the familiar caricature of a top-hat-wearing bearded man with the caption “Uncle Sam wants you.” Though this poster was created at the time of World War I, it has been seeded in the consciousness of countless people who didn’t even exist at the time. In the same way, I think it’s essential that, as a favor to Mother Earth, we heed the call to do our inner work that was seeded in our consciousness before we were born. How you do that is up to you. I subscribe to the biblical “seek and you will find, ask and you will receive, knock and the way will be opened before you.”

Or as Jung would say: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

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

Or...

“Youth is wasted on the young.” (George Bernard Shaw)

On the flight back from an open-house weekend at California University (aka Berkeley) my mind is flooded with new vignettes juxtaposed upon old memories that I thought might make a good topic for this week’s blog. Or at least, by writing it all down, I hoped to make sense of the jumble of emotions and impressions for which I have very little context.

First off, let it be said that Canadian universities are much more reserved than America’s. Of course I can’t make such a sweeping statement as that! Better I limit this impression to my own experience, a small sample that consists of three years at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, where I grew up. And where I lived at home until the third year, when I married, at age 21, to my childhood sweetheart. And where I continued with my relatively sheltered life into my mid-30s, at such time as we lost “everything” to the recession in the ‘80s, moved to Toronto, and then on to Vancouver, where I’ve spent an equal number of years gaining sufficient wisdom to realize that I didn’t know what I thought I knew! Still don’t.

One thing I did learn, during our short stint in Toronto, came from the Dean of Admissions at Western University, whom I interviewed while creating content for a community TV channel. The Dean explained that (at the time) the difference between a university degree and one from a technical institute was that the former offered a liberal education aimed at teaching students to think, to broaden their horizons and expand their general knowledge. But not particularly to get a job. Technical institutes, on the other hand, were created to provide students with specific skills that would help them gain fruitful, and imminent employment. In my case, I followed my virtually unemployable English degree with courses in Radio and Television Arts from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. And got a job as a copywriter at an ad agency shortly thereafter. Writing speeches for dubious politicians or hawking products that nobody needed.

Now, some 53 years since completing my first university degree, I reflect on how that education served me — or not — in tackling the life challenges that arose in the intervening five decades. It wasn’t until I returned to university for a Masters in Transpersonal Studies at Sophia University (class of 2000) that I understood the difference between knowledge and wisdom. And thereafter applied myself, through leading an examined life, to accumulating more of the latter.

Now I try to imagine how a university degree might serve our freshman grand-daughter in her quest for meaning and purpose, for a viable way to navigate the future. But perhaps even that expectation is a bit grand. Life skills come in so many different packages. And different skills are required at different times of life. Certainly, learning to navigate a new school, in an unfamiliar city, in a different country has to be ‘educational’. And character-building. Leaving the comforts and security of home, having the power to make independent choices can be a heady feeling. Exciting and/or terrifying. I know I experienced those and several other emotions as I registered the sheer size of Berkeley (aka Cal, to those in the know, which apparently includes everybody but me) and the kaleidoscopic student body. Seeing students falling down drunk at 2:00 in the afternoon reminds me just how unprepared many youth can be for the myriad options/distractions on offer at university. (This I know from experience. My own post secondary persona could have served as the poster child for youth being wasted on the young.)

Asking myself what wisdom I might now offer to our grandchild, I draw the conclusion that I am so far removed from the world she is entering, and from the eyes and mind through which she is seeing it, that my best answer is simply this: Just be true to yourself.

And hope to gather enough dirt on your fellow students to keep them from outing you to your children and grandchildren in some unspecified future.

SELF-INVESTIGATION

“We must investigate all of our concepts and ideas, anything we have accepted blindly, without question. Such unquestioning acceptance of authority is tantamount to allowing ourselves to be hypnotized, programmed, conditioned. We must ask, “What is hypnosis? Where (in what areas of my life) am I hypnotized?” You may find that you are indeed being hypnotized and that in your early years you were programmed by the ideas and, in some cases, the misconceptions of the adults around you. Perhaps you were told, “You can’t play outside if it’s raining because you will catch a cold.” Years later, you may still catch cold on a rainy day. We condition ourselves with such ideas as, “I only slept for four hours last night so I will be tired by this afternoon.” We tell ourselves, “I hate getting up in the morning,” but do we really mean, “I am unwilling to face the daily problems”?” (Swami Radhananda: Living the Practice)

This morning I heard an echo of the above quote as I yearned to stay curled up under the covers, unwilling to face a busy day of house cleaning, bed-changing, re-landscaping, outdoor furniture refinishing and deck resurfacing. Also, indoor painting and, in an ideal world, getting our dust-coated car washed. Though pretty much all of these jobs have been delegated to competent people, for which I am extremely grateful, I am still responsible to supervise and answer questions such as why there’s no power to the bunk room wall sockets, and what to do, if anything, with the viable plants that are being removed from the bed that is currently over-grown with foundation-invading roots.

Looked at metaphorically, how do foundation-invading roots relate to past conditioning and/or hypnosis? What long-held opinions and ideas threaten the foundation of the spiritual house I’m building as I go about leading an examined life? And how would I know if I’m operating on old biases and conditioning versus a conscious knowing that I truly believe in what I’m thinking, feeling, doing or saying?

When asked why he was so effective as a leader and teacher, Gandhi cited this same fact: he was congruent in what he felt and thought, said and did. He was not conflicted in these facets of his psyche. He did not think one thing; feel another; say something different and/or do something else entirely. Without knowing what is behind my thoughts and actions, how can I function from this place of inner congruence?

I find it effective — if not essential — to keep a journal in which to record thoughts and feelings that I can link to subsequent words and actions, and then assess the effects of the latter on the people around me, ultimately creating a record of cause and effect. If I don’t like the results of any given action I can trace these outcomes back to the thoughts and feelings that prompted them, and analyse what needs to change in this trajectory.

Today’s reluctance to get out of bed can be traced to the thought that I would be overwhelmed with decisions I wasn’t sufficiently informed to make. A lack of confidence in what I had been envisioning made any choices seem damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.

Self-doubt and second-guessing are habits that have dogged most of my adult life. It is only since I have begun examining these patterns that I have achieved some degree of mastery over this hypnotized conditioning. One of the misconceptions I internalized while growing up was that it was not OK to make mistakes. Learning about the downstairs brain, or amygdala, has enabled me to trace my fear of making mistakes to my reptilian brain and the survival mechanisms that seem irrational to a thinking adult. I have not evolved so far from those fight, flight, freeze or appease reactions that I can make choices with confidence and alacrity. But I am learning to have faith in myself, and have compassion for the aspect that was programmed to believe she could never admit or accept imperfection. If nothing else, liberation must contain an element of freedom from the programming of one’s past. Self-inquiry is a good way to uncover and, with the help of a consistent spiritual practice, ultimately remedy that.

Aum Namah Sivayah

P.S. This blog is late because I’m also conditioned to second-guess whatever content I think worthy to express. As Eleanor Roosevelt said: “We must do the thing we think we cannot do.” So I did.