Author: bondjanet

July 3, 2023

CHOICES OVER VOICES

“Don’t SHOULD on yourself. Understand what happened. Let it go. And keep on swimming.” (John Maitland)

The other morning I noticed the above-quoted on a white-board hanging beside my pool lane. I can imagine the swim coach urging his youthful competitors to figure it out when something goes wrong, shake it off, and get back in the water. As an avid swimmer, I find the quote applies both literally and figuratively. There are times when I get seasick, or caught in a current, or suffer a mild case of hypothermia, or get disoriented in the murky pea-soup water off Jericho Beach, and just have to keep swimming until I’m safely back on land.

As with all good metaphors, the quote applies figuratively to daily life, to the times I have to coach myself to keep going despite whatever obstacles I encounter. But I’m shocked at how often the obstacles that I have to overcome are created by my “inner saboteur”. If I understand Trungpa correctly, this inner saboteur is, if not the same thing, then a close cousin of his setting sun mind:

"When we are afraid of waking up and afraid of experiencing our own fear, we create a cocoon to shield ourselves from the vision of the Great Eastern Sun. We prefer to hide in our personal jungles and caves. When we hide from the world in this way, we feel secure. We may think that we have quieted our fear, but we are actually making ourselves numb with fear. We surround ourselves with our own familiar thoughts so that nothing sharp or painful can touch us. We are so afraid of our own fear that we deaden our hearts."

Perhaps it is a function of age, but I encounter this aspect of myself more often than I want. The good news is that I catch it at all. As awareness increases, so too are an increased number of times when I find myself not in my “right” mind. My spiritual readings and practices are all aimed at restoring my inner light or sunrise mind. A very useful tool that I acquired while studying Yasodhara Yoga, is a meditation on light, with light symbolizing the highest and best that I would offer myself or anyone else. In many religions the light is associated with the divine, the sublime, universal intelligence or whatever terms refer to the mystery from which we derive our existence. The following is taken from an article written by Swami Radhananda, past president of Yasodhara Ashram and my spiritual guide of many years, as an antidote to the darkness of setting sun mind:

 "This is a meditation on light, to help you expand the limits of your imagination. Only go as far as you can. As you practise you will naturally be able to expand the light beyond your original limitations.

"Sit in a comfortable position with your ankles crossed. Close your eyes, softly focusing them on the space between your eyebrows. Let your body be still and quiet. See a point of light. Concentrate on the point of light.

"See the light expand, filling your body, surrounding you, expanding out and out until it reaches the sky and beyond. See yourself and everyone and everything in the light. See this light spreading as far as you can imagine, and beyond. Then begin to draw the light back to the space between your eyebrows. Stay quiet and still, absorbing the Light."

The purpose of focusing on light is that it distracts attention from our habitual identifications and, thereby, our typical way of relating to the world around us. Chogyam Trungpa, Swami Radha, Hillevi Ruumet, Pema Chodron, Sharon Salzberg, Ram Das and a host of other spiritual luminaries recognize this drawback to our growth as “enlightened” beings, this tendency to think and live mechanically — sleepwalking around the planet. Trungpa insists that meditation, the synchronizing of mind and body, is essential to awaken the sunrise mind.

 “In the practice of meditation, the way to be daring, the way to leap, is to disown your thoughts, to step beyond your hope and fear, the ups and downs of your thinking process. You can just be, just let yourself be, without holding on to the constant reference points that mind manufactures. You do not have to get rid of your thoughts. They are a natural process; they are fine; let them be as well. But let yourself go out with the breath, let it dissolve. See what happens."

Incorporating Swami Radhananda’s visualization on the light with a meditation centered on balancing the breath, engages more senses and enhances the effectiveness of the practice. The better and more thoroughly we synchronize mind and body, the more of ourselves we involve, the more ably we can step away from our inner saboteurs and begin to fulfill our potential.

I’ll buy a ticket to that. Oh. Wait. I already have a ticket to that. Practice, practice, practice!

June 27, 2023

“The dawn of the Great Eastern Sun is based on actual experience. It is not a concept. You realize that you can uplift yourself, that you can appreciate your existence as a human being. Whether you are a gas station attendant or the president of your country doesn’t really matter.” (Trungpa 1984)

Sunrise Vision vs Sunset Mind

At breakfast the other day I asked my friend a question that I gleaned from reading Walt Whitman, who asked his friends: “What has become clear to you since last we met?” It cuts through some of the shallower stuff we can get preoccupied by, and strikes me as a better use of our precious, shared time.

Her answer didn’t surprise me. She expressed disenchantment with her fellow humans, having too often encountered what Trungpa would describe as the setting sun mind: a self-serving attitude that lacks honesty, reliability and/or integrity. In essence, this mindset has its roots in fear, first and foremost of death, and secondly, of pain in its many iterations. Much human behavior stems from attempts to avoid this basic truth: death and suffering are intrinsic to human existence. In other words, you’re going to feel bad, sad, angry, lonely, alienated and frightened etc some of the time.

As I understand it, having sunrise vision means having the courage and willingness to directly acknowledge and embrace what one sees and feels, whereas the sunset mind is fearful and strives to avoid or escape these realities.

This begs the question “How does one cultivate courage?”. If nothing else, one has to exercise one’s power of choice, which is so often lost in the heat of knee-jerk emotional reactions.

Trungpa has this to offer

 "We can give in to our fear and anxiety, or we can surrender to this great mystery with courage. When we see people on a roller coaster, we see that there are those with their faces tight with fear and then there are those that smile broadly, with their hands in the air, carried through the ride on a wave of freedom and joy. This powerful image reminds us that often the only control we have is choosing how we are going to respond to the ride.

 "There are, of course, constant challenges, but the sense of challenge is quite different from the setting-sun feeling that you are condemned to your world and your problems. Occasionally people are frightened by this vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Not knowing the nature of fear, of course, you cannot go beyond it. But once you know your cowardice, once you know where the stumbling block is, you can climb over it—maybe just three and a half steps.”

To help you climb over, I offer a walking meditation that serves to calm and synchronize body and mind.

Choose a spot where you have room to walk without obstacles. Stand in a relaxed but erect posture, with your hands gently cupped, palms up, fingertips touching lightly, and held level with your navel (the navel in shakti yoga is the location of the third chakra, the seat of the emotions). From this position slowly raise your palms up to the center of your chest, approximately level with your physical heart. Slowly describe a circle by moving the hands forward and down to the navel, then scooping them back up to the heart center. Continue this circular motion – arms widening as you reach forward and then narrowing at the navel – while repeating the affirmation: I am functioning from my heart center, I am functioning from my heart center…” as you let your feet choose a meandering route. Do this for a few minutes and then return to your journal.

The scooping motion is symbolic of raising your troubled emotions to the level of love, compassion, patience and understanding that are associated with the spiritual heart center. As you spread your arms in front of you think of expanding your sense of things, dissipating whatever darkness your mind is harboring (the setting sun’s dread and despair) as you come back to the best that you would offer yourself or anyone else.

Take a few minutes to sit quietly absorbing the effects of the practice, then note in your journal any insights or shifts in perspective that arise in this quiet, reflective time. Repeat the practice, if only by saying the affirmation in your mind, whenever you find yourself sinking into the darkness of the setting sun mentality. As the Buddhists say, pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.

You have the power to choose, to move. Even three and a half steps are great progress.

Besides, what have you got to lose?

SUNRISE MIND

“The way of cowardice is to embed ourselves in a cocoon, in which we perpetuate our habitual patterns. When we are constantly re-creating our basic patterns of behavior and thought, we never have to leap into fresh air or onto fresh ground.” (Chögyam Trungpa, 1984)

Lately the temptation to crawl into a cocoon has been all too compelling for me. I’m hoping you can identify with such times as make one want to crawl under a rock or escape to a desert island, or whatever metaphor floats your boat!

Whether or not this urge is familiar to you, I am fairly certain we all have times when our coping skills don’t rise to the challenge in a way that would make us proud. As Trungpa put it earlier: “If you feel bad when you come home because you had a hard day at the office, you can tell the truth about that: you feel bad. Then you don’t have to try to shake off your pain by throwing it around your living room.”

Well, the other day I threw it around the living room. And splattered a few innocent bystanders while I was at it.

I perpetuated a pattern of thought and behavior that no longer serves me. But there was a silver lining to seeing the mess it left, to stepping back, reflecting on how things got that way, and discerning what needed to change. Trungpa would call that cleaning up our world:

“In this world there are always possibilities of original purity, because the world is clean to begin with. Dirt never comes first, at all. For example, when you buy new towels, they don’t have any dirt on them. Then, as you use them, they become dirty. But you can always wash them and return them to their original state. In the same way, our entire physical and psychological existence and the world that we know—our sky, our earth, our houses, everything we have—was and is originally clean. But then we begin to smear the situation with our conflicting emotions. Still, fundamentally speaking, our existence is all good, and it is all launderable. That is what we mean by basic goodness: the pure ground that is always there, waiting to be cleaned by us. We can always return to that primordial ground. That is the logic of the Great Eastern Sun.”

In contrast to Trungpa’s “setting sun world” — a closed loop of conditioned actions and reactions that create and perpetuate our problems — his rising sun vision is one of original purity. Other spiritual writers would perhaps refer to it as our soul or essence, over which is built up a lifelong dross of misunderstandings and coping mechanisms that Trungpa would have us scrape away in order to embody the pure gold that remains.

Put more simply, we can enact our desire to purify our minds (however vague and theoretical that sounds) by taking a very practical approach to cleaning up our surroundings. I call this cleaning up my own back yard. Whatever I do, literally, towards home maintenance and improvement, can be seen symbolically as a desire to clean up my karma, my thoughts and actions, and the effects of these on the people around me. Same with my physical appearance. I can develop habits of dress and personal hygiene that reflect both my self-discipline and the integrity of my beliefs. Beliefs that what I think and feel, say and do are either part of the problem or part of the solution. In order to discern which is which, I apply a method that was given to me long ago.

Generating a calm, receptive state with a simple centering meditation (as described in blog 4) I ask these questions:

What is the core issue here?
What am I contributing to the problem, and how can I change it?
What am I contributing to the solution, and how can I keep doing it?
Protect me from the problem, because I’m in it.
And I surrender it now.

I then spend time reflecting in my journal about the possible causes and solutions to the problem in question. Following that I surrender these musing to whatever higher intelligence is available to me (what I call my divine committee) and get on with my day. Throughout the day I then hold the thought gently that I want to see what’s really happening. At day’s end I go back to this reflection and see if anything has come clear to me.

By applying Trungpa’s advice to “perceive the world directly” and “see on the spot with wakefulness” I begin to see beyond my personal opinions and priorities to a much bigger picture. Granted it can come as a shock to register my relative insignificance in this bigger picture, but it also deprives my ego of thinking I’m the center of the universe.

The beginning of spiritual warriorship is marked by this profound shift in focus from a “me-centered” attitude to a “we-centered” reality. The reality that it’s NOT.ABOUT.ME. Needless to say, no offense, but it’s not about you either. It’s about all of us, working separately and together, to clean up the mess.

June 12, 2023

BE.HERE.NOW.

“Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.”

“Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring” by Wu-Men, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry. © Harper Perennial, 1993.

Years ago, at a yoga retreat, we were given an exercise which effected me profoundly. It came back to me today as I sat outdoors in a sheltered, sunny spot watching the world go by. The exercise we were given at the ashram was broken into four parts. We were first asked to reflect on what we would do if we only had a year to live. We then went off for an hour or so to ponder that question. After writing about a hundred things I wanted to do with the time I had left, I returned to the classroom and was asked to reflect on what I would do with six months to live. In the next hour I whittled my list down to half. Following that the class was given a week to live. My list consisted of writing letters to special people in my life. Maybe the odd phone call. Thereafter our final assignment was to choose what we would do with one hour to live. Shelving all my hasty plans, I walked around to the sheltered lee of an isolated cabin and sat in the sun, watching the light shimmer and dance on the waves of Kootenay Lake. Did not think, plan, scheme. Silently absorbed the sights and sounds, the smells and sensations of that quiet, peaceful space. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be. Simply bearing witness to my surroundings.

Reflecting on those “final” moments, I suddenly understood on a visceral level what Trungpa meant by basic goodness:

“When you experience the goodness of being alive, you can respect who and what you are. You need not be intimidated by lots of bills to pay, diapers to change, food to cook, or papers to be filed. Fundamentally, in spite of all those responsibilities, you begin to feel that it is a worthwhile situation to be a human being, to be alive, not afraid of death.”

According to Trungpa, a prerequisite to experiencing this goodness of being alive is meditation, which in turn is meant to synchronize body and mind. Meditation doesn’t come easily to me. At least not what I think meditation is supposed to be. Nor is it easy to explain in a blog. So I thought I’d take the memory of that peaceful hour by the lake and see if it fit Trungpa’s description.

“Synchronizing mind and body is looking and seeing directly beyond language. This is not because of a disrespect for language but because your internal dialogue becomes subconscious gossip. You develop your own poetry and daydreams; you develop your own swear words; and you begin to have conversations between you and yourself and your lover and your teacher—all in your mind. On the other hand, when you feel that you can afford to relax and perceive the world directly, then your vision can expand. You can see on the spot with wakefulness.”

Bearing witness to my surroundings at the ashram on Kootenay Lake, without my usual stream of internal chatter, is about as close as I’ve ever come to synchronizing mind and body. From that experience, I can suggest a beginner’s way to meditate:

Take a comfortable seat in a quiet corner of your home, in or out of doors. Start by spending five or ten minutes simply observing your surroundings. Just observing. What do you see, feel, hear? If your mind fixates on anything — maybe you see a cobweb you hadn’t noticed before and have an urge to clear it, or hear an ambulance screaming past and wonder what’s happened — just acknowledge that. Let it pass. You’ll get to that. For whatever length of time you decide to sit in silence, relax and perceive the world directly.

“In that way, synchronizing mind and body is also connected with developing fearlessness. By fearlessness, we do not mean that you are willing to jump off a cliff or to put your naked finger on a hot stove. Rather, here fearlessness means being able to respond accurately to the phenomenal world altogether. It simply means being accurate and absolutely direct in relating with the phenomenal world by means of your sense perceptions, your mind, and your sense of vision.”

To me, this translates as acknowledging my immediate experience of and engagement with my surroundings, with what’s happening in the here and now. Bringing my undivided attention to where I am, to what I am feeling and perceiving from moment to moment. Bringing full awareness to what I and others are doing, and responding accordingly, if a response is called for. Fearlessly.

It means giving the inner narrator a break. Try it. You’ll thank me one day.

Blog 3
June 5, 2023

“As a man thinketh, so is he [or she, or them]”. (James Allen, among others…)

The logical sequence of this blog should follow what Trungpa is saying in Shambhala, which would mean a focus on both meditation and synchronizing mind and body. In fact, his approach to synchronizing mind and body is via meditation, so I should say a word about all that before I plunge into the topic that interests me today. But having used two “shoulds” in the first two sentences, I’m just going to dive in to something more relevant to me in the here and now. I figure if I can apply what I’m learning in my studies, I will be practicing what I preach. Otherwise, I might as well just tell you to buy the book. I’ll get back to the other stuff eventually, or you might get there ahead of me. No biggie.

So this is what I want to focus on:

“In working with ourselves, cleaning up begins by telling the truth. We have to shed any hesitation about being honest with ourselves because it might be unpleasant. If you feel bad when you come home because you had a hard day at the office, you can tell the truth about that: you feel bad. Then you don’t have to try to shake off your pain by throwing it around your living room. Instead, you can start to relax; you can be genuine at home. You can take a shower and put on fresh clothes and take some refreshment. You can change your shoes, go outside, and walk in your garden. Then, you might feel better. In fact, when you get close to the truth, you can tell the truth and feel great.” (Trungpa)

That well-describes my day yesterday. I came home saddled with various disappointments and frustrations that would normally be projected onto the people or things around me. But having just read the above, I took a page from Trungpa’s notebook and made up a charcuterie board, quickly hopped into the shower, put on clean clothes from top to toe, and took this mini feast outside to share with my hubby on our freshly landscaped balcony. The result was nothing short of miraculous, or at least wonder-full.

By the time I was ready to share my truth, I was well past the frustration, sadness and negativity that had clung like burrs to my psyche.

From this “stepping away” I could better see what was happening in and around me, and communicate my truth clearly and succinctly. Which turned out to be unnecessary, because in the absence of any action on my part, the problems that dogged me were solved. As some part of me knew they would be!

Which brings me to James Allen’s observation: “As a man thinketh, so is he.” I had initially let my thoughts run away with me. I had witnessed a problem that tugged at my heart strings, and from which I wanted instant relief. I found that relief in a change of pace: a shower, clean clothes, some charcuterie, a glass of something pink and bubbly. Relief came with this simple engagement in the minutiae of my life. And with this change of pace came a shift in perspective. As I sat outside observing the world around me — the people coming and going along the sea wall, the boats and freighters swinging slowly around their anchors — I sensed a shift in me. It seemed that all of nature was telegraphing a message that there is a natural order to the world, an ebb and flow, and that I can trust in that natural order and let go. Trust in the basic goodness of Trungpa’s rising sun vision (more on that later) and let those natural rhythms shift the tide of emotions in my mind.

Om shanti, shanti, shanti. Peace, peace, peace.

BASIC GOODNESS

“The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.” William Morris

To be completely honest, I’m not sure I’m equipped to expound on Trungpa’s Shambhala Vision or that of his spiritual warrior. I’ve reread the first few chapters over and over again, and find it nearly inaccessible in its simplicity. I know. That sounds like an oxymoron. A part of me says: “What’s going on here? Where’s the esoteric philosophy? The multi-syllable foreign words and obscure religious doctrines? The fire and brimstone?”The latter is what I feared awaited me as I experimented with “Beyond Meat” to “beef up” (pardon the pun) the leftover bolognese sauce that we’re planning on eating at my daughter’s this week. The conversation in my head as I defrosted this faux meat product was anything but encouraging, fearing it would be rejected by all and a general waste of my time and energy. I ploughed on anyway, because of something I’d just read in Trungpa/Dorje:

“You have to relax with yourself in order to fully realize that discipline is simply the expression of your basic goodness. You have to appreciate yourself, respect yourself, and let go of your doubt and embarrassment so that you can proclaim your goodness and basic sanity for the benefit of others.”

In brief, the first half dozen chapters of Shambhala expound on this theme of basic goodness and intelligence, or sanity. It’s a reiteration of a popular self-help book I’m OK — You’re OK written by psychiatrist Thomas Anthony Harris in 1967. Though I read the latter when I was a teen, it stuck with me for the same reason I bring it into this essay today. Harris’s work emphasized how universal are the problems arising from the culture of comparing and competing that pervaded my formative years, and likely yours. This culture has spawned many great accomplishments — we have put humans on the moon and increased our convenience and longevity through science and technology. It has also sown the seeds of insecurity and anxiety that are rampant in 21st century society. Hence Trungpa’s insistence on a new vision for what he calls an enlightened society. Through explanation and meditation he aims to synchronize mind and body, and attune these to the natural order. As Morris would say, to take a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.

One of the obstacles to such an attunement is fear in any of its various forms: fear of rejection, of inadequacy, of pain and shame, and ultimately, fear of our mortality. Trungpa writes:

“The key to warriorship and the first principle of Shambhala vision is not being afraid of who you are. Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself” and
“If we are willing to take an unbiased look, we will find that in spite of all our problems and confusion, all our emotional and psychological ups and downs, there is something basically good about our existence as human beings. Unless we can discover that ground of goodness in our own lives, we cannot hope to improve the lives of others. If we are simply miserable and wretched beings, how can we possibly imagine, let alone realize, an enlightened society?”

Trungpa also provides this answer:

“The discovery of basic goodness is not a religious experience, particularly. Rather it is the realization that we can directly experience and work with reality, the real world that we are in. Experiencing the basic goodness of our lives makes us feel that we are intelligent and decent people and that the world is not a threat. When we feel that our lives are genuine and good, we do not have to deceive ourselves or other people. We can see our shortcomings without feeling guilty or inadequate, and at the same time, we can see our potential for extending goodness to others. We can tell the truth straightforwardly and be absolutely open but steadfast at the same time.”

Sounds simple enough, right???

Blog 2

Introduction: The path of the Spiritual Warrior

“Arise, awake and stop not [until] the goal is reached.”

“The [foregoing] inspirational sloka was Swami Vivekananda’s message to the [Indian people] to get out of their hypnotized state of mind. The sloka was meant as a call to his countrymen to awaken their “sleeping soul” and propagate the message of peace and blessings given by the “ancient Mother” to the world. “Awake” also denotes the awakening of one’s real nature…”

(Wikipedia citing of Swami Vivekananda’s Rousing Call to Hindu Nation, By Swami Vivekananda, 1963)

With that admonishment, my fellow seekers, I begin my foray into Part 2 of whatever it is that I’m doing. While my first fifty-two blogs were dedicated to the theme of leading an examined life, I aim for these next blogs to focus on what it means to be a “spiritual warrior”, to hone my skills for the purpose of waking sleeping souls, including my own. Towards that end, I’m culling through the resources I’ve accumulated throughout two plus decades of spiritual study and practice to find and share the voices that inspired my journey and increased my understanding of spiritual warriorship. My aim is to provide you, the reader, with references and questions that contribute to awakening your true nature, your spiritual warrior, in an era when “spiritual peace and blessings” appear to be sorely
lacking.

Much inspiration is to be found in: Shambhala: the Sacred Path of the Spiritual Warrior by Dorje Dradul of Mukpo, otherwise known as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. I could spend a lot of time expounding on what a REALLY BIG DEAL it is that Trungpa decided to use his given name — Dorje Dradul of Mukpo, but instead I will simply say that this venerated leader and teacher chose to step away from his roles and religious affiliations in order to address his readers from the standpoint of an ordinary lay person, a fellow seeker, or “the average Joe on the street”. But a seeker who might be curious about what is meant by the “awakened state”. As am I.

So where to begin?

If I asked you to define a spiritual warrior you might call to mind a great crusader like Martin Luther King, or a saintly person such as Mother Theresa. And you would be right, partially. For here I am compelled to clarify that, to my mind it is not their external actions and achievements that belie a spiritual warrior so much as the inner work that ultimately shaped them into influential leaders and social change-makers. Gandhi, another great change-maker, would say their power and influence was built upon an inner congruence: their thoughts and feelings were congruent with their words and deeds. And they used them to the benefit of humanity.

Hence my understanding of the term “spiritual warrior”: I am first called to create an inner congruence, to gain mastery over the small “s” self that is, well, self-ish. If this makes a greater contribution to social justice and welfare, then so much the better. But if such changes stem from “unskillful means”, aimed at elevating one’s status or esteem (aka one’s ego), it will not bring about the transformation of which I speak.

In the short term, then, there is much work to be done in my own back yard. And this work is, first and foremost, about shrinking my ego. Which is no fun at all! My ego wants to be seen and heard, accepted and respected, and above all, to be counted a valuable (read indispensable) member of the community — all stemming from an ingrained need for survival and security — a personality aspect that thinks if “I” get rejected by the tribe, I’ll die.

Much of what I had learned up to a certain point in my life, namely the start of my spiritual journey, was about getting along or getting ahead in the aforementioned tribe. One of the first things I’ve had to understand is: it’s NOT. ABOUT. ME. And, sad to say, it’s not about you, either. It’s about getting out of your own way so that your essence, or what Vivekananda calls your “real nature”, can shine through. And this requires the courage to face your “near enemy”, the “you” that you think I’m talking to! Paradox is the language of self-transformation, and it begins by stepping away from thr “hard-wiring” of conditioned beliefs and preconceived ideas, with curiosity, resilience, and humility.

As Trungpa/Mukpo writes: “Warriorship here does not refer to making war on others. Aggression is the source of our problems, not the solution. Here the word warrior is taken from the Tibetan and literally means ‘one who is brave.’ Warriorship in this context is the tradition of human bravery, or the tradition of fearlessness.”

It is the fearlessness of suspending what you think you know, of bravely stepping into the darkness of the unknown, and learning to navigate life in a refreshingly different (albeit less self-assured) way. I think it’s called a leap of faith. Or as T.S. Eliot would say: “You should be satisfied to have sufficient light to secure the next foothold”. For me, the next foothold is to study the way of the spiritual warrior, to awaken my true nature or inner essence, and, ideally, to propagate the ancient Mother’s message of peace and blessings.

I hope you’ll be curious enough to keep me company

hi folks…

“Meaningful dialogue is absolutely necessary if one is to remain human.” (Thomas Merton New Seeds of Contemplation)

After quietly congratulating myself for having done what I set out to do, (fifty-two in fifty-two) I rested on my laurels for a few days, until my “itchy fingers” told me I was missing my blog Ohana and the focus it gave me!

Contemplating my next steps on this great blogging adventure, I’ve begun formulating a course on leading an examined life that I want to share with those of you who wish to pursue your inner growth and development in a little more depth. And for those of you who just want a weekly reading, you can do that too.

In a series of six or eight segments I plan to focus on the various teachings and practices – and the written resources – that have informed my personal journey, or those whose journeys have inspired me. While introducing some of these ideas in my blog, such as journaling or balanced breathing, I felt that there was more I could do to provide structure and generate further discourse around developing one’s inner potential. From personal experience, I can state, unequivocally, that there is so much more to explore. And to share.

One of my writing teachers, Paul Belserene, motivated his students with this admonition: “Just get to the heart of the matter, and tell the truth.” For those of us who have been focused on building what pundit David Brooks (The Moral Bucket List) called the “resumé virtues” — a list of the degrees and achievements that testify to our socio-economic successes; the focus on his “eulogy virtues” — one’s spiritual life or soul journey has been hit-and-miss at best, if not entirely absent from our lives.

This course would be aimed at addressing this void, at enhancing our self-awareness and understanding, and fostering more meaningful dialogue among those closest to us (including our innermost selves), yet with whom we often relate in a superficial and ultimately unfulfilling way. As we go along, I hope we will become clearer on how to discern what feelings and beliefs ring true for us, and what opinions and conditioning no longer give our lives direction and meaning. Or authenticity.

In order to do justice to this new chapter, I intend to spend the next few weeks outlining and fine-tuning this course offering, and plan to put something online by the beginning of February — after our move to the North Shore (of Vancouver). Once again there will be an option to subscribe ( or not, no offence taken) to the (free) weekly installments of Leading an Examined Life: The Next Chapter.

I hope I’ll have the opportunity to continue learning and growing with you as I embark on the second incarnation of fifty-two-in-fifty-two! Inshallah, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Jolly Kwanzaa, Naw Ruz, Now Rouz, and Gung Hay Fat Choy. And of course, Mele Kalikimaka. If you don’t see your particular festive greeting, it’s because I haven’t fully got to know you yet. Like I said, so much more to explore…

“Aloha is not a word with a simple translation. It doesn’t mean just one thing. Aloha has several meanings. But it’s so much more than just a word.” (Joe Flanagan)

Here I am, back in Hawaïi, contemplating my 52nd blog, and in awe at all the changes that a year of ’living Aloha’ has wrought. Having returned to B.C. (kicking and screaming) in August after spending nine months on the Big Island, I was determined to finish my commitment in the place whose language and culture have had a powerful but ineffable effect on me, as it has had on so many people. This ineffable effect has been called, by some, the Aloha Spirit, and it permeates the islands like something organic, something intangible, something simply embedded in the land and embodied in its people. 

To look more deeply into the many meanings of Aloha (from “hello” to “goodbye” to “I love you”, to name a few), I ordered the English-Hawaïian dictionary created by Mary Kawena Pukui with Samuel H. Elbert. Checking the fine print, I saw that it will arrive around Christmastime. Oops. So back to the internet I went, gravitating to what Joe Flanagan offers by way of explanation:

“…more than just a word, aloha is also a way of life. You may hear the phrase “spreading the aloha spirit.” What exactly does that mean? To answer that question, let’s break down the word into two parts.

     “The Hawaiian word “alo” means “presence” or “share” and the word “ha” means “breath of life” or “essence of life.”

     “So the word aloha is something that you experience, your interaction with life, passion, joy, something that’s present within you. But at the same time, it’s something that you share, something that is spread to those around you, sharing that energy and joy that is within you.”

By this definition, Aloha is not – or should not be – exclusive to the islands of Hawaïi. How often do we register, as our duty to humanity, this sharing of the energy, passion and joy that is within us? The degree to which we take this message seriously, that we pay forward our gratitude, share our passion and our happiness, is the degree to which we embody the spirit of Aloha. 

By this logic, we are responsible for clearing away any obstacles to this exchange of positive energy or essence, this flow of love, compassion and understanding. To me, this means leading an examined life. Tracking my footprints, taking responsibility for the effects of my thoughts and actions and their impact on our planet. It is what inspired me to write a blog for fifty-two weeks. To use any words I might possess – or learn – to convey the meaning and spirit of living Aloha. And what did I learn in the nine months I spent living on the Big Island? 

I learned to pace myself rather than rush around madly trying to tick off boxes created by my inner task master.  

I learned to plant seedlings and stay in one place long enough to see them grow. To harvest arugula and tomatoes, and find homes for an over-abundance of basil and mint, for dozens of lemons and bananas, and the Breitenbach’s surplus mangoes (with permission, of course!) Not to mention learning to compost. The results of which are finally ready, I might add, to spread on the flower beds, though some of the straw etc from those fateful Christmas wreaths look suspiciously “composed”. Aka unchanged from their wreathing days. 

I learned about the patience required to play a musical instrument and render the simplest version of “Over the Rainbow”. Badly. But I still dream of jam sessions down at the beach (or around a campfire at the bottom of the Grand Canyon – the location doesn’t matter) with far better players than me. The more the merrier. 

I learned the importance of getting in touch with what matters, what gives my life purpose and meaning — sharing what I’ve gleaned from decades of studying yoga psychology, philosophy and spirituality in workshops and classes. Daring greatly, as Brené Brown would say, to offer my innermost thoughts in a weekly blog. Which brings me to…

MAHALO

The latter portion of this week’s blog is dedicated to thanking the people who have come on this journey with me. Like Aloha, the Hawaiian word for thank-you, Mahalo has more nuances than that of expressing gratitude; it is both a noun and a verb that convey admiration, regard, respect and esteem. Praise and appreciation. 

I hold all of that and more for the people who have taught me, by walking their talk, how to be living examples of Hawaiian values and proponents of Hawaiian language and culture. Those who have created large-scale community initiatives like Mike Hodson’s (of WOW Tomatoes) Farming for the Working Class; medium-sized initiatives like Mattie Mae Larsen’s Upcycle Hawaïi; and smaller, individual efforts, like Sandy Littelfield’s “tiny houses”. 

There are so many more people with whom I have interacted, shared joy and energy and passion and empathy while living briefly on the Big Island, and many more friends and family on the mainland who equally give my life its true heart and meaning. 

Mahalo nui loa to you all, and to those who have been willing to explore, in their own quiet way, the topics I thought relevant to the theme of leading an examined life. Mere words cannot express my gratitude. 

ʻO wau nō me ka mahalo. ― Respectfully yours, Janet