A yogini at large

PRIMING THE WELL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

THE PATH

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

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

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

Ruumet expands on her topic:

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

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

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

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

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

Or...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SELF-INVESTIGATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aum Namah Sivayah

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

WHO AM I?

There were at least three people sharing a pool lane with me this morning. All having a lot to say. Making waves on the otherwise glass-calm water. The pool was empty. The personalities disturbing the peace of an aquamarine morning were all in my head. So many conversations going on. Such a great way to spoil an exceptionally clear and warm morning. Finally, floating on my back and staring up at the cloudless expanse of robin’s-egg-blue, I was able to witness this inner bickering with just enough equanimity to temporarily drown out the noise by repeating the Divine Light mantra that I learned at Yasodhara Ashram in the late 1980s:

“I am created by Divine Light. I am sustained by Divine Light. I am protected by Divine Light. I am surrounded by Divine Light. I am ever growing into Divine Light.”

Later, as I reflected on the dissonance between the restless activity of my mind and that infinity of blue sky, an excerpt from Swami Radhananda’s Living the Practice came to mind. In her chapter titled “A Skylike Mind” she writes:

“We spend so much time identifying with the busy mind, the monkey mind, the restless mind, all the names we label it with. We focus on the limitations, rather than the potential. We try to control it, overcome the negative tendencies, but what if we let the Light in? What if we recognized our minds as Light?”

Simply put, we identify all too often with one or two facets of our psyche, call them personality aspects or egos that run the show. When we feel threatened or vulnerable, our reasoning faculties can get hijacked by the reptilian brain that psychologist Dan Siegel explains with the analogy of a two-storey home:

“The downstairs brain, often referred to as the reptilian or primitive brain, contains the brain stem, limbic region and the amygdala. This instinctive part of the brain is well developed from birth and is responsible for basic physical functioning, along with the innate threat responses of fight, flight, freeze, or [appease].”

This downstairs brain is also responsible for producing strong emotions like fear and anger that can, if the upstairs brain is insufficiently developed, completely override the rational, thinking capacities and cripple one’s ability to make sound decisions, control their behaviour or show empathy.

Seigel’s analogy continues with: “the upstairs brain can be imagined as a light filled, airy, second storey study, library or bedroom filled with windows and sky lights, enabling us to see the world more clearly.”

Siegel describes the exchange of information between downstairs and upstairs levels of the brain as a staircase. When working well, the staircase enables us to consider the emotional and physical messages coming from the downstairs brain and use the thinking and analysing upstairs brain to determine a course of action. Unfortunately, much of what we witness in society today is illustrative of a failure to ascend that staircase. A failure, on a very fundamental level, to control our self-serving agendas or kneejerk defenses. In Untethered Soul Michael Singer calls this impulsive, immature aspect our “inner maniac”.

Swami Radhananda has this to offer:

“When the Light lights up your mind, first you may have to address what it reveals – all the fears hidden in the dark, the issues left unaddressed – and clean up the clutter. And with the space that emerges, you may then experience a different kind of fear, what you could call a holy fear, a fear of the unknown, luminous mind.

“To face the awesome part of ourselves is a difficult thing to do. We live in a mundane reality, and to go from the mundane to the unexplainable is a huge step for the mind. You will find that you are asking new questions, such as: Who am I? What is my responsibility, knowing that this luminous place is possible?”

I do know that this luminous place is possible. I know its my responsibility to ascend that staircase each and every day. And I know when I’m nowhere near being in that second-storey brain. In the pool this morning I could honestly say I was out of my right mind. Even to register this is a major victory.

Using the tools of journaling, breathwork, mantra chanting and/or Light Invocations, I am steered intuitively to the messages I need, which is to firmly step away from the inner conversations, as I did by switching to the Light mantra in the pool. More often than not, these conversations are just the residue of hidden fears and unfinished emotional business, the product of convoluted logic, or no logic at all. That cleaning up this clutter can be a colossal struggle only shows how far I yet have to go to achieving Swami Radhananda’s skylike mind:

“This is what yoga is all about – building awareness of the Light and building the courage to live life. “I am not the body. I am not the mind. I am Light eternal.” Make the space available – have a skylike mind that holds the Light.”

Aum Namah Sivayah

Here are two links that might serve for future use in the struggle with your inner maniac: https://youtu.be/TaqQlW-3yDg?si=fHhNhRuAc3rDJPw1

and https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Divine_Light_Invocation/RQ088-vIVhQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

PEOPLE POWER

BLOG 41

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead)

Last Thursday I spent a fulfilling couple of hours preparing Easter baskets for foster children and other underprivileged youngsters. I stumble on the word ‘underprivileged’ because it suggests that a certain segment of society decides what constitutes a ‘privileged’ lifestyle. I’d almost prefer to use the word ‘under-served’ because that suggests society in general owes all of our youngsters an equal opportunity to grow into their full potential.

As naïve as that notion may be, it never hurts to work towards it, which is what happened with regards to the Easter baskets. It was a kind of reverse “loaves and fishes” parable: rather than the story of how a very few baskets circulated at an ancient gathering miraculously provided food for the multitudes, our group of a dozen or so people started with ten empty baskets and ultimately filled twenty-eight of them to the brim with everything from toothpaste and brushes to coloring books and stickers and stuffed animals, colorful eggs and candy kisses. And whatever else I’ve forgotten to mention but which I know will bring delight to many a young child.

My word of the year has been ‘trust’, and this exercise reinforced that quality or ideal in spades. When I signed on to the Easter basket project I envisioned going to Target or Walmart and loading up on such goodies as I imagined a four-to-six year old child might need or want. But, distracted by hosting several of our “nearest and dearest”, I had done absolutely nothing when the appointed day arrived. I found myself debating even going to the gathering, feeling embarrassed to be arriving empty-handed. But I went anyway, trusting that there was yet some way to make a meaningful contribution. As if to affirm this, when I arrived I saw that the work tables and surrounding “floor space” on the grassy field were groaning with bags upon bags of thoughtful, useful and whimsical items. Including, of course, candies galore. And oodles of craft materials to turn ordinary baskets into enchanting works of art.

All that was needed were ‘bodies’ to do decorate the baskets and distribute the goodies among them. I could do that! I might even eat the odd candy…

Needless to say, I’m glad I went, if only to witness the incredible generosity of this “small group of thoughtful and committed citizens”. But there was more to be learned than just trusting it would all work out in the end. While our two dozen plus Easter baskets won’t make a big dent in the glaring needs of the greater community, I realized that it wasn’t up to me to solve all the world’s problems. It was more a case of building “Rome” one small act of kindness at a time. And it led to the discovery of a very positive movement about which I had no prior knowledge.

While looking up the exact wording of Margaret Mead’s quote, I landed on a site called WorldChanging:

“WorldChanging.com works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it’s here. We only need to put the pieces together.”

This seemed congruent with what happened in our Easter basket gathering. In our small way we put the pieces together from the various and assorted offerings that each in our own way brought to the table. I credit a long line of community-minded people who work, in the spirit of Aloha and Ohana, to make life better for the under-served population of Hawaïi Island. I felt I was contributing in small measure to this powerful force that is gathering momentum even as its opposite, the forces of resistance and reactivity are taking the spotlight away from positive change. Doesn’t mean it’s not happening. As the WorldChanging quote goes: “another world is not just possible, it’s here.”

Aum Namah Sivayah

PS I only ate a small snickers bar. My inner child was delighted!

BACK TO THE GARDEN

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy. They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” (Marcel Proust)

The problem with reading “Daily Om” before blogging is the feeling that there’s nothing more to be said. They’ve said it all, and better. You might think so too, should you choose to look it up. As I write this, the day’s installment is about ‘worth’. It’s tempting to copy it verabim, just so you’d get the benefit of it. but I didn’t and I won’t, lest I just rehash a good essay in my own way.

Thankfully, I then received a gift from a “gardener who made my soul blossom”, and set my mind on a different trajectory. She is one of a trio of people (who also have their own behind-the-scenes people) who combine into a force for good that I can always refer to when I encounter something that makes my soul wither.

For example, I woke with lyrics from the Beatles tune “Hey Jude” in my head that probably came from a conversation I’d had about “weltschmerz” (world pain) the previous evening. “Hey Jude” alludes to that kind of disillusioned sadness:

“And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,
Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders.
For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder…”

Though I had to look up the exact words, the message was clear, “Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders.”

I picture the triathletes I sometimes encounter on the sea wall, faces grimly set with physical effort, while somehow trying to convey the impression that running in the hot Hawaiian heat isn’t the worst kind of torture. As a person who spends a lot of time trying to strike a balance between what I hear “on the street” and what, in my heart, I believe is possible, I have a tendency towards weltschmerz, (which is why I know the word): “mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state.” And this struggle invariably shows on my face.

One noteworthy thing I gleaned from the Daily Om post about worth was how much my sense of self-worth influences how I respond to the world:

“You are born worthy — it is intertwined with your very being. Your concept of your own self-worth is thus reinforced by your actions. Each time you endeavor to appreciate yourself, treat yourself kindly, define your personal boundaries, be proactive in seeing that your needs are met, and broaden your horizons, you express your recognition of your innate value. During those periods when you have lost sight of your worth, you will likely feel mired in depression and insecurity, and lack of confidence. You’ll pursue a counterfeit worth based on judgment rather than the beauty that resides within. When you feel worthy, however, you will accept yourself without hesitation. It is your value as an individual, who is simultaneously interconnected with all living beings, that allows you to be happy, confident, and motivated.”

In this way I learned that it’s not only me who suffers if I diminish my self worth, but those around me who benefit from the actions taken by a happy, confident and motivated person.

Needless to say, it was a great affirmation when I encountered the Proust quote about charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. It might not have struck me so deeply had it not come from an actual gardener whose efforts, along with those of a landscape designer and a contractor are combining to create an Eden (sans apple tree and serpent) in my own back yard.

Far better than mourning the illusions I carried about how the world should be, I can daily pay forward the thoughtfulness, generosity-of-spirit and can-do attitude that these three stellar humans, and their respective crews, exude. Their positivity is contagious. They have left a mark on my heart that reminds me I’m surrounded by good, kind, honest and thoughtful people. These are the fellow gardeners I seek, and have found in abundance, in my own back yard.

Please know that you are one of these charming people who make me happy whenever I see you. I’m grateful for you and everything you do to make the world a better garden.

KARMA

“As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” (Someone biblical)

As I was rooting around in the fridge for lunch this afternoon I came upon a container holding the seeds I had scraped from two particularly tasty papayas that were given to me recently, with the intention that I should scatter the seeds in the raw land at the back of our small property, cover lightly with a layer of soil, and see if we could germinate a small grove of papaya trees. Enlisting our landscaper for the task of scattering and coating them with soil, I was advised that in such a manner the birds would get the seeds before they had a chance to sprout. She suggested that I start them in pots where I could bury them deeper in soil to discourage any predatory birds.

As with other seemingly good ideas that required more work than I’d bargained for, I put the seeds in the fridge while I pondered (aka forgot) their fate. Until today. Having thrown countless papaya seeds in the compost, or worse, today my recession mentality kicked in and I felt compelled to plant the special seeds that had been given to me. I did not want to let down the side, garden-wise. So, rather than scatter the seeds randomly I dispersed them evenly between three cleared-out herb pots, and a bald patch next to the now-idle-but-for-a-thousand-cockroaches composter. I covered the seeds generously with soil and watered them in, just as raindrops signaled a temporary halt to the job. At which time I returned to this blog, and the many metaphorical associations with seeds that I’ve encountered in Swami Radha’s teachings. The first to come to mind was the following, from the chapter on “Good Intentions” in Time to be Holy:

“You can have very good seeds, but if you put them in poor ground they will not even take root and no shoots will ever come up because they are not nourished. If you put your spiritual seed in poor ground, it is exposed to all sorts of things like competition and envy: I’m bigger; you have been initiated longer; I’m first. These things do not belong in your spiritual life.”

Not only our actions but the thoughts that engender them expend energy that can be used for good or evil, the consequences of which will surely find us, if one believes in the law of karma. How do I know this? It’s not rocket science. If I want to lose weight, get in shape, learn to speak Spanish or grow papaya trees, there’s a universal law of cause and effect that says my rewards will be directly correlated to my effort. Given the right conditions, if I plant enough papaya seeds, I will inevitably get at least a few papaya trees. I won’t get orange trees. And the better I care for my papaya plants, the more abundant the fruit. In this way I am invoking the law of karma every day in every small act that is aimed at making the world a better place. As I witness the many disillusioning (if not downright terrifying) behaviors playing out on the world stage today, I invoke this law of karma as I know it to have operated so many times in my own life.

But, as I write this, I’m overcome with a great weariness. My inner saboteur is coming up with case after case wherein, with the best intentions, things do not appear to have turned out as desired or intended. In that sense, I am a microcosm of the population at large. The forces in me that would discourage even an intent – let alone a positive action – are at work in most of us at some time in our lives. Such forces as indifference, indecision or antipathy can overturn one’s best efforts to shift the needle from competition and greed to altruism and charity.

It is for times like these that I have ‘banked’ spiritual capital; through hours of chanting, reflection, and study of sacred texts I have planted, nurtured and harvested the seeds of wisdom that luminaries like Swami Radha have shared with me. I have learned to surrender my questions in meditation and prayer, and let the answer emerge organically. Today’s answer: just do the best I can with what I have where I am.

So today I planted papaya seeds. And a blog.

Oh, and the ‘royal we’ have also planted lime trees. If only I could grow blueberries, I’d have a tropical breakfast trifecta.

PURPOSE

“If you don’t know where you want to go, it doesn’t matter which path you take.” Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland

This morning as I pondered the theme of purpose, I pictured myself in a car idling at a crossroads; instead of four options — left or right, forward or back — the roads fork off in all directions like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. My imagination then expands this image into a three dimensional ball with spokes on all surfaces like a large pincushion. Soon this image morphs into a sun with its rays beaming in every direction. And this in turn reminds me of a talk I attended about the Keck Observatory. It was dazzling to see screen images taken of outer space, and marvel at the massive, complex telescopes that captured them at Keck.

In Yoga a Path to Awareness” Swami Radha writes that it is difficult (if not impossible) “for the individual to comprehend the tremendous phenomenon of the whole cosmos in which we find ourselves. Yet somehow we have to form a relationship to the cosmos or find our place in it.” Finding my place in the cosmos has been a lifelong pursuit.

Taken at a more relatable level, here on planet earth I can at least get a sense of the trajectory I’m on by tracking my footprints. By reflecting on the choices I have made that led to where I am today. Arthur Frank, a respected Canadian psychologist and author wrote:

“To live is to write one’s credo, every day, in every act. I pray for a world that offers us each the gift of reflective space, the Sabbath quiet, to recollect the fragments of our days and acts. In those recollections we may see a little of how our lives effect others and then imagine, in the days ahead, how we might do small and specific acts that create a world we believe every person has a right to deserve.”

From this I get a sense that purpose is not something that falls out of the sky to land in my lap and steer me for the rest of my life. And further, I realize it’s unhelpful, if not dangerous to compare myself to others who seem more certain and self-determined. I remember marveling at a relative who confidently claimed he had known he wanted to be a surgeon since he was a first-grader. He never wavered. My own youthful aspirations were more congruent with those of young girls everywhere: I wanted to be Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet; a veterinarian; a ballerina; a famous artist and influential writer.

The latter ambition, that of writer, gained some traction through creative writing classes at university, and courses in Radio and Television Arts at NAIT that eventually landed me a job at an ad agency, and finally a somewhat unspecific writing job at the Alberta government’s Public Affairs Bureau. All of which I left behind to raise a family for the following few of decades.

My true and lifelong passion did not reveal itself until the Recession of the ‘80s. Having lost our business, our home, our livelihood and the social status that went with it, I realized that the only unassailable possession I had was ‘me, myself and I’. Sad to say, I didn’t even know who ‘I’ was without all the external trappings that supposedly defined me. Around this time a friend introduced me to the teachings of Swami Sivananda Radha, and these have indeed guided my subsequent adult life:

“When you recognize and accept the gift of consciousness, you realize it’s time to do something with it. That’s when you get control over your life. You don’t feel helpless, no matter what is going on in the world around you. And the inner security that so many people try to find through higher education, more money, greater social status, now comes through your own efforts.

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

This is why I continue to pontificate about leading an examined life. Urging people to go within, clean up your own back yard. The better I understand what makes me tick, the clearer I am about what is authentic to me and what is mere conditioning; the stronger I am about correcting negative behaviors and thought patterns, the more effectively I will respond to whatever daily life presents. And that, I believe, is a worthy purpose.

“Know thyself, and thou shall know all the mysteries of the gods and of the universe.” (Ancient Egyptian expression)

IMAGINE

“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)

One of the things that has occurred to me in the process of recovering from surgery is a need for some kind of creative stimulation, something engrossing that can help pass the time I’d normally be spending in more outgoing, physical activities. Sadly, I’ve spent too much of this precious “down time” binge-watching Jack Ryan, and then trying to erase that gratuitious violence with episodes of “Young Sheldon” and/or “Frasier” reruns.

I am well aware how toxic it can be to feed my imagination such disturbing images as often witnessed on TV, or described in the books I’m reading. (NB Thanks to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” I now scrupulously read reviews and download samples/trailers before committing to any book or film that might give me nightmares for weeks). This strategy is not a case of sticking my head in the sand and avoiding anything controversial or unsettling. Rather it’s a matter of using my inner resources, in this case my imagination, to the best possible advantage.

As to cultivating imagination, I once gave a workshop in which I asked participants to write down any pressing issue, obstacle or problem they’d brought with them to the workshop. Then, after a time of spiritual practice or quiet reflection, I posed the question: “If it didn’t have to be this way, how else could it be?” (This is also useful in dealing with problematic habits like procrastination — which is why I’m “cramming” to finish this blog before midnight on Monday). The point is, we often create a self-fulfilling prophesy by telling ourselves why things have to remain the same: “I can’t change X,Y,Z because of A,B,C!”

In some cases this is indisputably true. But not all. And probably not even most of the situations in which we feel stymied and/or incomplete. If we genuinely wish to make changes in our lives, (vs blaming and complaining) we need to at least suspend this belief about how things have to be, and recruit two of our most powerful tools: the power of choice and the power of imagination. Rather than accepting something as a necessary evil, say watching the evening news, I can choose to engage in any number of more constructive activities that will better prepare me for a peaceful night’s sleep. Researchers tell us that what we see or hear just prior to bed is apt to both seed our dreams and influence the next day’s mood.

Despite having created some helpful bedtime routines, and starting my day with practices designed for balance and equanimity, I am not impervious to the bombardment of information that Swami Radha describes below, in Kundalini Yoga for the West;

“The complexity of life has become such that one becomes either panicky or lethargic. In the latter case, the attitude of “It doesn’t matter anyway” may act as a key sentence in the mind and, through its unaware repetition, may achieve an almost hypnotic effect. Once settled in the mind, it is kept alive by emotions that can be both desperate and depressive. If violence is not one’s nature, resignation to life seems the only way. The natural life rhythm simply cannot absorb the constant impact of news, television and urban living, combined with the many power struggles that are outside the domain of an individual’s control.”

I refuse to buckle to either hypnotic suggestion or desperation/depression. Instead, I have begun a practice of listing what is currently disturbing me, and, after quiet reflection, asking myself how else it could be. When I hear stories of cruelty, corruption, hatred or greed I enlist the opposite of these behaviors, thus substituting gentleness for cruelty, honesty for corruption, loving kindness for hatred, and generosity for greed. Every day presents myriad opportunities to embody these and many more positive qualities. As Swami Radha would say:

“It’s up to each of us to develop a balanced, healthy diet for the imagination, a taste for quality and compassion, that can then manifest and help create the kind of world we want to live in.”

The power of choice emboldens me to co-create the change I wish to see in the world today. Besides, I can still eat popcorn without having to watch TV or movies…