A yogini at large

“Everything, not just some things – but everything – is workable”.
(Pema Chödrön)

A couple of decades ago I volunteered at Covenant House, a half-way hostel for street youth, located near Vancouver’s downtown east side, or DTES as it is known in social working circles. “One of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods, the DTES is the site of a complex set of social issues including disproportionately high levels of drug use, homelessness, poverty, crime, mental illness and sex work.” (Wikipedia) Yikes.

Along with a friend and fellow yoga student, my role was to run a weekly crafts program for the teens temporarily residing at the center. One option we offered was journaling, surprise surprise, as a way to help the youth vent their feelings and perhaps process some of the many stresses that are endemic to life on the street. One youth, a well-spoken and seemingly highly intelligent teen, described how he came to be staying at Covenant House. His dad and step-mother had moved him and his much younger half-siblings onto an isolated country property, survivalist-style, where he lacked a social context or stimulation for his brighter-than-average mind. He explained: “One day I just got so frustrated that I took my computer outside and blasted it with my twelve-gauge. After that my parents didn’t think my siblings were safe, so they sent me away.” Okaaay…

At a loss for words after hearing this ’confession’, I can’t now remember how I extracted myself from the conversation, but the incident left a profound impression. As a mother, and would-be youth counsellor, I felt unequipped to offer the support I felt this troubled teen needed.

Thereafter, I set out to better prepare myself for dealing with such emotionally challenging situations. Laterally, I learned the balanced breathing exercises that I sorely wished I could’ve offered to that alienated youth. At the time, I certainly could have used such a practice to settled my agitated mind! From a friend who practiced mediation and conflict resolution, I learned of another effective technique that follows these guidelines:

1. Give each person the time and space to express their feelings without interruption, advice or judgment.
2. Acknowledge that each individual has a right to their feelings, whatever they may be.
3. Once an individual knows he or she has been heard, and acknowledged, the emotional memory can be more easily dissipated, and the individuals themselves can be recruited to find novel solutions, or options for going beyond their current problems.

I call this “going meta”.

Wikipedia explains the term as follows: “Meta (from the Greek μετα-, meta-, meaning “after” or “beyond”) is a prefix meaning more comprehensive or transcending.”

Another definition that appealed to me reads: “People talk about “going meta” as upleveling, stepping out of something to observe it, typically because there’s something unresolved at the lower level.”
(Jeremy E. Sherman, “Everything You Can Do, You Can Do Meta| Psychology Today Canada”, January 8, 2020)

What is often at the “lower level” is a perception, bias or story that frames the situation in a certain way, and fails to consider the bigger picture, or enquire into what details might be missing. Including an exploration of how these biases and prejudices came about in the first place — Sherman’s “something unresolved at a lower level”. Though it sounds convoluted, going meta about one’s preconceived thoughts and ideas is a practice of thinking about thinking. In yoga we are encouraged to question how and why we think what we think; asking ourselves “how do I know this is so?”, and “is this idea authentic to me, or did I take it on blind faith from other sources or people? Is it part of my past conditioning, and, if so, can I move beyond all that?”

Depending on how hard and fast I hold on to an opinion or belief, it can take a tremendous effort to let go, stay open and receive new information, particularly if the latter contradicts something to which I have formed a strong emotional attachment. Which is why, as in the case of the homeless youth, I find it vital to bring in a spiritual practice. Find some way to dissipate the emotional energy that could be blocking my capacity to see clearly and respond calmly. As suggested in previous blogs, journaling and balanced breathing are two invaluable tools that anyone can use to become less emotionally invested in a particular answer or agenda.

Why is this important?

Because it is our best hope of freeing ourselves from an endless circle of cause and effect, a cycle of knee-jerk reactions or unrealistic expectations predicated on an unexamined past.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche explains it thus:

“This kind of freedom cannot be created by an outsider or some superior authority. One must develop the ability to know the situation. In other words, one has to develop a panoramic awareness, an all-pervading awareness, knowing the situation at that very moment. It is a question of knowing the situation and opening one’s eyes to that very moment of nowness, and this is not particularly a mystical experience or anything mysterious at all, but just direct, open and clear perception of what is now.”

It is this open and clear perception that gives us what Eckhart Tollé calls “the Power of Now”. The power to respond to people and situations, no matter the provocation, with clarity and patience.

And leave the twelve-gauge on the shelf.

“Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold,”

(T. S. Eliot, “Two Choruses from ‘The Rock,’” The Waste Land and Other Poems)

The other afternoon a friend and I went for a standup paddle on Green Lake (a glacier-fed lake that is actually swim-able after such a warm summer) in the now 34C degree heat. So much for my freezing feet! Armored up with a water bottle, SPF 30, a UV shirt that I soaked before we set out, a big floppy hat and sunglasses; I felt happy and refreshed after a leisurely paddle. With the hat flapping down around my eyes, I had only limited vision as I climbed up the steep path that leads from the lake to the street. As I picked my way carefully up the irregular stone steps, the thought occurred to me that “one step at a time” was a good mantra to repeat as I transition into life in B.C. Not gonna lie, the first couple of days of cold and rain, and the general strangeness, had me itching to get back to the place that, for the past nine months, felt familiar and safe. But we don’t grow where we are too complacent. At least, I don’t.

Prodded on by a need to feel productive and engaged (didn’t I write a blog about that harsh inner taskmaster?) and needing some sense of direction, I’ve been pondering my next steps with a greater-than-necessary sense of urgency. It may even be a character flaw, this need to be occupied and achieving – if not great things – then at least something that justifies my existence. Something that ticks the boxes, or answers the perennial question of “what am I doing with my life”? In my usual manner, I went searching for a clue as to what my next steps could, should, or ought to be.

In what struck me as fortuitous, even serendipitous, I came upon two readings that addressed these existential questions. In today’s Daily Om blog, Madsyn Taylor wrote: “When our next best course of action seems unclear, any dilemmas we face can appear insurmountable.”

She then suggests: “The first step in overcoming any obstacle is to believe that it can be overcome. Doing so will give you the strength and courage to move through any crisis. The second step is to make a resolution that you can prevail over any chaos. Enlist your support network of family and friends if necessary.”

Ironically, my “network of family” is the chaos, more often than not! And, historically, I have always thrived on it. However, after months of relative isolation I struggle to get into the rhythm of life outside the bubble that was Hawaïi. Though hardly a crisis, this first week in B.C. has been disorienting. A part of me wants to crawl into a cave and integrate any changes that I see in myself and my surroundings, to reflect on what has become clear to me, as Walt Whitman would have me do, since last I was in this ’country’.

To sum up Taylor’s column, the advice I gleaned was similar to something my indomitable mother used to say: “Do something…even if it’s wrong.” Though this is strikingly similar to what I encouraged my would-be writer friends to do in last week’s blog, and while in my books doing something is infinitely preferable to doing nothing, Swami Radha, in Time to be Holy offers a different POV:

“When you go through times of difficulty, it is necessary to sit back and wait. Don’t act” … “Even if you have to hold on by your teeth, your fingertips, or your toenails – just hold on. Wait.”

Swami Radha is referring to the difficulties one encounters when trying to lead an examined life, what she calls cooperating with one’s evolution of consciousness. And she believes that tracking one’s footprints is the best way to achieve that evolution. It is tempting to abandon such a contemplative path and simply engage with the shifting circumstances and developments of the everyday. And indeed we must do that too. But the Swami would have us do so with a view to responding, versus reacting to whatever happens. She would have us understand how our choices and actions have affected the world around us, so we could adjust or change our trajectory, if necessary. And she would have us resonate with something that transcends the mundane. Our spiritual journey, as it were.

In reference to the “getting and spending” (as William Wordsworth would say) that preoccupies so much of Western life, Swami Radha writes: “That’s the question that is always there. You always have to go a step further, and ask, “And then what? What happens after I have that? What is the next step?” Indeed!

Having reflected on what these esteemed writers have to say, I’ve concluded that, no matter how credible the authority, the responsibility to choose my next steps ultimately falls to me. One authority might have me act, and the other might advise me to wait patiently for the path to be revealed to me. Fantasy artist James Christensen describes it thus: “Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.” (James Christensen, The Art of James Christensen: A Journey of the Imagination)

It is through tracking my footprints in my journal that I can see where my past choices — or visions — have led me, and only by taking my next steps carefully, as I did climbing those stone steps up from the lake, can I avoid making unnecessary mistakes. No doubt mistakes will be made, anyway; nobody’s perfect. The key is to reflect on the latter, along with any victories, and continue building on a combination of action and reflection that is informed by a vision of who I might become. One step at a time. Satisfied that I have sufficient light to secure the next foothold.

I just wish I had a better flashlight…

“There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind – you are the one who hears it.” (Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)

The other night as I was exhorting my two dinner companions to “just do it” — just commence the writing projects we’d talked about when last we met, I had the sudden thought: “Yikes! Today is Thursday” (which in fact it was not — it was still Wednesday) “and I haven’t made any progress on my blog! I haven’t even started it yet! I have no clue what to write about”. And thus the maniac in my mind started winding me up. The very thing that had inhibited my friends from getting on with their projects was exposed as the voice that tries to sabotage my own progress.

I had advised my friends not to wait for inspiration, but rather to sit down with pen in hand (or computer, tablet or iPad), and note down whatever came to mind about what they were hoping to achieve. Which is what I’m now doing. Not because it’s particularly brilliant or refined or enlightened, but because it’s the only way I can get past the mental guard at the gate of my creativity. This guard or obstacle is what Michael Singer calls our inner roommate, or “maniac inside”, the part of the psyche with which most of us identify and on whose commands and opinions we most rely. At our peril.

So how does one “hear the maniac and do it anyway”? In discussing this with some other friends I learned about the term “energy activation barrier”:

“Imagine waking up on a day when you have lots of fun stuff planned. Does it ever happen that, despite the exciting day that lies ahead, you need to muster some extra energy to get yourself out of bed? Once you’re up, you can coast through the rest of the day, but there’s a little hump you have to get over to reach that point.” (”Activation energy article”, Khan Academy)

Now quadruple that effort when you don’t have lots of fun stuff planned…

Newton’s 1st law of motion also relates to this effort: “If a body is at rest then it will remain at rest unless it is acted upon by an outside force”. Therefore, the cause of inertia is resistance because an object resists changing its state of motion [or rest].” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

In simple terms, most humans resist change. The more a habit or routine becomes comfortable, even mechanical, the more strongly (however unconsciously) we resist changing it. This could be a habit of constant movement and activity, never staying still or reflecting on our actions. Or it could be a tendency to remain rooted to the spot. Heels dug in. Not budging. As it is in physical states of energy, so it is in our mental, emotional, and dare I say spiritual, states. Regardless of how strongly we may desire to shift out of our current patterns, the inertia of our habitual way of being in the world has the pull of a very strong magnet. It’s not my imagination that it gets harder and harder to start a blog as time goes on. Each blog I write is an exercise in transcending the maniac in my mind that says “It’s a waste of time. I’ve got nothing to say. Nobody reads it anyway.” This could well be the case. But my experience with breaking previous energy activation barriers, such as transcending my resistance to swimming in the ocean after a shark incident, or biking on the Queen K Highway, anytime, has taught me that to “just do it” is the only way to get through it.

Knowing that this tendency is not exclusive to me, that it is in fact universal, even scientifically proven, gives me the incentive to set goals that require barrier-breaking motivation and determination. Because they’re there. Knowing I would run into a heap of resistance to the idea of blogging for fifty-two weeks in a row was sufficient motivation to “feel the resistance and do it anyway”. And now I must leap over another barrier which is that of being jet-lagged and disoriented after a nine month ’sabbatical’. As foreshadowed last week, today’s blog is coming to you from Whistler, where it is currently 14 degrees C to Kalaoa’s (Kona, HI) 26 degrees C., and the skies here are a moisture-laden grey. This is a cause for celebration; I’m grateful that these cooler temperatures and rain may help douse the fires that are burning throughout B.C. But my feet are freezing.

In truth, the abrupt change in climate, altitude, surroundings and routine (or lack thereof) are creating an inertia that’s derailing my attempts at writing. But I’m not going to listen to the voice that suggests: “Let’s just give this week a miss.” The fact that it is Monday and I’m still figuratively twiddling my thumbs is why I’ve just given the title of ’Inertia’ to this blog. And told myself to just move on. Trust that the energy to break through this particular barrier will carry me to a conclusion, if not an insightful and elegant one, then at least something that says “Enough, I’m done!”

Yup. That’s all she wrote, folks.

“It suddenly occurs to me that the transition I’m caught up in is NOT the transition from a pre-to-post COVID world, it’s from a pre-to-post COVID me! The concern is not what I will encounter when I return to B.C., but who, what and how I will be.” (Blog post #16, A Yogini at Large March 8, 2021)

It was mildly disturbing to discover that I had already posted a blog on “Transitions” several months ago. At the time, hard as it is to imagine, I was focused on my return to B.C. later that month, before the end of our six-months-less-a-day that we are allowed in the States. Due to another outbreak of COVID our March departure was delayed, and now I am fast approaching a new departure date. Eek.

As plans go, I will be in Whistler to post Blog #38, which, in the meantime, allows me to observe how my mind and body adjust to the reality of leaving Hawaïi. Poorly, as near as I can see. This “difficulty with the dismount” as they say in Olympic gymnastics, is not something that has been mitigated with age. Judging by this morning’s headache, upset tummy and tendency to distract easily from the task at hand (don’t I need to wash my bike, hem those pants, fold those towels and call a repairman about that squeaky kitchen fan?), I can see my ’chicken-with-her-head-cut-off’ tendency running rampant. While all those other chores are legit demands on my time and energy, it is only by writing my blog that I can address what is happening in my mind and body.

To aid my understanding of what’s been going on internally, I searched for the Hawaiian term for transitions, because I appreciate how the Hawaiian vocabulary often builds on a story of how that term came to be, or how it applies, culturally speaking. In my internet search for the equivalent of “transition” or “transformation”, I found the word “Ho’ololi”. According to the Hawaiian electronic library Ulukau, “Ho’o” means “to try” and “loli, to change”. “Hoʻololi i ka manaʻo”, means “to change the mind”. (Or more literally — and realistically — to try to change the mind). I’d really like to change my mind about transitions. I’d like to shift the dead weight of resistance to “what is”, to something more positive.

Martha Beck, a favorite life coach and author, offers an intriguing perspective on how one’s “internal wiring” can aid or inhibit one’s ability to transit from one activity or program to another. She describes two groups with very different attitudes towards timing. The first —monochrones — lead well-structured, punctual, and schedule-driven lives, wherein time is “fixed, rigid and absolute”. By contrast, the second group — polychrones — “see time as loose and elastic”. They have a fluid sense of time and can get so absorbed in what they’re doing that they tend to lose track of meetings, schedules and deadlines. Beck writes:

“Entire cultures can be polychronic or monochronic. In a polychronic country, dinner may continue throughout the night, and appointment times are suggestions, not space-launch absolutes. But First World cultures (except maybe Mediterranean ones) are extremely monochronic. Our high-tech society requires human synchronization on a massive scale: Huge numbers of us must show up at precisely agreed upon places, at precisely agreed upon times.”

I am unarguably polychronic, and Hawaii, as far as I can see, is a polychronic culture, which suits me to a ’T’. Which also explains why I have great difficulty leaving. Not only have I dug deep roots in a relatively short time, absorbed in all things garden as never before, but I also find I am more in synch with the casual spontaneity, the organic flow of life on the Big Island. Locals and tourists alike are familiar with the term “Hawaiian time”, which differs greatly from the monochronic culture of the mainland, where, until COVID interrupted the supply chain (among other things), one could reasonably predict a correct ETA for everything from mail delivery to garbage pickup to subway trains. But for those of us who can’t always ’keep up with the plot’, as the Brits would say, (you can look it up) changing course in a major way can be disconcerting at best, and traumatizing at worst. Beck even uses the term “transition trauma” to describe how difficult it is for a polychrone to disengage from whatever has arrested their attention:

“Although disengaging feels to us polychrones like having our molars pulled, transition trauma is brief (it goes away as soon as you’re engaged with the next activity), and it’s much better than most alternatives”. (Aka getting fired, losing friends, or suffering feelings of extreme inadequacy.)

The trauma for me in going back to B.C. would be losing the more laid-back approach I have adapted in the past nine months; losing track of the simple joys of puttering in my garden (which one grandchild egregiously calls “Meme’s farm”); and instead feeling a need to compare and compete (if only in terms of needing someone to show me who, what and how to be).

As fate would have it, I concluded Blog #16, with a clarion call to my future self:

“Unlike Alice waiting to be told who she is before she will leave the rabbit hole, the “me” who emerges from the detox that is COVID has to be informed by my own vision of who, what and how I want to be. And not only informed, but inspired and motivated, as Gandhi would say, to be the change I wish to see in the world today.”

It seems ironic that my next blog, #38, will be double the number of blogs written since I first explored the topic of transitions. Or transformation, as the Hawaiian dictionary would have me say. What has become clear to me since then is that to stay engaged and focused in the present moment, as any good polychrone is wont to do, may mean I miss the odd deadline, but I won’t have time to second-guess or dread whatever’s coming around the bend.

Now if I could just find where I left my head…

“It takes courage to say yes to rest and play when exhaustion is seen as a status symbol.” (Brenee Brown)

The other afternoon I asked one of our grandsons (whom I think is an old soul) what I should focus on for this week’s blog. His response was succinct:

“Doing nothing.”

He followed this with the observation that: “We’re never really doing nothing when we say we’re doing nothing.” Then he went off to join his friends to “do nothing” while I pondered his thought-provoking comment.

Shortly thereafter, an Instagram post from Brenee Brown (as quoted above) was the “second witness” to a message re: learning to take it easy. Hmmmm.

The “third witness” was an email from a good friend who wrote: “Of course you’re tired. Need I remind you that you are always exhausted being with your grandkids, pretty much at a nonstop pace, I’m guessing. And I hate to mention the part about tiring more easily at our age, but I just said it.” Sheesh!

Finally, I opened my Daily Om blog to a post extolling the virtues of napping: “Though judged by many as a pastime of little children or the lazy, the need for a nap is a trait that all mammals share and an acceptable part of the day in many countries.”

That decided it.

The theme for blog #36 became “rest and play”, or “ho’omaha a pa’āni. “Ho’omaha: to give oneself a break”. “A pa’āni: to frolic, joke or play a game”. Pretty self-explanatory. Think footloose and fancy free. The way one dreams that island life should be. And often is. For those wise souls who have what David Brooks calls “a settled philosophy about fundamental things”. In order to join those savvy folk, I think it bears considering the cost to body, mind and spirit, of keeping oneself constantly busy.

I disagree, however, with Brenee’s observation that “exhaustion is a status symbol”. (Our daughter has five kids and is running on fumes most of the time. I don’t think she’d be amused). However, I do see how a pattern of being constantly busy sometimes runs unchecked in my own life. Surrounded, intentionally, by active, motivated and accomplished people means I am confronted, on a regular basis, with a “compare and compete” mentality. My own, that is.

I can’t count how many conversations start with a friendly “So what have you been up to today?” which spurs an urgent inner need to share something praise-worthy: “I biked, paddled, sailed, swam, did yoga, hiked, practiced banjolele, harvested tomatoes etc. etc”. Maybe not all on the same day, but still…

I now understand how this internal pressure to constantly tick off boxes can contribute to the exhaustion that Brenee Brown talks about. I actually tried to convince the few adult members of our family who are visiting us in Hawaïi to participate in a discussion about what we learned “before, during and after” COVID. A group dialogue re: “What adjustments have each of us made? What adaptations do we plan to retain? What things no longer serve a useful purpose? What has to change?” And behind it all looms the elephant in the room: “What to do now that the pandemic is ’over’”?

I recognized the down-side of this desire for a ’post-COVID growth inventory’ when I read Anna North’s Vox article titled: “Lockdown was not a sabbatical. Don’t worry if you haven’t grown as a person during the pandemic”. North noted that “The pandemic gave rise to new, weird kinds of productivity discourse”. A “water-cooler” conversation that might previously have exchanged work-place goals and objectives among office mates, has lately shifted to the domestic arena. The pandemic ushered in a host of internet offerings aimed at ways to productively fill our erstwhile work days. Those fortunate souls who sheltered at home got to live vicariously through social media. Communicate through Zoom. Were inspired – or exhorted – to start new hobbies, catch up on our reading and/or neglected household chores. Or choose from countless online courses. For me, personally it was an opportunity to start composting, herb gardening, banjolele playing, exercising obsessively, and of course, blogging. Busy, busy, busy. And that was before five grandkids arrived.

North’s article was further helpful in letting me know that I’m not alone. She quotes David Blustein, a professor of counseling psychology at Boston College as saying: “An obsessive focus on productivity is part of late-stage American capitalism”. With the result that, during the pandemic, “This productivity ethos has gotten transported into our hobbies, it’s gotten transported into our relationships, into our physical and mental health.”

Guilty as charged!

My idea for the family discussion was a telling example of how Blustein’s “productivity discourse” had pervaded my own pre-and-post COVID approach. Far from freeing me/us from the need for measurable productivity, Anna North observed that the post-COVID discourse was simply “shifting toward the idea that the pandemic should have been a learning experience, helping us optimize our skills, our lives, and ourselves for post-pandemic living”. Same s**t, different pile.

And the antidote to this culturally-conditioned push for productivity?
My grandson’s suggestion of “doing nothing” might just be the remedy I need.

Ho’omaha A’pa’āni Rx: Take a nap. Go play outside.

“Reason sets the boundaries far too narrowly for us, and would have us accept only the known — and that too with limitations — and live in a known framework, just as if we were sure how far life actually extends. As a matter of fact, day after day we live far beyond the bounds of our consciousness.” (Carl Jung)

Many years ago a group of us visited a village market spread out over several cobbled streets that radiated, spoke-like, from a central square. As lunchtime approached, all but one of us managed to meet up at the appointed hour and place. Not wanting to keep hungry grandchildren waiting, I embarked on the seemingly futile errand of finding Sarah, our missing person. There were so many people milling about and possible routes to search that I more or less froze on the spot where we’d last seen her a couple of hours earlier. With no better idea of how to find Sarah, all I could think to do was concentrate on ’beaming her in’ telepathically (though not holding out much hope for success). Imagine my surprise when, mere minutes later, she wandered right up to me! 

How did that happen? Yes, coincidence is a possible explanation. Perhaps even likely. But so is telepathy, a psychic phenomenon that has gained credibility thanks to relatively recent neurological studies that I won’t go into at this moment.

Ever since that day at the market I have been curious about what can be achieved through the power of intention and, corollary to that, the other means through which humans can gather and exchange information outside those channels recognized by modern science and technology. Over the years of peripheral exposure to its language and lore, I have developed an appreciation for the spiritual and mystical aspects of Hawaiian culture, and how, as in other indigenous societies, important knowledge has been passed down orally, through songs, symbols and “talking story”. Among other legendary Hawaiian exploits, the journey of the outrigger sailing canoe “Hōkūle’a” is a tale that captured my imagination:

“Hōkūleʻa, our Star of Gladness, began as a dream of reviving the legacy of exploration, courage, and ingenuity that brought the first Polynesians to the archipelago of Hawaiʻi. The canoes that brought the first Hawaiians to their island home had disappeared from earth. Cultural extinction felt dangerously close to many Hawaiians when artist Herb Kane dreamed of rebuilding a double-hulled sailing canoe similar to the ones that his ancestors sailed. Though more than 600 years had passed since the last of these canoes had been seen, this dream brought together people of diverse backgrounds and professions. Since she was first built and launched in the 1970s, Hōkūle’a continues to bring people together from all walks of life. She is more than a voyaging canoe — she represents the common desire shared by the people of Hawaii, the Pacific, and the World to protect our most cherished values and places from disappearing.” (Polynesian Voyaging Society website) 

One of the more intriguing aspects of Hōkūle’a’s story was the revival of almost-extinct navigational skills that ancient Polynesians developed to cross vast swaths of the Pacific Ocean without the aid of such ’modern’ instruments as Captain Cook used when he sailed from Europe to Hawaïi. We know that Polynesians used natural navigation aids such as the stars, ocean currents, and wind patterns, but it is also told that they communed with the spirits of their ancestors — their aumakua — to aid in their “wayfinding”: 

This manner of communing with ancestral spirits is also discussed in a book I discovered recently, called: “Other Ways of Knowing: Recharting Our Future With Ageless Wisdom”. In his introduction the author, John Broomfield explains: 

“At a time when many despair about the fate of the earth, my purpose with this book is to bring you the good news that the necessary wisdom is readily available from many sources: From the sacred traditions of our ancestors. From the spiritual lives of our own and other cultures. From spirit in nature. From the deep knowledge of healthy processes embedded in our own bodies. From feminine ways of being. From contemporary movements for personal, social and ecological transformation. Unexpectedly, even from the apparent source of our current crisis: science itself.”

I’m not entirely in agreement with Broomfield’s comment about science being the apparent source of our current problems. Think COVID vaccines. But I can imagine, as Jung said, that a balance needs to be restored between that which is deemed scientifically valid or worthy and that which led an artist to dream up a sailing canoe such as his ancestors used. And then use it to generate dialogue and cooperation between a widely scattered — and not always friendly — Pacific island chain. 

Why is any of this relevant to me? To us? As one who is prone to overthink things, I have used much of the “time-out-of-time” that was imposed by COVID to ponder what might have brought our culture closer to the brink of extinction. This may sound extreme, but, in a conversation about what we learned from the pandemic, and how we might go forward more intentionally, our thirteen year old grandson observed somewhat fatalistically, “The Delta variant is probably just one of many that’ll wipe us all out, eventually. So what’s there to discuss?”

This thought has also occurred to me. It seems to me that the ’need and greed’ mentality that pervades Western society, the attitude that the physical or natural environment is separate from us and designed to serve our every need, is as much a disease as any virus could be. As with the creators of Hōkūle’a, I sense a great need to protect our most cherished values and places from disappearing. And I agree with John Broomfield that at least some of the answers to our current crises are embedded in a spiritual dimension that has always existed. I’d like to believe that the spirit of exploration, courage and ingenuity that carried the ancient Polynesians across vast, uncharted territory could be harnessed, and enhanced by modern science and technology, to find solutions to our current global issues.  

Oops! I think my soap box just broke…

“Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.”
(Madame De Staël)

The other day a friend shared a Hawaiian word that may be one of the least heard about, or least often observed, in social situations in this day and age. I thought “olu olu”, politeness or courtesy, would be a better topic to explore, or a better way to approach the theme that occurred to me initially, which was “target practice” — the human tendency to take hostages when unable to deal with one’s own problems. (Besides, as you can imagine, I couldn’t find a politically correct quote to go with “target practice”.)

Even a bad mood unwittingly affects the energy around me, much as a dark cloud casts a pall on its surroundings. If I am to be the change I wish to see in the world today, it behooves me to make a habit of owning whatever shadows I might cast.

Experience has taught me to take notice of my effect on the people around me, and vice versa, and to “choose among my thoughts” so as not to create the aforementioned pall. I set aside time each morning to take inventory of my mental-emotional state, and to address any deficits before they adversely effect my day. I record my thoughts and feelings in my journal so I can get some detachment and objectivity, an arm’s-length POV. This morning’s reflections enabled me to see how yesterday’s talk of shark sightings had filled me with an unconscious dread of joining the ocean swim this morning. I observed just how easy it is to let these fearful conversations — or other sensational news and disturbing events — sink in overnight, and then muddy my thoughts and mood when I wake up the next day. Despite not being immediately able to trace from whence they came, these impressions can produce a nebulous anxiety that in turn leads to all sorts of difficulties, such as taking hostages of the people around me, as I try to dissipate the not-so-easy-to sit-with feelings. Or even taking hostage of me, by refusing to go in swimming!

I am forever grateful for the teachings of Yasodhara Yoga and Transpersonal Psychology that help me to calm and center myself again. Restore my balance and equanimity. Journaling is key. Mantra practice is another invaluable tool. Walking meditations, visualizations, and breathing exercises are also useful aids. Daily inspirational readings offer different perspectives and expand my sense of things. Though selected at random, these readings often provide the very lesson or guidance that I need. This morning I chose a reading in Thomas Merton’s “New Seeds of Contemplation”, because I recognized that my tendency to compare and compete had set my thoughts and emotions on a negative trajectory.

This is where the notion of hostage taking, or “target practice” come into the picture. If I am experiencing particularly low self-esteem, if my mood runs towards negativity, if some unresolved frustration or disappointment lands on my plate, I run the risk of venting these feelings on a convenient, undeserving hostage. This is what contemporary psychology calls “displacement”. A version of coming home from a bad day at the office and kicking the dog. Today’s reading spoke succinctly to that problem:

“He has planned to do spectacular things. He cannot conceive of himself without a halo. And when the events of his daily life remind him of his own insignificance and mediocrity, he is ashamed, and his pride refuses to swallow a truth at which no man should be surprised.”

This denial of one’s “flawed humanity” is what often gives rise to displacement, the unconscious defense mechanism that the ego erects to protect itself from shame or disgrace. “When we use displacement, our mind senses that reacting to the original source of our frustration might be unacceptable—even dangerous [including to our self-esteem, if not also our ego]. Instead, it finds us a less threatening subject that can serve as a safer outlet for our negative feelings.” (Verywell Mind website)

Certainly I am familiar with such pride as Merton describes. It’s a denial of what should be so obvious: I am intrinsically flawed, as are we all, and furthermore, being flawed is not a problem. Our task is to just let go of a need for perfection and the compulsion to rate oneself as better or worse than anyone else. Simply recognize and acknowledge our flaws, and accept ourselves and others with compassion and tolerance.

Merton’s conclusion offers an appealing alternative to displacement and hostage-taking:

“Having given up all desire to compete with other men, they suddenly wake up and find that the joy of God is everywhere, and they are able to exult in the virtues and goodness of others more than ever they could have done in their own. They are so dazzled by the reflection of God in the souls of the people they live with that they no longer have the power to condemn anything they see in another. Even in the greatest sinners they can see virtues and goodness that no one else can find. As for themselves, if they still consider themselves, they no longer dare to compare themselves with others. The idea has now become unthinkable. But it is no longer a source of suffering and lamentation: they have finally reached the point where they take their own insignificance for granted.”

That sounds a lot like olu olu, to me. The courtesy of giving others the benefit of the doubt. The wisdom of seeing that we are all imperfect to some degree or another. The politeness of choosing our thoughts and actions accordingly.

And the humility of taking my own insignificance for granted.

Besides, I don’t even own a dog.

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” (Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr)

The above, oft-quoted phrase commonly translates to: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

I respectfully disagree.

This week several members of our family were reunited in Hawaïi after a long COVID hiatus. During this time I have had many months of separation from my family, while still leading a full life in Hawaïi, which has enabled me to see that I am not just the roles that once defined me. I am not just a wife and mother, nor a yoga aspirant and teacher. Those roles defined me in context with other people, whereas I’ve come to see who I am alone, with myself, “in the dark woods” as Dante would say. I’ve come to see that I’m a soul having a human experience, and currently that experience is a reunion with some of the people who give my life heart and meaning. And occasional “blood, sweat and tears”!

This morning, in an attempt to create a semblance of order amidst the clutter of pool toys, soggy swimsuits, rusting matchbox cars, various and assorted hats, UV shirts, mismatched socks and flip flops, I picked up a familiar pair of swim goggles that I thought I’d worn not long ago. Wondering why I’d relegated them to the “community property (or might-be-useful-junk) bin” I inspected them more closely and spotted multiple small scratches on the plastic eye-pieces. Marks made before I realized that the goggles I’d absent-mindedly handed to one of our ten grand-toddlers, had served as an effective, albiet expensive teething toy. Oy.

Something about this simple reminder of times past prompted me to reflect on how our family has grown in numbers and stages, and to ask myself, through all these changes, if I am the same person I have always been. Aside from physicality, how substantially have I changed as I aged? Who am I today, after the aforementioned COVID hiatus? Who, indeed, are you?

A few years ago I wrote a memoir that catalogued the turning points in my life, and particularly, how I came to be on what I consider a spiritual journey. The memoir, begun on the eve of my sixty-fifth birthday, marked a sort of rite of passage, in which I explored what had steered me to an in-depth, twenty-plus year study of Eastern philosophy, psychology and spirituality, and then to abruptly veer away from what was, by that time, very much a part of my identity. With the aid of a brilliant writing coach and personal historian I was able to distill what the Buddha describes as the first of his seven dharma (or wisdom-mind) tenets:

“Having a sense of oneself means knowing your strengths and weaknesses in terms of conviction, virtue, learning, generosity, discernment, and quick-wittedness. In other words, you know which qualities are important to focus on, and can assess objectively where you still have more work to do.” (Tricycle: The Buddhist Review)

This blog is part of the work I still have to do. Through it, I aim to articulate for myself what social commentator David Brooks, in his Moral Bucket List, deems a “settled philosophy about fundamental things.” His article helps me discern the essential elements of a life well-lived, a potential best-fulfilled. And, most importantly, to determine what sort of legacy I hope to leave.

An essential element of the legacy I hope to leave my family is a certain degree of self-confidence, or self-belief. Having spent much of my life deferring to what outside ’experts’ (parents, teachers, peers, the media) told me I should be or believe, it wasn’t until my mid-sixties that I realized there is no greater authority in-or-on my life than me. I am responsible for the choices I have made, and must bear the consequences of the actions I have taken. This requires some degree of self-belief. I have to trust that I have acted in good faith and am willing to grow and change, admit and learn from my mistakes. Hence I chose to focus this week on the Hawaiian term “hilina’i pono’i”, the trait or quality of self-belief. In the words of Hawaiian cultural specialist Luana Kawa’a:

“Literally, hilina’i translates as to believe, trust; to lean on, rely on; confidence. Sometimes in life we can feel defeated. Especially in these trying times, it can be hard to believe that things will get better. Even in the midst of challenges we must hilina’i — believe. Believe that things will improve. Believe that there is hope. Hilina’i also means to trust and lean on. It is so important to surround ourselves with people we can lean on and trust with complete confidence. Friends and family that can be the ko’o, support posts we need to lift us and at times, even carry us through.”

One of the (many) meanings of pono’i reads as follows: “In Hawaiian culture, if a person is living pono, it means that they have struck the right balance in their relationships with other things, places, and people in their lives. It also means that they are living with a continuous conscious decision to do right by themselves, by others, and by the world in general.” (Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel Hoyt Elbert’s Hawaiian Dictionary)

Google Translate offers “hilina’i pono’i” as the translation for “self-confidence”, so it follows that there will be times when one must be able to “believe, trust; lean on, rely on, have confidence in” ONESELF.

This is the greatest change or shift that I have made as I aged. To not only believe in myself, be my own authority, but to have created, through leading an examined life, a “settled philosophy” about what, for me, has heart and meaning. Though there are still times spent wandering in that figurative dark woods, I know what qualities to focus on, and how to see what still needs to change in order to become the best me that I can be.

Now to find a decent pair of swim goggles.

“As a man thinketh, so is he”. (Proverbs 23:7)

The other day an incident happened that left me struggling to restore my inner equanimity. I thought I would process it in a blog, but, having already written about equanimity a dozen or so blogs ago, I looked for an approach that would best restore my physical, mental and emotional well-being. Ultimately, I chose to process it through journaling, or what psychologist James W. Pennebaker calls “expressive writing”. More on that later.

The incident that triggered this disequilibrium happened the morning a large female monk seal hoisted herself up onto the local beach. Reports vary on how many monk seals (estimated at no more than 1,400) populate Hawaiian waters, but the words “rare” and “endangered” invariably crop up when the seal is discussed or, in this case, when she comes in to sleep on the patch of sand that is our usual water access. The spot where a stream of outrigger canoeists, paddle boarders, snorkelers, power boaters and swimmers enter and exit the ocean in increasing numbers now that summer has begun. Needless to say, it’s not an ideal situation. While conservation officers patrol, and signs and makeshift barriers are erected around the seal to keep people at bay, some beachgoer inevitably wanders too close and elicits a volley of sharp warning barks from this massive sea creature. (An adult female monk seal ranges in size from six to eight feet long and weighs four to six hundred pounds. Not one to be messed with.)

On the morning in question, I registered with horror that a two year old toddler was making a bee-line for the sleeping seal, while his mother was preoccupied with his baby sibling. Seeing what was unfolding like a bad dream, I vaulted out of my chair, dashed down the beach and grabbed the young lad just as he reached the tail end of “Mrs. Monk Seal”, as she is known to children around here. Thank goodness it wasn’t her head! This she reared up immediately, her throaty barks warning us off as I scrambled for a footing in the soft, wet sand. I now understand the expression: “time stood still”, as I pitched down onto my knees, calling frantically for someone to grab the little boy, whom I couldn’t lift up the bank, and out of range of the irritated seal. Within seconds the whole incident was over, the poor baffled child was returned his mother, where he hid from the maniac (me) who had so rudely interrupted his trajectory.

Meanwhile, I crumpled onto the nearest chair, gasping for air, heart racing, too stunned to move. Joan Didion’s “Life changes in a heartbeat” flashed through my mind. But, thinking I’d made enough of a spectacle of myself for one day, I tried to shove the incident out of my mind and spent the rest of the morning paddling in and around the water with a new-found, four-year-old friend who enjoyed pushing a boogie board between a mooring buoy and a couple of inflated rafts anchored just offshore. Child’s play, as they say.

Later, however, the event haunted me throughout a restless sleep. Visions of what could have happened flooded my chest with a kind of latent dread. The next day I had a roaring headache and was utterly zapped of energy. Nursing a pulled muscle in my leg that registered once the shock wore off, I simply couldn’t restore my balance and equanimity. I realized I had to pro-actively change the inner narrative of “coulda, shoulda, woulda” that only compounded the recovery from what my rational mind told me was a relatively minor incident.

Enter a New York Times Opinion article that I encountered early this morning which addressed what I was attempting to do — revise the story that was running overtime in my mind. What psychologists call my “narrative arc”. Writing about the human tendency to put the pandemic behind us without a backward glance, Author Emily Esfahani Smith urges her readers to pause for a beat before getting on with their post-COVID revelry. Advising the reader to reflect on the story they’re telling themselves (or denying) about the past sixteen plus months, Smith writes:

“…if we want to emerge from this crisis whole instead of broken, we need to process what we’ve lost. Rather than bulldoze past our grief straight into the delights of summer, we should take the time to work through it.”

She describes how one’s story-telling style, one’s way of framing events as positive or negative, can influence one’s wellness on multiple levels. And ultimately, set the course of one’s life. While therapists and spiritual counselors are also recommended, Smith advises the reader to try “expressive writing” as a means of processing the many changes and losses that the pandemic has wrought.

Citing Dr. Dan McAdams, a personality psychologist, Smith introduces the idea of narrative identity. “Most people, whether they realize it or not, carry an ongoing narrative in their minds about themselves — who they are, where they came from and where they are going. We consciously and unconsciously create this story by taking the disparate fragments of our lives and assembling them into a coherent whole.

 “Dr. McAdams encouraged people to divide their lives into chapters, recount major events, reflect on early memories and pull out the overarching themes in their narratives. After analyzing these stories, McAdams found that some people tell what he calls “redemptive” stories while others tell “contamination” stories.”

In layman’s terms, the redemptive story is one in which we frame our experience, although sad or difficult, in a way that offers some grace, some silver lining that enhances our wisdom and understanding. Depending on what we tell ourselves, even a ’bad’ experience can be put in a broader context that ’softens its edges’. By contrast, the contamination story is one in which we conclude that an event has no compensating features, and, to some degree or other, has irreversibly wasted or ruined some or all of one’s life.

Obviously, the monk seal incident is easier to put in context than my year plus of ’girl interrupted’ by COVID. But the same theory applies. As does Smith’s and McAdams’s advice. Expressive writing (aka regular and consistent journaling) is an invaluable tool for making sense of life’s events. Over the next couple of days I took time to un-pack — in writing — what was lodged in my memory as a “bad” day at the beach.

For one thing, I learned a lot about the little boy with whom I spent the rest of the morning. I learned that he was recovering from what his mother later explained were three cancer-related operations and a year of chemotherapy. During COVID.

Floating alone-together on a small raft in the Pacific Ocean, this brave little lad told me the story of his “big surgeries” and how he got a present when it “ended”. He must’ve been three when his cancer journey began. Who knows what impact that experience will have on his particular life narrative? I doubt it was the first, nor will it be the last time he tells his story, but relating these events to other people could be seen as the child’s attempt to process a bewildering, and no doubt painful time in his very young life. His version of expressive writing. Hearing him trying to pronounce words that are foreign to most four-year-olds, my heart filled with empathy for him and his family. Four people who were, only hours earlier, simply strangers at the beach, immediately became the newest members of my Aloha Ohana.

A redemptive story about the-monk-seal-that-interrupted-my-morning, if ever there was one.

“Do you believe in rock ‘n’ roll,
Can music save your mortal soul…?” (”American Pie”, by Don McLean)

I don’t know about music — though I suspect it can — but I do know that gardening helps save MY mortal soul. Today I pulled apart a big rectangular flower arrangement that a friend gave me from her daughter’s virtual bat mitzvah (the first of any kind of bat mitzvah that I’ve had the honour to attend) and layered them into my six-months-old composter. Separating the moss and leaves, wilted blooms and rusted tacks from the florist’s-foam-holder brought me back to the early days of my compost initiation.

Bought to recycle the detritus of my two big Christmas wreaths, the compost barrel that I installed in December has now had time to “forgive” my earlier error of adding pine needles to the mix, and, after countless infusions of vegetable matter, one compost compartment is almost ready to spread on the garden. How monumental is that! I’ve designated it for our new avocado and strawberry papaya trees (that I suspect might bear fruit in the next millennia). But hey, I’ve just harvested three out of five of our white pineapples, and that seemed highly unlikely a half-year ago (particularly because we were scheduled to go home in April, when they were still deeply green). Not to mention the scores of bananas and oranges, lemons and limes that have been harvested over time. And now, drum roll please, we can pick parsley, basil, dill, thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary, mint, radishes, green onions, arugula and, one day soon, plum tomatoes. Digging, watering, sowing seeds, waiting patiently, and of course harvesting produce an upswell of satisfaction that’s hard to duplicate. There’s really no word in the Hawaiian vocabulary that I’ve learned that describes that elated feeling of accomplishment, of being one step closer to self-sufficiency. So I settled on the expression ’Kou Ola Pono’.

In the Hawaiian language, ’kou’ translates as ’your’ and the word for health is ‘ola’ meaning ‘life’. The word ’pono’ has strong cultural and spiritual connotations of ’a state of harmony or balance’. In old Hawai‘i, the natives relied heavily on the ‘āina (the land) and their akua (gods) for their health and healing. Thus, ’kou ola pono’ defines good health as a balance between care of the land, including the human body, and the mana — energy or spirit of a person or place. Since pono stands for balance and integrity, it is believed that our actions must be infused with this quality in order to serve a worthy purpose. To be ’pono’ means to be in a state of harmony or balance with oneself, others, the land, work and life itself.

Reflecting on my training in transpersonal studies, kou ola pono echoes the Bhuddist tenet of right livelihood: “Our vocation can nourish our understanding and compassion, or erode them. We should be awake to the consequences, far and near, of the way we earn our living”, (Thich Nhat Hahn). The Christian teaching of the Golden Rule, or ’Do unto others as you would have done unto you’ also reflects the ideal of kou ola pono.

Imagine our world if more people embraced such humanitarian ideals.

While several islanders I know have or are building family compounds that include much more comprehensive gardens than mine, with coffee farms for revenue and even hunting and fishing practices to sustain their families, I wonder what living pono means for someone like me? Or for you, my mainland friends and city dwellers? Each week, as I learn new Hawaiian words and values, I ponder the ways these humanitarian ideals apply to my life, and manifest in the culture around me. According to Wikipedia, such ideals as I observe in Hawaïi are based on “an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans, in order to improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic and logical reasons.” I have seen this benevolent treatment take the form of magnanimous financial donations to local aid agencies. I see other friends supplying meals to a posse of homeless youth (who, thanks to COVID, are ubiquitous throughout the West) or assembling care packages for families living on the margins of society.

These examples inspire and motivate me to get out and join my friends in their community causes, but there is one small but significant thing I can do without leaving my living room. I can suspend judgment, even as I read news or watch tv, and instead, see other people as part of one big human family, the aloha ohana, sharing the strength and synergy that grow from a foundation of belonging and community. A foundation of living pono. Fostering a sense of global community that starts with cleaning up my own back yard.

Which reminds me, I seem to have veered off from the soul-saving properties of gardening with which I started this blog, so I’ll end with a note-to-self for other would-be “herbies*”: egg shells, avocado pits, and pistachio shells all take forever to decompose. Wishful thinking won’t alleviate this. Just. Say. No. to putting them in your compost. You’ll thank me later.

*herbies: short for the Martha Stewart wannabes of the grow-your-own-herbs community. Currently numbering me.