A yogini at large

May 27,2024

MEMORY LANE
…is a dark alley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BELONGING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now to light my gratitude candle…

May 13, 2024

GRATITUDE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 6, 2024

AIR ROOTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PRIMING THE WELL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

THE PATH

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

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

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

Ruumet expands on her topic:

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

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

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

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

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

Or...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SELF-INVESTIGATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aum Namah Sivayah

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

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

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“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!