ron d hicks

Falling Down Forever

2011-12-01T06:46:00.005-06:00

My excellent massage therapist has been wanting to return to yoga after a shoulder injury he sustained two years ago finally healed. Not a single yoga class in the interim. I recommended Thrive Austin, and when Paul decided to actually go to a specific class, I reconnected with a friend who checks people in and told him to be sure and give Paul an especially warm welcome. It was all very sweet, and to reconnect with Fred after so many months of being out of touch made me feel both happy and sad. It was through that conversation, last night, that I learned that a mutual friend of ours had been suffering from severe depression and had succumbed to the suicidal impulse. After being released from a psychiatric care facility he went home and shot himself dead. I have known many people who have taken this route. Depression is an illness that can swoop down on any of us and put us in a place of such intense pain and darkness that we can see no alternative but to push ourselves down forever. There is a sadness and finality in doing this, but it is something I understand. There is no blame or guilt. We all fall down forever at least once, for certain, and that fall can manifest itself in countless forms. So I remember all my conversations and all the classes I took with Paolo and lament his tragic and abrupt end but with an understanding that such things are indeed part of the journey. At the same time I celebrate the birthday of my partner who turned 81 today, and I look at him with deep affection and admiration and yes, a touch of envy, at his extraordinary life and the profound influence he has had on me. He is healthy, alive, and each day is a celebration of the dance of life, in a calm, smooth and seemingly effortless flow of one moment to another. I will begin baking Chocolate Decadence this morning.

As it sit here in the quiet time of dawn, the sounds of hooting owls and cooing doves and chirping birds reminds me of the cycle of life. One lone white wing dove was presented to me with bloody injuries that should have killed him, but his will to live was strong and I could feel that and saw no other alternative but to do whatever I could to help him survive. Dove season will be coming along soon and countless birds will be brought down to death by countless shotguns. There will be birthdays today as well as memorial services. I will get my deep tissue massage again next week and connect with my therapist on a level for which I can find no words to describe other than simply delicious. I will have lunch and ponder the complexities of life with my therapist an hour or so later. I will smile and laugh as often as possible and let myself cry and feel deep sadness when that's what I need to do. In the back of mind I will always wonder when will I fall down forever.

Fire, Earth, Water

2011-10-22T14:58:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Leah at Austin Yoga for all her film and book recommendations!. I recently finished watching the third film in the trilogy directed by Deepa Mehta--Fire, Earth, Water. Absolutely beautiful, educational, touching.   I'm just now beginning to read The Inheritance of Loss and was so engrossed in it yesterday that I failed to hear my psychiatrist call my name. When I showed him the book I was reading, he told me his wife had read it twice she liked it so much (she is also a psychiatrist).  Why do I see a psychiatrist? Well, it all began when I was 16 years old, and I've never been without one. An early diagnosis of manic-depressive illness, now called bipolar disorder, has been with me all these years although it has been quite a few years now since it has shown manifestation.  There are aspects of Western medicine and psychology that have so much to offer in the way of healing (be proactive!), and when combined with spirituality and the holistic science of yoga, the benefits can be profound.

My outdoor cat Misty brought me a white wing dove. She always has this contented, unmistakable look of gratification when she brings me her trophies, and bring them to me she does. Of course I don't like it but she is doing what her instincts are telling her to do. So, I am ever so often rescuing animals and releasing them back to the wild whenever possible. I must admit that she does manage to eat many of her catches but I accept that as part of her nature and although I don't praise her, I certainly do not chastise her either.  She is trying to win my acceptance, and because of the abuse she apparently has suffered, I've worked hard to win her trust. So this beautiful white wing dove was lying in the grass a few feet from Misty, and when I walked over to him I was surprised to find him alive. He walked away and headed for cover, begging for a safe place to hide. He could not fly. So, I brought him inside, put him in a large, ventilated box lined with cotton tee shirts and put him in a warm, quiet place, and covered the box with towels to create darkness and calm for him. Several hours later I attempted to release him but he would have nothing to do with it. He stayed put. We repeated this several times but apparently he wanted me to continue helping him (a juvenile male). Surprisingly he drank some water and appeared to eat a little so within 24 hours I presented him to a Wildlife Rescue bird rehabilitator who immediately examined him, gave him an antibiotic injection and sprayed his bloody wounds with a painkiller (of course she kissed him, called him darling and other endearments, as animal lovers are wont to do).  "With a few stitches and time, he will be completely healed. Nothing is broken and the muscles used for flight will heal." The bacteria from the mouth of cats is deadly to birds and they must have antibiotic treatment within a prescribed amount of time or they will likely die. One of my other cats, Ralph, has been suffering from kidney issues for years now. A prescription diet worked well, then we added medication, then doubled it, now we are hydrating him three times a week subcutaneously. I don't think he has much longer to live. He has a sad, pleading look on his face that in many ways reminds me of myself. Along with his sisters and mother, he was rescued from the Humane Society and certain euthanasia, only to watch his mother and three sisters get adopted out while he stayed in the shelter for five more years. I've had him now for about 6 years and he is a sweetheart.

I witnessed a near fatal collision today. A car was driving on the far right lane of a four lane highway, probably going 55 or 60, when another car pulled out right in front of her. She slammed on her brakes and swerved, causing her car to slide sideways along the middle of the highway. She was so lucky there were no cars in the opposite lane, and she and the other driver are so lucky that she did indeed swerve and avoid a collision there too. I pulled over and stayed as a witness. All was okay, but this sweet woman gave me a very warm hug. It was unfortunate that this incident happened, but the warm hug and tenderness she showed to me was ever so sweet and will stay with me throughout the day.
******
Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi

Sketchy Writings of Summers Past and Present

2011-08-10T09:59:00.001-05:00

Journaling is therapeutic, whether we sit and write our thoughts on a blog or keep a notebook hidden away for no one to see. It's a way of processing our thoughts and emotions and allowing them to flow through us. When writing, we can use our non-dominant hand, let the words flow out in a stream of consciousness style, we can even make squiggles while we wait for thoughts to form themselves into words (which they may not do). In a way, our nightly dreams are our personal journals of our daily journey. While we rest our bodies, our minds stay very busy, exploding with chemical reactions and the electrical firing of countless neurons. We seek to understand the complexities of everyday life on many levels. It is in our nature to know our ourselves and our world.

I was sitting at the local AT and T franchise store awaiting my turn in line when an elderly lady came rushing into the store in a state of great frustration and breathlessness. "I hate this phone," she said, with a deep Southern accent, looking directly at me. "It's given me nothing but problems. I don't want all this high tech stuff, I just want a phone to be a phone, and I want it to work." I told her I understood. "You know Obama is not Black," she said to me, out of the blue. "People who voted for him just because he was Black, with the thought that he would end racism, were misguided," she said. I immediately retorted that I disagreed with her, and asked if she was of the idea that he wasn't a USA citizen. "Of course he's a citizen," she replied, "he was born in Hawaii. But his father was from Kenya, and was a Muslim, not a Black. His father was an Arab." She apparently had this fixed idea that all Muslims were Arabs, and Arabs were not Black. I explained to her that many peoples in Africa, who were Black, were Muslims, just as many white people were also Muslims. And so began a long discussion on a variety of topics ranging from cell phones to her childhood in Mississippi, her black nanny who wasn't allowed to eat at the table with the family to her own maid that helped raise her children. "It was all wrong," she said, "the way we treated them. But, it was all we knew." Sometimes what we learn to be right is very wrong. It's helps to ask ourselves: do our actions harms others? I had recently finishing reading The Help, a great book that I recommended she read. I understand a movie based on the book will be released in a few days.

In a recent dramatization of an Agatha Christie story set in a Middle Eastern country, a Englishwoman waiting to board a boat was traumatized when she suddenly found herself watching a local woman being stoned to death by a mob composed of community and family members, mostly male. "It is best to not interfere with local customs," Hercule told her. In other words, look away and ignore. I practice regularly with a young Iranian woman. She fussed at me for mentioning a movie I'd recently seen that was a docudrama about the stoning to death of a woman in Iran. It doesn't happen, she informed me, and they made that movie many years after the documented event. The next day there was news of a stoning in an Iranian village. Atrocities abound in our world.

Much of the world's cardamom comes from Guatemala. I like to grind the pods to flavor my coffee--it enhances the taste very nicely and has health benefits to boot. Yesterday when I lifted the top of the Rubbermaid box by the gate to retrieve a much awaited package of soaps, teas, and cardamom pods, a big red wasp glared back at me menacingly from his nest as he hung upside down and sideways from the bottom of the lid I held in my hand. I could tell he was ready to attack if necessary. Gingerly, I lowered the lid and warned my partner of the nest; like so many others, he's highly allergic to wasp and bee stings and can go into anaphylactic shock.

One morning I went to Devon's 7:30 a.m. Iyengar class at Clear Spring Studio, which I thoroughly enjoyed--I love hip and groin openers and hamstring stretching which we found in variations of supta padangustasana, which was also taught that same morning by Anne (subbing for Christina) and Clayton. Funny how often that happens. I love early morning. Anyway, before leaving the studio I reached into a wall mounted mail box of printed schedules and instantly felt an intense burning pain in my middle finger. I quickly pulled away and caught sight of a big red wasp staring back at me as she stood guard of her nest that hung from the metal lid. Deja vu but this time I realized the power such seemingly small insects can yield. In an airing of Life, narrated by Oprah, the world of insects (and mammals and reptiles) informs us that there are more insects on the planet than mammals, birds, reptiles and fish combined. They have evolved and adapted unique survival attributes. Pretty amazing stuff. They can quickly put us in our place. They can easily command respect. Scorpions suddenly appear walking across our tile floors at home, often attracting the attention of the cats, who seem to know instinctively to protect their tender noses. I stepped on a scorpion the other day and cannot recall ever having felt such intense pain from an insect. My tongue was numb the rest of the day. My partner had a scorpion on his pillow the other night and it stung him on his hand. Carpenter ants march in and out of the ac copper coil outside my bedroom, and the movement in the nest in the wall can be heard as I sit at my desk. Cicadas sing so loudly at night it's almost deafening. Long lines of ants form along the rafters as they take their share of sugar water from the hummingbird feeder.

I have truly been disappointed in myself at the way I have handled my reactions to events surrounding a current project, as well as my reactions to some of the people I've had to work with. Instead of being understanding and compassionate at the errors of others, I've been angry and judgmental. I find my mind caught up in the drama, making the drama, living the drama, lost to detachment and empathy. My emotional reactions beg to be processed and dealt with before I can move forward. I know in my heart that these are doors of opportunity knocking, and I can ignore them or walk through and learn about truth. My mind says, but I've had enough knocks for a while!

I chatted briefly with Mandy last summer about injuries, and how they help open us up to so many things, and how they can help us deepen within ourselves, deepen our practice. No wonder I keep injuring myself! Christina Sell wrote in her blog today:

"...staying close to our own goodness, radically affirming the presence of Grace no matter what is happening and living our authentic truth in a community of others who are doing the same."...

This really struck a chord with me as does so much of what she writes. It resonates loud and clear like a hammer hitting the sky, permeating the heavens and ringing like John Henry's hammer on cold steel. Is it going to be the death of me or will I rise up and be transformed, even in some minuscule way? Will I walk on in self-pity or genuine humbleness at the astonishing forces at work in our lives? Many of us have to both live and work outside the "community of others who are doing the same," and this can be quite a challenge. Along comes struggle and it feels like drowning, when in reality if we just breathe in the sweet, cool water, relax into the moment, we are offered the blessing of death to old ways and birth to new ways. It is in this that time and time again, I drown.

Gioconda writes:
"In daily life we see people who are happier than we are, people who are less happy. Some might be doing praiseworthy things and others causing problems. Whatever may be our usual attitude toward such people and their actions, if we can be pleased with others who are happier than ourselves, compassionate toward those who are unhappy, joyful with those doing praiseworthy things, and remain undisturbed by the errors of others, our mind will be very tranquil." TKV Desikachar's interpretation of Yoga Sutra 1:33

This too rings with truth. My mind has not been tranquil because I have not remained undisturbed by the errors of others. So I need to do a lot of work, and be grateful for all the time I'm afforded to be around people in the yoga community, and learn to also be grateful for the lessons to be learned from others who challenge us to seek that inner tranquility that comes when we practice a sense of empathetic detachment.

This is the hottest and driest summer on record, but I do prefer the heat to the cold. Dale and I have been taking long walks down the road in the early evenings. I pulled my gracilis muscle a couple of months ago and just finished several weeks of physical therapy. It was suggested that I needed some strength training to avoid future injuries in my yoga practice, so I joined a local gym and am working with a personal trainer. I need to balance strength with flexibility. Jeff W. recommended a massage therapist to me, Paul F., and I've been seeing him now for a little while, and he is one of the best I've ever worked with.

Again this summer I find myself involved in a project, this time with my partner and his family, and suddenly finding myself dealing with a person who challenges me on so many levels. It really hurts to have false accusations thrown our way, and I have had to simply give up explaining the details of how a particular contract works to someone who's emotional issues come to the forefront of all objectivity and throws a wrench into the whole business. There is a certain blindness going on, an attachment to something that keeps one totally in one's comfort zone, a choice is made to reside out of the realm of facts and reality, but to stay in that place of unreality for fear that the admission of a mistake will cause all the walls of self worth to come crumbling down--the crumbling of such walls of delusion can be very difficult, but it is a rich experience that can bring one deeper into an understanding of oneself. And so I recall how we--especially me--must learn to find a balance within ourselves when we are confronted with the errors of others, when we are confronted with false accusations and attacks on our intentions and integrity. It's important to stay open to the feelings so they can move through us and not get stuck within us by our own repression of them. I find myself extremely angry, and subsequent to that, a tenderness arises in which I see that the errors we all make are often the result of a life unexamined, emotions that remain repressed and unprocessed. Stephen Cope writes in his book Yoga and the Quest for the True Self about the suffering that comes about as we reside in our false self. We are asked to move from the unreal into the real, which can be quite a difficult task. He refers to this as the reality project, in which we move out of the false, delusional self into the real, authentic self. The twin pillars of this reality project is clear seeing and calm abiding. I highly recommend this book.

We watched as a baby raccoon was abandoned (hopefully temporarily) by his mother. He could barely walk. I made sure he had plenty of water. It is sad to see how the heat and drought will cause so many animals to not survive. There is a famine going on in Africa right now that I believe is the worst in recorded history with tens of thousands of children dying from starvation.

Green Doors

2011-06-06T11:18:00.006-05:00

I was browsing the Internet when I came across a blog titled Toning the Om:
http://toningtheom.com/, and as I read on there was an mp3 download to a talk given recently by Marianne Williamson. I downloaded it and have listened to it at least 4 times now. I find it quite inspiring and although I've heard of Marianne Williamson (click on her name for a download of her talk) I am not familiar with her work, but hope to be soon.  I went back to this blog and noticed that the author had recently returned from a trip to Egypt, and she began thanking her fellow travelers on this trip that was so special to her. It all sounded vaguely familiar, so I contacted her and sure enough, she had traveled with Spirit Journeys, a unique and spiritually-orientated travel "agency" that puts together trips and workshops relating to yoga, shamanism, spirituality, self-discovery, and so on, and they have many workshops and travel leaders who range from psychologists to shamans to social workers and more. I have a link to this wonderful group on my blog. I went with them to Bali as well as their men's retreat at Bodhi Zen Center in New Mexico a few years back. Highly recommended.

Then I discovered Stephen Cope.  Peggy Kelly (see her new blog Physical Poetry: Ayurveda and Iyengar Yoga) told me I would really like him and she was right, I am so inspired listening to him speak. I downloaded one of his talks from iTunes titled Yoga for Emotional Flow, Free Your Emotions through Yoga Breathing, Body Awareness and Energetic Release. Absolutely fantastic.   He has a book that is highly recommended:  Yoga and the Quest for the True Self.  It is on order. On the day that Peggy told me about this author, a friend of mine whom I hadn't seen in quite a while showed up to class, which was unusual as he lives out of town.  He had studied with Stephen Cope years ago at Kripalu. Anyway, we got together for lunch as he wanted to share a recent event in his life that he described as traumatic. So I listened. I was shocked. I don't want to go into details, but he was arrested and thrown in jail for 36 hours before being released on bail. What happened to him should not happen in this day and age. It has had a profoundly negative effect on his life, and I hope justice prevails for him. We never know what life is suddenly going to throw at us, and it can all happen in a split second and our world as we know it has been dramatically changed.

I joined Angie's list to find a local plumber to help find an elusive leak associated with the outdoor shower. In this process, I got an email for whole house window cleaning, inside and out, at a discounted price. I've never had this done before, so I got an estimate and they are due to arrive at 7:30 a.m. this morning. Which brings to mind a dream I had last night. A green door belonging to someone had been removed from its hinges. First of all let me say that green is the color of the heart chakra, and doors represent openings (as well as closings). The door had a small window located at eye level. For some reason the window was covered with plastic, so it was our task to remove all this plastic, and then put the door back on its hinges--rehang it. To me the door represents the heart, and the importance of allowing our hearts to be open, but perhaps not open in such a way that we can be easily abused or taken advantage of. But we need to be able to see clearly through our hearts, and not have a film over it that totally blurs our view, or clouds our judgment, as we look out at the landscape of life through the window of the heart.    We need to be able to choose when to open our hearts to love and when to close our hearts to those who mean to harm us, as opposed to having our doors off their hinges completely. I think this addresses the issues of boundaries and unmindful vulnerability. Stephen Cope tells us that we must never deny or repress our feelings, but we must let them flow through us. When we exile a powerful emotion that may be too painful to experience, it will eventually come back at us in one way or another. It may manifest itself in our body, reappear as a dark shadow/demon, or seek expression through drugs or alcohol. Until we truly feel the emotion and let it move through us, it will not leave us alone. This resonates with me.

I have been having intense pain in the tissue on the left side of my right knee which I feel when doing ardha chandrasana or trikonasana. It burns and stings intensely and is quite scary. Peggy tells me that when we have such pain, we should look both above and below the area, in other words the hip area and the ankle/foot area. Devon confirms this. Bekir tells me to focus the outward spiral through the femur bone, and not through the knee. During sitting mediation I noticed (not for the first time) a tightness, a blockage, a particular spot in my right hip crease that stands out loudly in the forefront of all physical sensations. Focusing on that spot, breathing into to, listening to it, naming it was my task at hand. After staying with this for maybe ten minutes, I suddenly felt my leg "let go" and the tightness disappeared completely. I don't think, of course, that this is the end of it, but rather the beginning. But finding the beginning of something is essential in moving forward in it.

Civic Duty, Family Duty, Silent Witness, a Baby Opossum

2011-06-03T11:08:00.000-05:00

I was summoned to jury duty yesterday afternoon. I was actually hoping to be picked as I've always enjoyed serving on a jury. The room was packed with prospective jurors, only six to be chosen from the lot. It was going to be a short civil suit having to do with credit card debt collection. The lawyer had thick gray hair and reminded me of Raymond Burr in his later productions of Perry Mason--a nice looking man but carrying around an enormous amount of excessive weight. He asked each prospective juror, one by one, a series of questions relating to credit card use, trying to ascertain one's position regarding the collection of such debt. So, I was really taken aback when my turn came and his first question was, "Mr. Hicks, is that a purse you are carrying?" "No," I replied, "it's a backpack." "Oh, I see," he said, "please forgive me if I insulted you." I immediately responded by saying "I do find that remark to be quite offensive."  Again, he apologised.  He moved on to his next question, "Mr. Hicks, are you an athlete?"  "I am an avid yoga practitioner," I said, noticing that several people turned around in their chairs to have a look at me. My palms were beginning to sweat, but I sat up straight and turned on my assertive self. "My wife does yoga" he said, "well, she used to. Always trying to get me to join her, but I never did." "Well," I said, "I think you would benefit tremendously from it." Okay, here I was jabbing back at him, doing the same thing he had just done to me, something I do not believe in doing. Impulsive retaliation.  Take me to that place of non-reactive calm, I said to my Silent Witness. I need your help at this moment. The rest of the conversation was pleasant, and he said I would be an excellent juror for this case. (I did not get chosen).

I made my first trip to Europe when I was 23 years old. I was fascinated at how many men carried these neat hand held, zippered "wallets". Many have loops that you can put your hand into and let them dangle from your wrist.  I bought one and have carried one ever since, replacing them every few years. In recent years I've thrown it all into an ergonomic shoulder bag sold at Relax the Back and other places, but I often just pull out my hand held man-purse and just carry it alone (wallet, checkbook, cell phone, pen, comb, fingernail file, iPod touch). I have only had one person make a negative remark about this in 36 years and it was a friend of a friend struggling with accepting his own homosexuality. There are studies that show that some men who suffer from lower back pain can alleviate the pain dramatically by not carrying their wallets in their back pockets. Definitely not a skillful way to sit.

I watched the tiniest baby opossum moving toward the fountain in the backyard yesterday. Somehow he barely managed to climb up the side, but when it came to drinking the water, it was so far below the ledge he was on that he spent several minutes exploring his options. He finally decided to go for it, and eased himself down towards the water, finally able to drink by clinging to the top ledge with his hind legs, and drink he did. It is so hot and dry and I cannot remember having so many dry windy days. Then he fell into the water, way too deep for him to stand up in, and I watched as he helplessly tried to climb out, his paws slipping on the Mexican tiles. I knew he would never make it out so I rushed out and scooped him out and placed him on the ground. He was so tiny and skinny, I wonder if he will survive. Where is his mother? It has been a busy week for me, and I've spent very little time staring out the window on to the landscape of the backyard, and I marvel at the fact that I was watching at that very moment. I do think nature talks to us. We have a hummingbird feeder hanging from the eaves in front of the kitchen window. It has to be refilled every 3 days, at least. Earlier this morning as I was sitting here at my desk, a hummingbird came to my bedroom window, hovered for more than a few moments, then left. I checked the hummingbird feeder and it was empty.

I had my third colonoscopy in 15 years this week and will find out the results of the four polyps the doctor removed. This is an extremely important procedure for anyone who has any family history of colon cancer.

It has been several years since I've worked with an Oil and Gas Company representative, negotiated the terms of a lease, and gone through that whole process of proofreading a detailed 50 page legal document at least twice. There have been a flurry of emails and phone calls and dealing with family members. I always end up with hurt feelings, but that's just me.  Things went smoother and faster than they ever have in past years--from beginning to end it all happened within the span of about 3 weeks, and not the many months of protracted engagement of pitting one company against the other in an effort to secure the largest possible bonus lease consideration.  I am happy the process is over, and now it's just wait and see if they drill, and if so will it be the usual dry hole, a marginal producer, or maybe something different. Perhaps a little bird will tell me.

South India

2010-12-19T05:24:00.018-06:00

I recently returned from South India, traveling around Kerala and Tamilnadu in a Toyota van with Dileep, our driver, and my longtime companion who turned 80 on the trip. Before meeting with Dileep and beginning our journey, we checked into Kairali Ayurvedic Health Resort and experienced 7 days of Panchakarma treatments. Dr. Rajeev gave a pretty thorough exam, wrote up an evaluation and prescription of treatments including a daily organic vegetarian diet, a continuation of Trifala and Chyawanprash and he added Abhayaristha 30 ml twice daily, plus lots of drinking water which was a special concoction of warm water steeped in a variety of herbs and spices with a peppery taste. Each day began with an hour of yoga practice followed by a one hour treatment in the morning (each treatment took place on a Droni table and involved 2 therapists) then breakfast, free time (walking, swimming, more yoga, cycling around the countryside, lots of rest), then lunch followed by rest or activity, an afternoon treatment, a short period of time before meditation, a late dinner and then to bed. The place was absolutely magical. The treatments varied daily and included Abhyangam (general massage), Sirodhara (nonstop stream of medicated oil, herbal concoction, milk or other materials), Elakizhi (herbal poultices, whole body massage), Pizhichil (whole body and head prescribed oil massage with continuous slow and light hand pressure), Navarakizhi (whole body massage with small linen bags filled with cooked Navara rice cooked in cow's milk and mixed with herbs and oils), Nasyam (after certain processes, exact doses of oils are poured into the nostrils as the patient inhales deeply), Netradhara (eye therapy with medicated oils), and much more. Most therapies were followed by time in a hot steam box followed by an exfoliating shower, then a brief meeting with the doctor and his assistant over hot tea. Weight, blood pressure and various measurements were taken, feedback solicited, modifications made. For example, because I'm one of the lucky few who have no allergies, the administration of medicated oil into the nostrils was only done once, and because the doctor didn't like the way my eyes got all red and bloodshot after having cups and cups of oil poured over them (try keeping your eyes open for that!), he suspended that treatment. I was never sure what was coming next which added to the deliciousness of it all. Learning to totally relax while your therapist administers an enema, or pounds your body with bags of cooked rice, or suddenly finding yourself being soaked in buttermilk can be challenging, but I loved the experience. Many people return often. One of my favorite friends was a woman from Trinidad who had worked in many countries, including Kenya and Tanzania, with abused and dis-empowered women (including the horrific forced practice of "circumcision" which is really a brutal mutilation of the female genitalia), and is currently based in NYC and has been with the United Nations for many years. For her, the treatments were all about down time and destressing from a high pressure job as well as weight reduction. Another friend was the 25 year old son of a businessman who needed to see some maturity in his only son (and weight reduction). People from all over would suddenly appear for brief treatments, some to just relax, some after pilgrimages or ashram stays in the North. For me, 7 days was plenty, but 14 or 28 days are most recommended, but not many people can do this.

One day I was walking on the road towards the village when a small, crippled dog suddenly appeared underfoot and caused me to nearly fall. He was so sweet and determined to be petted. I later learned that a woman from Germany who was staying at the resort after hip replacement and multiple bypass surgery and who had a habit of cycling throughout the countryside despite doctors order to the contrary, had found a little dog that had been crushed by a car and lay dying in the road. She insisited that Dr. Rajeev, an Ayurvedic doctor and not a vet, come immediately to help her rescue the dog. I'm told she cried for days while holding the dog and nursing him back to health. There is a "canteen" across the street from the resort where employees gather before and after work, and this little crippled dog that demanded so much of my attention had been promised a lifetime of care by the employees of the resort.

On the day of our departure, there was significant protesting going on in Palakkad after a brutal attack in which one woman was killed (political stuff I'm told). Our driver made it through early, but our departure was waylaid until the crowds dispersed late in the day. And so began sixteen days of travel throughout South India, from Palakkad to Cochin, Munnar, Alleppey, Kumarakom, Periyar, Madurai, Trichy, Tanjore, Mahabalipuram (aka Mamallapuram) to Chennai.

Illusions

2010-10-18T13:37:00.009-05:00

This morning I randomly opened a book to read: "Stay alert to the easy shift from the illusions of false expectations to the illusions of anger and fear that follow in their wake." It resonated. Recently our nearest neighbors have been partying and the noise just reaches out and grabs me and stirs something inside that gets me so riled up it is just ridiculous. My heart pounds, I get angry, I pace, I want to respond to the retaliatory impulse that swells up inside me by moving my stereo system outside and turning it on full blast. I want to scream at them to shut up. I find it hard to sleep, not because of the noise they are making (because I cannot hear it in my bedroom) but because of the noise I am making inside myself. It is really my own noise that is beckoning me to listen, to learn, to go inside. The illusion of the false expectation indeed shifts so very easily into the illusion of fear and anger. Of course it comes down to the deeper truth that I fear I am not worthy of love and that can express itself in sadness or anger. When I was a kid sometimes my parents would have loud arguments and fights, and it was so scary for me. I would be hypervigilant and stay up for hours listening mostly to the quiet, thinking I could spring into rescue mode the moment the fighting resumed. That impulse to stop the noise stays with me today although I can truly say that I no longer jump totally out of myself when I hear a loud noise. A teacher recently said that those of us who are most sensitive to outside noises tend to have a lot of noise going on inside ourselves. I think there is some truth in that. There is certainly nothing wrong in seeking peace and quiet, but to expect it to always be there may not be so realistic. Bayda writes: "Peace is found not through seeking peace, but through residing completely in what is."
There is a new yoga teacher in town that I really like. He teaches from the heart. He truly inspires me and helps lead me to that quiet place inside. He is an asset to the Austin Yoga community, a very warm welcome to Chris Muchow.

Platters of Nourishment

2010-10-04T09:17:00.012-05:00

On the breakfast table in a house I lived in years ago was a large platter of food. It was mine. Two people I know--one a friend, one a family member--were voraciously eating from this platter. I grew so angry that I yelled and threw a cup against the wall, causing it to shatter and break into a thousand pieces. "This is MY food and I hate it when others eat from my plate," I screamed. Food can represent nourishment, both physical and spiritual, and we all must have nourishment. Sometimes I feel I am unable to grow when I perceive that others around me are depriving me of nourishment (which is of course transference/projection). We are each one of us responsible for providing ourselves with the nourishment we need to grow and enlarge ourselves in this life. We cannot do this completely alone. We do need times of silence, of being alone and still with ourselves so we can listen to what our Self is trying to tell us. But, it is not all the disruptions and interferences that cause us discomfort and suffering that lead us to the places we need to be in order to grow and learn? True, we cannot allow the behavior of others, over which we have no control, to disempower our determination to seek nourishment. We cannot blame others for our own failures to procure for ourselves what we need as we do not have the power to change anyone other than ourselves. So what is the message of the dream? We all need nourishment and often that nourishment is the same (something we all share), yet we cannot blame others when we do not get what we need, for it is up to each one of us to take from the plate of life that which we need to feed ourselves--this takes action. And, it is through the chaos and craziness of human behavior that we can see more clearly the path upon which our deeper self is guiding us to walk on. I often struggle with relationships. If someone does something we vehemently disagree with, what action, if any, do we take? Do we decide to distance ourselves from that person? Do we choose to look at that person's good qualities and accept the "bad" as simply part of their humanity? I always think the compassionate, loving viewpoint is the best route; however, it is good to remember that we can love someone from afar without constant interaction. We can disagree with their beliefs, philosophy, religion, orientation, etc, but do we condemn them just because they are different from us? I think not. What about all the things we have in common, both good and not so good? Hollison writes: "We do not learn and grow by all subscribing to the same school of thought, copying the same values, or voting the same way. We grow from the experience of our differences, although in insecure moments we quickly forget this. The capacity to include those differences, even incorporate them into an ever broader, more sophisticated range of choices, is the chief task, and gift, of evolving relationships."

Universal Mirrors

2010-05-23T06:29:00.016-05:00

It seems I've been seeing my darker side quite a bit of late, reflected in the actions of people around me. It puts me into that place where I find myself trembling with fear, and once the anger aspect has dissipated, I feel a raw tenderness that leaves me so humbled and stripped of self that I begin to open to those moments of better seeing. Tears can refract the incoming light and break it up into a range of blinding colors. I am caught off guard when the intensity and depth of these reflections come in sudden waves. I wonder what I'm doing to elicit these blinding visions. I don't mean mystical visions, but rather the kind of seeing that pushes me towards that place of limitless learning, whether I like it or not. Life can be so profoundly sweet at times that I tend to just lay back on the cloud and float, and that's good stuff, for sure. But the cloud floating is not something I've learned to sustain. I heard someone say recently that when we realize that learning is limitless, new worlds open to us. Learning is work in progress, and the lessons put before us are opportunities. These opportunities can wear chaotic faces that are not easy to look at. I find it hard to suddenly discontinue the star gazing from the cloud and look towards those difficult and challenging realities, but that is the task at hand and while looking away may be a choice, it is not the choice that is usually best.

Parallels

2010-03-24T07:04:00.019-05:00

I had great fun this weekend with a houseguest--a new friend, a yoga teacher (in the Iyengar tradition, in the NYC OM studio tradition, etc.), a former professional dancer, a professional musician. The gifted artist with a wide range of talents. Just the kind of people I've always been drawn to. Strong elements of independence, living on the fringe of things, so to speak, a certain outer fierceness (aka control freak) coupled with an inner sweet fragility. Vulnerable, open to life. In truth, someone whose life, in many ways, has run parallel to mine. Of course, many differences, but the connectedness comes from discovering those things shared. He told me that staying here was relaxing and he felt totally decompressed. He spoke of having vivid dreams. We talked endlessly and were both silly and serious.

My step cousin committed suicide a few years ago. She was young, toying with drugs and alcohol, feeling depressed and all alone. It happens a lot. She and her mother, my aunt, had a falling out on the phone which perhaps triggered the final act of her young life and she spiraled into that place of no return. I dreamt of her last night, and my aunt and my father. My father and I were in line to view the body and we were outside near the sea, and we were both barefoot. There was a playfulness and joy to it all. As I approached the body for my personal viewing, the corpse began to stir and move. Clearly she had been dead for a long while and I wondered why the funeral was being held so many years later. In brief, she was possessed and so began my journey towards exorcising the demon within her. She constantly changed forms, from an adult to a tiny baby in a bath. Always I was trying to exorcise the occupying spirit without success. I begged a holy man for water, he had none. But he gave me a small piece of dampened cloth to apply to her body, which I did. Slowly the life began bleeding from her body, but she had recourse to counteract the bleeding. Clearly, this was not going to be an easy exorcism!

Other people mirror who we are, and those attributes we relate to, whether representative of our accomplishments or unresolved issues or yet to be achieved goals, and we see ourselves, we see aspects of ourselves. We can choose to feel good about where we are in our current life, and gaze out on the landscape of our lives with a sense of contentment; we can also be reminded of those issues that always inform us that our work is really never done. There is always something to propel us forward toward wholeness, or completeness, whether such is ever achieved or not being irrelevant.

Spring is here and it's time for cleansing. Time to gently stir from the darkness of winter and take inventory. Where are we going? What do we want? What do we need? What can we do to bring about these things? Are we being realistic and honest in setting our goals, or are we being fanciful? Fantasy is great and can reveal much about who we are, but a certain kind of common sense that comes from our gut is the best leader.

Unlike most trees, live oaks drop their leaves in the spring, not the fall. As the leaves die and fall to the ground, new leaves are growing simultaneously. Dying and rebirth are always happening, often at the same time, in the same moment. We want to cast off (exorcise) those aspects of ourselves that don't serve us, and this is a never ending process, just as we need always to find nourishment for the renewal.

Getting Marooned Outside Our Inner Sanctums

2010-03-12T06:53:00.001-06:00

This past weekend reminded me that I keep company with cats more often than with people; the sounds of windchimes, birdsong, and rustling leaves is far more prevalent in my little world than that of conversing humans. This weekend was an exception. It was martini night at Blu, certainly a first for me. Sweet and fruity martinis with an alluring, nectar like taste that can take one to the edge of drunkenness and dizziness lickety split. The key is small sips followed by long pauses. I was delighted to see an acquaintance tending bar there. Daryl and I had great fun--I like how we connect in so many ways. We all need these new infusions of special connectedness with one another, especially if, like me, they are relatively rare of late. The music was live and loud and begged for a sing-along. I Will Survive, I Put A Spell on You, because you're mine. And that's when the walls came crashing down around us. Sweet, beautiful and fragile, my acquaintance laughed and exuded such warmth as she served us drinks. Then she went off duty, and moments later returned with tears flowing down her face, and she was devastated, for the moment, her vulnerability violated. He had taken her bag away from her and refused to give it back. He was refusing to leave her alone. I've seen that kind of possessiveness, the kind that screams I Own You, and it's a bad scene. The police were called, and I can claim to know nothing more other than that which I observed. But I know all about abuse, particularly spousal abuse. I have seen how it can wreck lives, transform holy holidays into shattered pieces of brokenness. To the outsider, these things just burst forth into the moment and cause temporary shockwaves. For the victims, they can be long-term, hurting and festering day after day until suddenly they just burst open like a boil that spills forth its pus like an erupting volcano, and suddenly one is just burnt down to ash. I cannot judge. I don't know the many facets of this story. I don't know the whole of it. But, it is a theme that runs through many of our lives. Our pains come flying out of us and onto others--we strike out as often as we've been struck, until we learn, if ever we do, that it simply doesn't have to be this way. The cycle can be broken. And, as usual, I too feel sad and weep.

A couple of weekends ago I took my first intense vinyasa class in quite a while, and did it ever leave me feeling oh so sore. But I did two more this weekend and while the plan is to pretty much stay away from them, I did have great fun, especially when I let go of all attempts to push myself beyond what felt good. My physical therapist has "graduated" me! I have passed his tests and my shoulders are well into their healing. Just keep doing what you're doing, he advised, and let time do the rest. Thank you Steve at Star Physical Therapy, and thank you Iyengar Yoga and the wonderful, instructive teachers I've had the honor to work with, thanks to Erin and Mark at Austin Deep, a special thanks to Bekir, and to all those who have shared their healing knowledge with me and shown sincere concern.

It is fascinating to watch Blue Eyes the once feral cat being transformed before our very eyes. Daily, he changes. His aggression and fight or flight response is now replaced by yawns, stretches, lots of purring and oh so much curiosity. He gets lots of petting, but still, I must move gently and slowly and always be respectful of his boundaries, his fears--he will not hesitate to let me know his claws are far sharper than mine. Still, a quick dip of my fingers into his water bowl and a quick splash of water droplets flying off my fingers on to his face usually does the trick. He backs off, we both apologise, and begin again. I have yet to find a better way to win the hearts of others than simple kindness, compassion, love, and understanding. And a big dose of patience. Total non-violence. It works, just like Gandhi told us, and all the sages and seers before and after him. But, watch out for those wearing false robes of holiness, they can outwit us and before long we listen to them above and beyond our own inner wisdom. Keen discernment towards all that tends to shape and mould our lives is yet another of many mantras to help guide us along the way.

They are selling maroon-bonnets at HEB, maroon bluebonnets, that is. I don't know why this has left such an impression with me. When did someone come up with a maroon bonnet wildflower or have they always been with us? I've never seen one before, nor heard of one. I asked inside the store and was told "no, those are Indian paintbrushes." My reply was "no, they certainly are not." "Well, look at the label." So I did. Maroon bonnets, in little black containers alongside regular, old fashioned bluebonnets. Actually, I really like these little surprises.

A big white church invites me in. I stand outside. It is massive. Except for a vertical line of bas relief in rich colors and forms, it is simple architecture covered in a bright white stucco. It glows. Young plants ready to be potted sit in a window sill beside the door. I am called to go inside and pot these plants. We all need to go inside and tend to our inner gardens, nourish ourselves and be in that inner sanctum. Well, at least I do. Sometimes I linger so long outside that sacred space that it all but becomes lost to me, even though it's always there.

Blue Eyes the Feral Cat

2010-01-10T16:00:00.017-06:00

Country living has its disadvantages, such as being the repository of unwanted pets, in particular, cats. Domestic cats that don't have loving homes and are left to fend on their own become wild creatures, often forming feral colonies where the females reproduce prodigiously, the males fight bloody battles and disease runs rampant. Life is very short and not so sweet. This is how I came to know Blue Eyes, a beautiful cross-eyed Siamese feral tom cat who began sleeping around the house, seeking cool spots in summer and places to be warm in winter. It's not easy integrating a feral cat into your home. I gave it a try and failed. I released him today with a prayer and a few tears. Now I find myself gazing out the window hoping to see him return. I tend to melt when he looks at me with those incredibly beautiful eyes of his, pleading for love and kindness, and more importantly, for something to eat; subsequently, I feel rejected when he runs away from me in fear. This has been going on for months, but slowly he has allowed me to be his friend. As humans, we often tend to think we know what's best for everyone else while we continue making our own mistakes and learning lifes' endless lessons. I took him to the vet and had him neutered, vaccinated against rabies, feline leukemia, dewormed, revolutionized (kills fleas and ticks), and most definitely he got traumatized. Then I brought him home and set up the sunroom to be his domain, his refuge, his place of healing, his prison. The vet regretfully informed me that Blue Eyes tested positive for FIV, the feline immunodeficiency virus, and gently recommended that he be put down. The animal rescue people believe he should live out his remaining years in isolation from all other cats, including other ferals. "Such placement can be quite difficult, but you might find a no kill shelter that has a room set aside for such infected cats." Certainly a reasonable alternative to releasing him back into the wild where he may very well continue to infect other cats. In the US, it is estimated that between 1.5% and up to 4% of the cat population is infected with this virus. Worldwide the infection rate is estimated to be around 44% of all cats. Euthanasia of such infected cats is a way of bringing the infection rate down, of reducing the population of infected cats. Like the HIV virus, it is spread through the transference of body fluids, often through blood fights between tom cats who exceed females in their rates of infection. It can be passed on from mother to kittens, but not always. Much is unknown, and the vaccination is admittedly not a very effective prophalactic; however, cats can live long lives with the virus. Unlike feline leukemia, which is highly contagious and tends to make cats very sick, very quickly, the FIV infected cat can live a long life, especially if they can be put on high protein diets and given supplements and treated with antibiotics when the frequent kidney infections, and a litany of other problems, occur. Such options are not available to the feral cat. So I keep looking out the window, and if Blue Eyes shows up, he will have water, food, and shelter, but the decision is his. While writing guess who showed up? He peered in the window and meowed, but ran away when I approached. We engaged in the meow call and response. I opened the door, left the room, and watched as he tentatively entered, then proceeded to eat. Then he left. My neighbors have a room above their garage they keep open for the local feral cat community, and have managed to get most of the females spayed. Between them, and us, and a couple of other neighbors, the wild cat community has some 50 acres in which to roam in relative safety from predators. My decision to release Blue Eyes back into his community, despite his FIV positive status, was in part due to the fact that most of these cats are likely to also be infected. I've learned a lot from my neighbor and my friends at the local shelter. Hopefully Blue Eyes and I will continue growing our friendship, and he will eventually overcome his fears and allow me to provide him with more care.

The Old Mare Can Still Bite

2009-12-08T07:09:00.016-06:00

We bought a crystal ball in Mexico, I don't remember when. It's very heavy and I'm sure it has a high lead content. Mostly it has sat atop the marble coffee table, but we moved it to a southerly facing window ledge a while back. Yesterday we could smell something burning, so I went outside to see if someone nearby was burning a trash pile or leaves but sensed nothing. The smell was coming from the living room, not unlike the smell you notice when you blow out a candle and the waxy smoke quickly fills the surrounding space. The burning smell was so strong we moved into action. I climbed up into all three attic areas but all was okay. We checked the toaster, electrical wires, went outside again, checked the oven. Neither of us had been burning candles or incense. We narrowed the smell down to the fireplace area, but our fireplace is set up with fake logs and natural gas and we haven't turned it on in ages. Finally I saw the problem--the sun was hitting the crystal ball in such a way that the rays of the sun were focused on a spot on the wooden window ledge adjacent to the fireplace and had burned a hole about the size of a razor blade. It was black and hot and penetrated about an eighth of an inch. We doused it with water and vowed to keep the crystal ball away from the rays of the sun. It wasn't exactly forecasting our future but I can't help but wonder what the future might have held had we not been home.

I visited my sister and family on Thanksgiving day and met the newest member of her family--a beautiful quarter horse. I walked out into the damp field with bridle in hand and walked right up to her, put the bridle on then had my cousin, with several kids in tow, give me a hands boost up onto her back and I rode bareback to the barn where I saddled her up and rode for just long enough to get acquainted with her gentle nature. All the kids wanted to ride so I hoisted them up, one after another and led the mare down a cow path and back. It was great fun and the adults in the group wanted a brief riding lesson so I obliged and then watched as they sat on her back and went absolutely nowhere! I gave several demonstrations but knowing horses and learning to ride is something that takes time and experience and even though I hadn't ridden in a long time it all came back to me instinctively. They are beautiful, empathetic creatures. I kind of fell in love with her and would just as soon bring her home with me! When I returned my nephew home at the end of the holidays the mare found her way to the fence right by my car. I brushed her a while and petted her, but soon the kids were all around and I could tell she was annoyed. Then my sister came up and someone said something that caused her to burst out into an uproarious laughter and in a split second the mare reared her head up and bit the hell out of my sister's right breast. I thought for a moment she was going to pass out, but after about 30 seconds the pain subsided and a big blue, red and purple bruise appeared. It was quite a shock that this should happen, but no doubt my sister needs to learn to be calmer around her horse or she's going to get it right in the...

A 19 year old college student plowed his mother's pick up truck through our wild game fence late on Saturday night recently and totally demolished a section of it, snapping the wires like sewing thread, including the supporting wires attached to the nearby telephone pole. Luckily no one was hurt, but the damage effects about 60 feet of the fence as seven T posts are bent and that much of the high tensile wire must be replaced, requiring the installation of a new bracing post. He left the scene but called the next day and apologised, which I appreciate but he simply didn't understand that he couldn't come out and prop it up on his own. He didn't want his auto insurance to be notified but when I saw the damage I felt I had to file a police report. His mother got involved and said she wanted to pay for the damages out her own pocket rather than pay higher insurance premiums and we agreed. However, things did not go smoothly at all and in the end I had to ask the sheriff to pay her a personal visit and get her automobile insurance information so we could file a claim and get the job completed by the original fence builder. It's interesting, to say the least, to meet someone who bitingly professes to be an authority on something they know absolutely nothing about, and can be downright aggressive when you try to spell out the facts. The enormous expenditure of misguided energy is quite perplexing and stressful.

I'm enjoying about 3 yoga classes a week these days, and am still working with my physical therapist on strengthening a variety of muscles to help heal and protect my shoulders. The hoisting of kids up onto the back of a horse is not something I plan to do again anytime soon!

Happy Holidays to all and be safe--at home, on the rode, and with your bodies.

On The Ride

2009-10-25T14:32:00.014-05:00

A small segment of a dream lingers in my thoughts for days afterwards. I was in an elevator, ascending to the top level of a building, and as I ascended the walls of the elevator began closing in on me--like they do in movies whereby the Indiana Jones character must find a quick means of escape or face death. An elevator is perhaps a contemporary of the wheel of fortune symbol, as it turns, one is ascending, descending, and at one point or another at the top or the bottom, but mostly in between. The emotional and physical ups and downs of life will apparently, at least for me, never end so long as I'm On the Ride. Just when we think the walls are closing in on us we find the strength to hold them open. My fortunes decline and then I find the coffers full; my spiritual strength waxes and wanes; my body forces me to a near state of stasis. I remember the meaninglessness of time, or better yet my skewed perspective, and allow the anger and frustation enough expression to diffuse and soften. I read mystery novels to pass the time. They often adhere to a strict formula which affords a sense of security, of predictability, the forces of evil doing battle with the forces of good where the detective ultimately outwits the villain and despite the damages already done, manages to set things right, more or less. I've become a huge fan of The Closer with Kyra Sedgwick as Chief Inspector Brenda Lee, a southern lady transferred to the mean streets of Los Angeles as head of a special branch whose purpose is to solve high profile murders (on DVD).

I miss group asana practice very much. I miss the community of people and the healing and nurturing that is always present. Doing physical therapy exercises with various colored thera-bands, at home, alone, is so boring that I feel I am being again tested to see if I can remember to stop and evaluate, to slow down even more and look at life from a different perspective. Personally, I don't care if my postural integrity is far from perfect, nor do I particularly care that my right lung is smaller than my left, that I have forgotten how to breathe into my upper lungs using my diaphram--I'm labeled an 'over inhaler'--nor that there's imbalance nearly everywhere from the hips up. But when it hurts and pain becomes a constant companion, I do indeed care and am called into a different kind of action. I've been very surprised to learn that quite a few people who practice yoga end up with injuries requiring physical therapy--so my physical therapist tells me. "We have many students of yoga coming through our doors seeking healing" he tells me. I've given up wondering what I might have done wrong. IF anything, it was pushing too hard doing what I love, not paying careful enough attention to pain, and forgetting the age and condition of this body I inhabit. It's not fruitful to think in terms of right and wrong, clearly I did a whole lot of right because it felt delicious and was so enriching. But now I need to compensate for whatever reasons that led to this imbalance that causes, at times, intense pain. Maybe I was over zealous in my pursuit of goodness, and ego got too involved. Doesn't matter anymore, not now.

A beautiful Siamese tom cat has decided he likes us, and we like him very much. He's not quite feral, but petting him is presently out of the question, much less placing him in a carrier and taking him to the vet for shots and evaluation. But it's been quite enjoyable making his acquaintance and doing our best to provide food and water. We call him blue eyes. How original.

I drive Dale to physical therapy this morning, his knee is healing very nicely and he walks far better post operation than before. We are already talking travel and planning our next adventure, perhaps Alaska, perhaps Ireland, who knows. I have a meeting with my physical therapist this week for the usual evaluation and the fine tuning and tweaking of my exercise program. I also see my newest Orthopedic Surgeon for the second time and hope to learn that surgery is not necessarily on the horizon, although I'm no longer resistant to it. One must be very careful in dealing with these surgeons, they often have god complexes and require that one be especially tolerant of their attitudes, as well as proactive in one's own care, but that should always be the case.

Back to The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte, check on Blue Eyes, have breakfast and begin chaffeur duties.

Interview with Karen Armstrong on NPR

2009-09-27T10:47:00.004-05:00

The following link should take you to a brilliant interview with Karen Armstrong which aired recently on NPR's Fresh Aire, and I highly recommend setting aside 38 minutes and listening to it.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112968197&ps=cprs

Should the link not work, just go to http://www.npr.org and find the Fresh Aire podcasts. Let the content be a worthy treat to yourself! I hope you find it as inspsiring as I did.

The More We Learn, the More We Love, the More We Love, the More We Enjoy

2009-07-10T13:57:00.017-05:00

While sitting in the doctor's office today I was delightfully surprised at the wonderful collection of books and magazines available to peruse--The Impressionists, a book on Australia, another of Africa, a book on Monet, a limited edition book about the Titanic, and much more. I was also impressed with the doctor and left feeling hopeful, uplifted and ready to move into his prescribed action or inaction, whatever the case may be. I feel quite hopeful that he has an understanding of my problem, one that he describes as "black and white with no areas of gray" and one that can be relatively easy to heal so long as I'm willing to do the work and stay proactive in my health care. I like his holistic approach. I like the fact that he seems so confident that he has discovered physical issues that clearly explain my problem--namely, my shoulder pain that continues to worsen no matter what I do. I wanted to jump for joy and scream YES when he told me that I've done nothing wrong, that this has nothing to do with yoga, or with doing asanas incorrectly, but has everything to do with trauma suffered in 1988-89 that has left my upper thoracic spine very much torqued in one direction which then is at a tug of war with my neck. I think the torqued upper thoracic spine spins my torso causing my right shoulder to move forward, my neck struggles to be forward looking, and there is much nerve impingement, plus the fact the the C-5 cervical disk is 60% gone and two other disks protrude slightly, one to the left, one to the right. I will work with him 3 times a week for the next two weeks followed by work with a physical therapist. He doesn't want me washing the car, mowing the grass, or doing any yoga while his treatment is in progress over the next two weeks. This will be a huge challenge. I will greatly miss the physical connection with community and no doubt the disconnect will not be easy, but this will be an opportunity to focus on the *non asana* aspects of yoga, such as, for example, studying my Anusara manuals!! But out of all the doctors and physical therapists I've seen (and more) he is the only one who has taken x-rays of my full spine, allowing him to view the whole spinal column to see what's going on. It's so common for doctors (and many of us) to have tunnel vision, maybe because we can only see that which we know about. In a book in his office I read, "The more we learn, the more we love; the more we love, the more we simply enjoy."

I took my yoga mat to Puerto Vallarta intending to do asana on the terrace or go to one of several yoga studios, but I simply didn't do that. I thought that giving my shoulders a rest might help--it did not. After a recent afternoon of swimming, I felt more pain than ever in both my shoulders, so rest seem to be a good idea, although the canopy tour of the jungle, all harnessed up and flying from one tree to another attached to a cable wire was definitely a bit of a strain on my shoulders. So mostly I just chilled, and read, and ate, and walked, and visited with people. Our suite in an old villa was funky and charming, right on the beach, and the staff and other guests were simply delightful. Dale struggled mightily with his knee and his greatly impaired ability to walk, so I suppose I did feel just a tad guilty being gone for over 6 hours on the jungle canopy tour. So I arranged several massages in our rooms, did some cooking in our little kitchen, and we spent a lot of time riding in taxis going out to eat at a new restaurant most evenings, lounging on the beach or by the pool or in the cool shade of our covered terrace. It's good to be home, as always. The pair of resident foxes are bringing their kits right up to the house to drink water. I wonder if they will survive the heat and what they find to eat. The birds and squirrels are all back as the feeders are now being filled daily. The old white haired racoon has learned to arrive early to eat what the birds and squirrels have left over. They are all always in search of food and water. The need for nourishment never ends. We can never learn too much, nor love too much, and there is always something right in front of us to enjoy, to take delight in.

"Home", More than a Film

2009-06-16T05:48:00.008-05:00

Home is a spectacular film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, narrated by Glenn Close, filmed in over 50 countries, with fantastic music, incredible aerial views, spectacular color. It is enlightening, enriching, educational, and a bombardment of the senses. Very Highly recommended. Home being our planet earth, its incomprehensible array of plant and animal species, micro organisms, our planet that is around 4 billion years old. We, as humans, having only appeared on the scene in the last 200,000 years. Only in the last 20,000 years did we settle into agrarian communities. Over one fourth of the people living on the planet today live exactly the way they did 6,000 years ago, and of those, three quarters still till the soil by hand. More people live in the deserts of the world than the whole of the population of Europe. Then we come to the last 50 years, and everything becomes "faster and faster" and what has happened just defies comprehension. We are a species like no other, ever. Please watch this film if you get the chance. It's available for rent, or can be purchased. I aimed the camera at the TV and took the above photos.

Resolving that Antsy Feeling

2009-06-11T07:22:00.014-05:00

A small remnant of a dream remembered from last night held fast to consciousness this morning, so I've been thinking about it over coffee. Something like this: the large (think super-size) skeleton of an ant fell on the floor after I extracted it from my ear, along with some other debris. I thought it might be the skeleton of a scorpion. With curiosity I touched it, and it was indeed the skeleton of a large ant--dead, decaying, and unraveling. The end of its life cycle. I'm pleased but a little sad, this letting go of something many have told me to do. Let's get to the core. I took yoga teacher training for the purpose of deepening my practice. I never aspired to teaching, and always put that out there and made that clear. Still, others who I very much admire and respect kept telling me that I should teach, that I would be good at it, that it would benefit both myself and others. This kind of positive but instructive feedback was good to hear even though it contradicted my original thinking. I began to question my lack of aspiration to teach. I began to turn it over and over in my mind. Again and again I would come back home to my own thoughts and feelings that teaching yoga is something I GREATLY admire in others, something that has benefited me beyond words. But me teach? Such a new, unexplored arena. So in a way, I gave in to the idea and signed up to be a substitute teacher. I had many doubts--not so much about my ability to teach (but yes, definitely some of those doubts), but more about my desire to teach, and how it would fit into my lifestyle, my time schedule, my commitment to my personal practice, my time constraints. More importantly, is this something I want to do? So I have been doing some teaching, and for a beginner teacher it is challenging, time consuming, and at first pretty scary. But I've done it and while it has dramatically increased my appreciation and admiration for the art and discipline of teaching this sacred practice, I have come round full circle and again have come to the confirmation that it is not something I want to do. And I need to be at peace that this is okay. I need to know that no matter what others tell me (and the vast majority of those who encourage me to teach are teachers themselves), I am ultimately the one who decides what my heart is asking me to do. So I've been a busy ant for a significant portion of my life, then I stopped and was no longer a busy worker ant always with a demanding job in front of me. I will not feel the sting of the scorpion by NOT doing what others tell me, I will not be punished, there will be no consequences to suffer, only that which I impose on myself. So I have given notice to the place where I teach, and this notice was received with total acceptance, understanding, and love. Sometimes my intuition isn't clear, it isn't black and white. Before we truly know what's best for us, we need to get out there and explore, and do it. Go through the fear, move through the action. And then we are far better equipped to move forward in our lives with discernment. And, this may need to be repeated. It is important to listen to what others say, and allow for change and a multitude of possibilities, but ultimately we chose our own paths.

Engagement in the Many Journeys

2009-06-08T07:52:00.013-05:00

After yoga Sunday night a small group of us were having sandwiches at The Great Outdoors Cafe: Paul had recently traveled to New Mexico and his roommate has/had a house in Santa Fe, Jim is going to the Bodhi Zen Center in Jemez Springs, his friend is going to meet him for a stay in Santa Fe, Bo was recently there...and all this got me thinking along these lines:

It began with a woman in art therapy giving me a rock that was precious to her. Take it, she said, hold it and feel the magic, let it transport you, it comes from the banks of the Chama River in Northern New Mexico.

Fifteen years ago I had a house in Canones, northern New Mexico, at the end of a four mile long dirt road that began as a forest trail and evolved into a two lane, deeply rutted, narrow, and at times harrowing road to the house and the surrounding four acres. It was a beautiful four mile drive that took thirty minutes to traverse in good weather, in a four wheel drive vehicle or pickup truck. At the crest of a hill to the left was an ancient Anasazi Indian village rarely seen except by the occasional villager and visiting archaeologist. To the right was a tiny Greek Orthodox Monastery that kept me amply supplied with the best locally made bees wax candles in exchange for taking in their cats during short sabbaticals. I had no telephone, no television, and in the winter, no neighbors. Delicious, sweet water flowed through the property from a mountain stream that also brought piped water into the house all year long--a rare commodity for most in this region. Near the corner of a large field behind the house were the remnants of a log cabin from long ago, shaded by an apple tree that was a prolific producer of small, sour apples. Horses loved the apples and with an old fashioned recipe could be made into the best apple pie I've ever tasted. A lone pinon pine towered mightily at the front gate while groves of cottonwoods lined the banks of the icy cold Canones Creek and colored the landscape with brilliant colors in the fall season. Surrounding the house was a root cellar, a tack room, a greenhouse, two large screened porches, one attached and the other some distance from the house as part of a guest room and an old abandoned trailer house that smelled of dead mice. There was a free standing carport adjacent to the small shed that housed the firewood. A giant propane tank stood out like a sore thumb near the entry gate and foretold of long, harsh winters that visited each year with deep snows and subfreezing temperatures. An old fashioned swing hung from the rafters of a small gazebo next to the wooden foot bridge that crossed the creek. The house itself had an exterior covering of split logs made shiny with regular linseed oil applications and was well insulated against the cold. Inside were two bedrooms, a sleeping porch/studio, an open kitchen and living room with fireplace, one bathroom, and a sizable utility room containing the defunct baseboard heating system, washer, dryer, hot water heater, and large freezer. I painted most of the interior walls, applied yet another coat of linseed oil diluted with turpentine to the exterior planks, and painted the trim of the house a colorful Indian red. I gardened, hauled rocks, mowed, chopped firewood, mended fences and gates, cleaned the tall chimney like a chimney sweep, went for long walks in the adjacent state and national forest lands, visited the Anasazi ruins, made friends with the monks and some of the villagers and used tools my hands had never before touched. I added extra panes of glass to the windows of the added-on sleeping porch which was intended for summer use and not well insulated against the blowing winds of winter. I learned to keep it closed off from rest of the house during cold winter nights, then would open it up during sunny days as I sat in front of my easel or took lazy afternoon naps. I added two propane heaters as emergency back-up. I settled in for winter. I was happy and contented. I was doing exactly what I wanted to do, I was following my dream. I had moved to my oasis, my utopia in the remote deserts, forests, mountains and valleys of Northern New Mexico.

I barely made it for a year. The winter turned the landscape to infinite shades of dull, depressing gray. The roads became worse. There was always the possibility of the pipes freezing which would result in the loss of water until spring. I fell off a ladder injuring my wrist with no one to hear my screams for assistance. I drove two hours to get groceries and stood outside in the freezing snows and blizzard-like winds making phone calls home, beginning to question my decision to move here in the first place. As winter wore on and isolation set in, I became desperately lonely. Night after night was yet another dark night of the soul. I would retreat to the Benedictine Monastery about 30 miles away for company, all the while worried about leaving my cats alone. I would walk out to the front gate under a brilliant cast of stars the likes of which I had never seen before or since and call out to some god to bring an end to my loneliness, my fear, my isolation. I spent day after day contacting and visiting various bureaucratic agencies in an attempt to get a telephone installed. I was told that a telephone would be simple to install provided I pay about $100,000 for the 3.5 miles of wires and poles that needed to be installed, after obtaining permission from each and every landowner whose property the lines would cross. I would visit friends in Santa Fe who couldn't visit me without having the underbellies of their vehicles torn away. I would visit art galleries and restaurants and get home long past midnight. I missed my partner back in Austin more than I imagined possible. I started therapy in Santa Fe with a wonderful young therapist who was my saving grace. After several months he asked me what prevented me from returning to Austin, from returning home, from returning to my partner? When I realized the answer was NOTHING, I jumped for joy, packed up some clothes and the cats, winterized the cabin, and headed back home. I had spent my time alone in the deserted northern wilds of New Mexico and came to fully understand the deep meaning in the phrase "there's no place like home." Dorothy said it, she was wearing the shoes all the while without knowing their power. A rich, unforgettable experience, a journey of learning and growth, a time of deep searching and longing and introspection, a time to never forget, but finally, the realization that I needed to go home, and that I had a home to go to.

A young, gifted friend tells me he wants to pull up stakes and move to New Mexico, buy some land, have a house and a separate studio for yoga, massage, teaching classes, group meetings and gatherings, and ideally have a scattering of small cabins on the property for guests. Where? I ask. Somewhere in Northern New Mexico, between Santa Fe and Taos, a small town. Why? I ask. To be in touch and harmony with nature, the dramatic, beautiful landscape, experience the intensity of the change of seasons. Like so many of us, he is drawn deeply into the Land of Enchantment. The place where alternative lifestyles are relatively commonplace. A place of indigenous peoples, secluded monasteries, Zen centers, Native American reservations, communities living off the grid. I totally understand this urge that pulls at him. I have felt it and acted on it. It's important to have dreams, goals, to follow our hearts, to move out into the world and take risks--this is what makes us feel alive. As an elder, I have seen this dream acted on over and over again, and while I'd never discourage anyone from following their dreams, I do strongly advise people to go out to New Mexico first and stay for a while, rent a house, become familiar with your surrounds. It's a very harsh life out there. It's one of the most sparsely populated states in the US. It's difficult to earn a living. It can get very lonely. All the people you dream about coming to visit you may not show up. The community you dream of building may not come to pass. The chances of returning to the place from whence you came are pretty high. I've seen this over and over again. The largest town between Santa Fe and Taos is Espanola. Between Espanola and Taos are a few very tiny towns, and although incredibly picturesque, not very many permanent residents. Heading from Espanola towards Abiquiu is also beautiful, but again a very harsh and difficult climate in which to live. People build dream homes along the Chama River and a year or two later put them up for sale. Countless communes have come and gone. Georgia O'Keefe loved this country and lived there for many years, but in the beginning she rented a house on secluded property of Ghost Ranch and frequently returned to New York. Over a period of many years and frequent visits and increasingly longer stays, she decided to take up permanent residence. But she was a highly successful painter and knew the landscape thoroughly, and was one of a rare breed of people who can thrive creatively and otherwise both in a harsh climate and virtual isolation from community for extended periods of time. But who am I to say that this gifted young man will not go out there and find exactly what he wants and needs? I am not one to say that, only present my perspective, my own personal experience, and be at peace with him doing exactly what he wants to do. Blessings to him and to all who venture forth into the unknown, whether alone or with a companion, in search of meaning and happiness.

A Motley Crew of Poets, Indeed

2009-06-01T06:37:00.012-05:00

A motley group of students take a field trip with their teacher to an old, run down monastery, built of great substance but in much need of restoration, set in a series of beautifully maintained gardens. Through dirty windows one glimpses the extraordinary greenery of the inner and outer sculpted and natural landscapes--inner courtyards and surrounding gardens with cypress trees growing along the grassy banks of a flowing stream. It speaks of enlightenment and the likes of William Blake. The assignment is to compose a traditional sonnet following a prescribed rhyme scheme. Afterwards, students are called out by name to read their compositions to the group. With great dramatic flair, one student pretends to conduct an orchestra as a prelude to the reading of his literary masterpiece. Another student greatly surprises the group by reading an exquisite poem written masterfully with perfect rhyme and image provoking metaphor. Yet another student reads her poem which ends abruptly mid-stanza and leaves the group puzzled over the lack of apparent meaning and the total departure from the specific assignment. I am called upon to read my poem, which I have completed following the given instructions, and I'm initially very pleased with my creative output until I begin comparing my poem to the exquisite compositions of others. Suddenly mine seems lame, and worthless, and I don't want to read it so I pretend to have lost it. I am not let off the hook, and the class waits while I search. In the meanwhile yet another student recites her poem of near perfection. Now my poem appears to be lost and I am glad I cannot find it. The teacher asks for all my materials--my books and various papers, and he begins a personal search for my lost poem. He finds other poems I've written, and drawings, and doodles and scribbles and underlined passages and marvels at it all. He points out the beauty of my personal inventory. Suddenly I am aglow with a renewed faith in myself and I too begin searching for the poem I have written. I find it and am pleased with it, I love it for what it is--my poem. Maybe not as sophisticated or erudite as some of the others, maybe not so rich in metaphor, not so colorful, but still, it is mine (and it is part of the whole). And all is well as I've listened to my teacher and stopped comparing and contrasting my work with that of others, stopped separating mine out.

We can always find people whose poetry of being is more beautiful than ours, just as we can easily find those whose poetry seems nonsensical, or lacking in rhyme and rhythm and substance. It's good to be aware of this great diversity and to observe it and soak it all in lovingly. But when we begin to compare ourselves in a judgmental way to those whose poetry we find more beautiful than ours we begin to doubt ourselves and lose touch with our inner teacher. The same is true when we compare ourselves with those whose poetry appears shallow and without meaning, for if we use it for comparative purposes to give rise to our own sense of well being, we have failed to truly embrace the beauty of diversity, we have turned off the dialog with our inner teacher. And so as we look out on to the poetic landscape of our lives, we seek to find learning and growth and beauty in all this, and focus our attention on exactly what we have before us in our own gardens--one day it may be lush and tropical, other days it may be a frightening barren landscape. Our outer bones and structure may begin to face decay, but it is what it is and we are who we are and so we begin to cultivate the poetry of our inner lives, listening to others, sharing, accepting, exercising non-envy and stepping forth into the circle and community of self-acceptance. By tending to our own gardens, we show others how to tend to theirs, and we all reap the bounty.

Om Hrim Om

Dissolving Knots and Melting Away Nails

2009-05-30T07:35:00.009-05:00

After practice yesterday I had a great massage, a Jeff combo special extreme. Laying on my stomach, I went into a deep relaxation, perhaps a trance. I saw my back covered with giant nails (best description is railroad spikes). This was not a painful image or a disturbing one, no blood, just a series of spikes holding my body down, and as Jeff continued to massage me the spikes disintegrated, releasing their hold. It was a sweet, pleasant image yet one that expressed intensity. Imagine actually being nailed down with railroad spikes penetrating your body--pretty awful. But in my image the spikes were painless. When we relax our minds and our bodies, we can release all the nails of tension that keep us nailed down, that keep us held in place and stuck, that keep us face down and free from seeing, free from moving into understanding. For more than a few weeks now I've been struggling to understand a relationship that I don't fully understand. It seems to defy definition, understanding, and at times, healthy boundaries. I needed to let it go, I needed to be free from it for the time being--all this within myself. I felt hurt and angry and these feelings cause my mind to get stuck in creating scenarios that are little more than illusions that seek to release the pain. They are like illusory whirlwinds that take off and gain strength in an instant before I realize I have the capacity to stop them before they take on too much of a life of their own. Again and again when I realize that I'm not feeling loved in the world, that I'm feeling unworthy of love, it helps me understand that the pain I'm feeling comes from old wounds and has been triggered by an outside event that usually has very little to do with what's swirling around within me. However, we do need to pay close attention to those people in our lives who may indeed have a tendency to disregard our boundaries, or whose actions don't jibe with their words (and vice versa). Human nature is so complex and when we try to nail down someone else's behavior we might only end up in knots ourselves. Sometimes, not always, it's best to just let go, stop the whirlwinds of illusion, and let the nails come out, and from this place we are more free in choosing what serves us best.

Underlining the Underlying

2009-05-24T06:04:00.003-05:00

I often find myself, while reading a book, grabbing a pencil or highliter and underlining nearly every sentence I've just read with the thought: I must come back to this--it really speaks to me, there are many layers of meaning here that warrant further exploration. Bringing Yoga to Life by Donna Farhi is one such book. For example, in her chapter The Freedom of Discipline, she talks about the importance of learning to channel our energies by "increasing our tolerance for staying in the pause between desire and satisfaction." Staying in that place between wanting and getting or doing. I've been applying this pause to so many things of late and the outcome is simply wonderful. It allows for things to just unfold without me interfering, interjecting, projecting, and in general trying to control or manipulate things, even with the very best of intentions, whether I believe I'm being appropriately assertive or not. There is a gentleness in this that I like very much. Not knowing what to do is a dilemma many of us find ourselves in, as well as not knowing what to say, when to say it, whether to say it at all when confronted with difficult situations. Yes, the avoidance of conflict altogether is not a very realistic approach to living--after all, conflict of one kind or another is a fact of life--but fully understanding and seeing that fine line that divides *into action* vs *pause* is difficult for many of us to define. Staying in pause mode can bring the clarity we are looking for, and oftentimes that clarity unfolds before us while we are in a state of pause, and resolution comes to fruition while we observe. This is NOT to say we shouldn't actively participate in our lives nor does it promote procrastination. What it does say is that the habitual reacting that may have been with us for a long time may be a behavior that needs to be carefully examined. Farhi writes that the Latin root for discipline is disciplina which means knowledge, or enlightenment. Discipline sometimes has a negative connotation, but when put in the context of an action that brings knowledge and insight into who we really are, it helps to push us to show up to the yoga mat or the meditation cushion, or just get out and work at getting and finding whatever we need in a manner that is skillful and guided by discernment. Pausing can be as simple as wanting to tell a stranger in a yoga class that his behavior is insulting to the teacher and violates yoga etiquette and tradition (not paying attention to the teacher, talking so that other students cannot hear the teacher, physically adjusting a fellow student, etc.) But when you pause from saying anything and moments later learn he is the spouse and/or best friend of the teacher it's a confirmation that the pause served you quite well!! Action that is anger based, or controlling based, or care taking orientated is best kept in the pause mode. Pause doesn't mean stop permanently, it just means slow down and be very mindful before stepping in to shape or control a situation. I really do like this whole pause concept. I'm underlining Pause and examining its many underlying meanings and applications in my life.

The Falling of a Teardrop--"Just a Little Green"

2009-05-18T07:04:00.022-05:00

To account for his distance, J told me life had been throwing him some curve balls. That's what life does, I said, it likes to throw things at us and pull us in all sorts of directions, leaving us dizzy and sometimes sick, and therefore not always as available as we would like to be. We all need time to process, to be alone to ponder and wonder. Sometimes we are lied to, people try to engage us in scurrilous gossip and sometimes we succumb and are sucked right into that vortex. We try to untangle all the little injustices laid at our feet, set the record straight, let the truth be known. We get caught up in the web and are devoured by the stories. Hooked, as Chodran calls it. Just hooked in a nano second, before we've had time to just step back and take a deep breath. This stepping back is not easy, nor is it withdrawing. There is an element of detachment but by no means void of empathy. We seek a sense of objectivity without being an actor in a play written by someone else. A play that might be tragic, absurd, or sad, and mostly quite irrelevant to what we want to be engaged in. So we begin learning to script the plays that bring richness to our lives but this doesn't mean building a wall around us with a deep moat filled with stagnant water; however, it does mean growing to know ourselves and what we want, what we need, then seeking out those people and situations as best we can so that we can act out the roles we feel are best suited to our own personal growth, hence we can interact with and observe others doing the same thing--for our own good and the greater good of others. Often there is so much UN-learning for us to do. Truths can be elusive, with so many dimensions. We begin to reject and throw out all the ignorances that have caused us so much conflict, so much suffering.

Patanjali has so much to offer us, it's really almost incomprehensible in it's simplicity. With humility, an open heart and an open mind we embrace the sacred study of yoga, and with that, we begin to embrace the life we want to lead. Each time my buttons get pushed, it indicates a clinging to one of the kleshas. (Patanjali mentions 5 kleshas, or causes of suffering). To help us dissolve these veils, he suggests that we develop 4 attitudes: friendliness, compassion, celebrating the good in others, and remaining impartial to the faults and imperfections of others. Donna Fahri writes that our spiritual fitness can only be tested in relationship with others. So, when my buttons get pushed, I ask myself what's really going on here. And usually it comes down to the simple answer: I don't feel loved, and that for me can be a really devastating feeling, until I realize, HEY, this is that opportunity presenting itself, it's a pretty loud knock on my door. Someone says or does something, or doesn't say or do something, and I'm triggered. I might feel angry, sad, wanting to act on that retaliatory impulse; when I stop myself I realize that usually nothing has really happened that amounts to a hill of beans. Just a hill of beans I create in my mind because I'm afraid I'm unworthy of love. The old story that reaches back into childhood. The recurring theme. "You are not loved because you are not worthy of love." When I realize this is what's going on, again, it breaks the illusion that someone is purposely trying to hurt me. It's just the little boy in me feeling deeply hurt that his dad couldn't find ways to express his love for his son. My best *defense* is learning to love as sincerely and as deeply as I can muster, and that means being open and vulnerable, which allows the love of others to freely come to me, and it does. The healing is profound.

I had a leisurely lunch with my good friend J yesterday. He still blames himself for his HIV status, and finds himself beating himself up with guilt. He is searching for the path that will lead him to forgive himself. Many of us indulge in little indiscretions from time to time, and they add up but usually with no significant consequences. But the AIDS virus doesn't allow you to forget your indiscretion. Your partner told you he was not infected, you had every reason at the time to trust him. He hid his little indiscretion from you thinking there would be no consequences. Just a little rendezvous. And it spreads and spirals out of control and has profound consequences. It is with you every single day and sometimes rears its powerful head and comes very close to slaying you.

I closed my eyes and saw a green tear falling from the heart center. Why a green teardrop? In so many arenas of life, I'm still green and have so much to learn (and un-learn). The heart chakra is green, as is a blade of grass shooting up towards the sun, spring time colors the palate with shades of green, of renewal and growth. Oh yes, and split pea soup. How do all those peas get split into near perfect little halves?

Taking Flight

2009-05-13T11:18:00.011-05:00

I love Spring time. I've spent countless hours watching the birds, especially the mama and papa chipping sparrows and their chicks on the top of the column of the front porch where they built a nest upon a nest upon a nest. All day they tirelessly bring insects to the screaming hatchlings. They chatter and fuss when the cats sit in the windowsill nearby and become conspicuously quiet when I walk outside. Yesterday the chicks decided to emerge from the nest and jump around on the top of the column. One fell out but couldn't fly. Then another fell out. I stood sentry in case the neighbors cats showed up for a meal. The little ones just couldn't fly and the fussing and screeching kept my attention for hours. Finally I decided to intervene and try and put them back in the nest. Well, what a mistake that was. I spent forever trying to catch one of the chicks with a soft cloth. I must have looked pretty silly but finally I caught one and put him back in the nest with his siblings, and he immediately flew out and landed right back on the ground. They are too young to leave the nest, so goes my thinking. The sun set and everything quieted down. I looked this morning and the nest was completely empty. Presumably, all four babies had taken flight, or attempted flight. They grow so fast, all the while the parents are inexhaustibly bringing insects to spit into wide open beaks. I saw a big tom cat sitting out on the rock ledge a while ago, right where the baby birds take refuge. Did he eat them? Did they escape? I don't know, but I do know I need to just let it go, and let nature take her course.

I know I'm borrowing from a poem that really speaks to me, but during a class this week there was a brief moment, when, through guidance and energy, I thought I was going to totally explode into a radiant blossom of overwhelming light. I think that spark that resides within each of us is often made more assessable when we are led into that space by another who is tapping into their higher energy and we let go completely and let ourselves just fall into IT. Perhaps this is what happens when we truly let go and taste the nectar of grace. For me, it's like dipping my toes into a cool stream of water and feeling totally electrified by the sensation, only it's not so much a physical sensation as an inner, spiritual one. Thanks to all the yoga teachers whose energy connects into inner territory and allows me to intuit something far greater than anything I know. Those are indeed sacred moments. No more nor no less sacred than watching baby birds trying to take flight for the first time.

I love Spring time, and I love trying to take that inner flight towards the light of self.

Silent Altars Today

2009-05-07T15:57:00.014-05:00

2009-05-04T22:41:00.014-05:00

I stepped outside into the cool darkness of predawn to listen to the mystical call of a great horned owl. I've not heard him in a while. I saw a fox sauntering down the sidewalk without a care. Quails sing out bob white, bob white, and make regular appearances under the bird feeders. Other birds sing out Shakespeare, Shakespeare. Eggs have hatched on the front porch perch and the parents feed their naked little ones a feast of insects all day long. On the drive home today from the Orthopedist, a red tailed hawk flew right over my car at the moment that these lyrics from Memory (Cats) were being sung:

And soon it will be morning,
Daylight, I must wait for the sunrise,
I must think of a new life
And I mustn't give in
When the dawn comes
Tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin

A new day is dawning, and I mustn't cling to the old, the bad, the past is but a book of memories, both good and bad. I think of J, and his healing abilities that are now being explored, his unfolding processes. His energy work leaves me feeling absolutely fantastic. Dare I say I love the guy? Yes, I do say it.

I had my initial visit with an Orthopedist today. Xrays show significant deterioration of one of the discs in the lower part of the cervical spine.
This could be the root cause of the pain now shooting down into the shoulders
and into my arms to the elbows (all rather tolerable, mostly). The deep cortisone injections into both shoulder joints will either ease the pain significantly in about a week, or do nothing at all, which will determine the next course of action, an MRI or not. Pressure from bony structures, herniated discs or misaligned bones can cause nerves to do strange things to the body. Yoga helps a lot. It's an ancient injury.

I taught my second class yesterday as a volunteer sub. Teaching as a novice is difficult and time consuming. I hope others benefit. I have very mixed feelings about all this, and wait for clarity to come (or not).

Yesterday I received the following letter. Following that is a letter she received from a representative of the Dalai Lama. Following that is my letter to her.

"To fellow dharma friends,

Hello. I have been a dharma practitioner for many years. Recently, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, on a Canadian television interview, stated that he completely
rejects the notion of homosexual love

( http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/2007/11/110407_1.html ).

In response to my question about this cultural prejudice, one of His Holiness's representatives (Tsultrim Dorjee) sent me this response below ”essentially comparing the acceptance of homosexuals to the toleration of thieves, liars, and adulterers.. It is a rather sad day when Buddhist leaders and the Tibetan Government in Exile cling to cultural norms and prejudices.

This is a serious concern for all dharma practitioners. What should I do? Am I living in sin because I am a lesbian?

I ask my dharma friends to call on His Holiness to embrace homosexuals as full members of the dharma community. I think it is time for true compassion, not prejudice.

I would like some serious thoughts as to my question though. Thank you.

Tenzin Palmo

--- On Thu, 4/30/09, Tsultrim Dorjee wrote:

From: Tsultrim Dorjee
Subject: Acknowledgement
To: jjnyinluv@yahoo.com
Date: Thursday, April 30, 2009, 6:09 AM

Dear Tenzin,

This is to acknowledge receipt of your letter of April 28 regarding homosexuality.

For your information, what His Holiness is actually trying to say is that once you accept a religion or a belief you are naturally obliged to follow certain precepts, norms and rules of that religion or belief. For example in the case of Buddhism, the definition of being a Buddhist is:
1) All produced things are impermanent
2) All contaminated things are suffering
3) All phenomenon are empty and selfless
4) Nirvana is peace
If a person professes to be a Buddhist but does not believe in these things, then technically he is not a Buddhist. Similarly, more relevant to the issue of homosexuality, there is the code of conduct for Buddhists. As a Buddhist one should refrain from engaging in the ten non-virtuous actions. In the practice of the ten non-virtuous actions homosexuality is considered a sexual misconduct. Naturally therefore, if you are a Buddhist it is not considered proper to indulge in homosexuality. On the other hand, if you were not a Buddhist this would not be applicable. For example, if someone is not a Buddhist and does not believe in Karma (law of causality) it would be ridiculous to condemn such a person or to say that his attitude is inappropriate. But if one is a Buddhist the situation will not be the same. In any case, it is important to look at this, as in the case of all other things, from an overall view. There are many such actions that are considered inappropriate for a Buddhist, such as lying, stealing and committing adultery and so on. Many Buddhists commit these acts. They are not condoned or considered appropriate but there is an acceptance that there are people who commit such acts.

I hope it clears you now.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Tsultrim Dorjee
Assistant

*********
My response to Tensin Palmo's letter:

Dear Tenzin Palmo,

As a gay man and a person who embraces the teachings of Buddhism (and other spiritual precepts) I am initially shocked into disbelief at what Tsultrim Dorjee has to say about homosexuality in the email below and also at what the Dalai Lama himself says about homosexual love in his interview ( http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/2007/11/110407_1.html fast foward to 10 minutes into the interview). But then again, they are both only human and apparently ignorant in regards to this matter. I love the story Jack Kornfield tells of a deeply depressed gay man who found a spiritual teacher who taught him meditation and completely turned his life around. When he learned that his guru viewed homosexuality as "wrong", he fell back into a depression and was deeply conflicted. However, his guru had taught him so many wonderful things, and was such a wonderful person/teacher, that when he was able to look past his teacher's ignorance on this particular matter, and forgive him for this ignorance, and focus on all his good qualities, he was able to come to terms with the matter and resume his relationship with his spiritual teacher. If we believe people are innately good, and that goodness lies at their core, then as humans we must assume they are still journeying towards that goodness, and we must love them as best we can, including all their blemishes and imperfections.

Like Alice Walker, I do not call myself a Buddhist because it is yet another label that attaches oneself to an institutionalized set of rules and a belief system whose evolution often bears little resemblance to the original moment of spiritual enlightment that occurred centuries ago. On the other hand, I believe I have the right to call myself a Buddhist if I believe I am following the teachings of the Buddha.

In my opinion, it is simple nonsense to think you are living in sin and not walking the dharmic path. What does your heart tell you? There you are. Be at peace with this. It is unlikely you or I will be able to change the Dalai Lama's position on this matter any more than aspiring gay priests or nuns will be able to change the Pope's condemnation of homosexual love or certain Cardinals who believe the Holocaust never occurred, despite the truth that is standing right there in front of them.

Ron Hicks
rhicks2@austin.rr.com

Mish Mash

2009-04-28T06:53:00.017-05:00

When a wounded, bleeding cat was presented to me in a dream I took him in with open arms and nursed him to health. Soon he was running around the house freely, in good health, just being a much loved happy cat. When he tried to follow me outdoors I blocked his exit and said No, you can't have THAT kind of freedom. So I began wondering how this related to my current life. Cats are fiercely independent creatures, with minds of their own, free spirits--yet they are very dependent upon the care of humans. Like any living thing, they can be hurt, wounded, abused, mistreated. They can lose their power. Their damaged bodies die and the spirit moves on.

Our sense of freedom can suddenly be shattered by life events that are unexpected, from small shatterings that are momentary to life-changing events. Adding on a new responsiblility can be both rewarding and feel like a restriction to one's freedom. But there is always choice. Choosing freedom when it's offered, choosing to heal when that's available to us, chosing carefully when to set up boundaries (as opposed to barriers), and choosing to love and care for oneself and others. Sometimes, with the very best of intentions, we give our power away by acquiescing to things when our gut says no, I really don't want to do that, or no, that doesn't work for me. We allow ourselves to do things when something inside keeps telling us it just doesn't fit. Clarity can be elusive, decision-making can require deep introspection, and then we just have to trust. Self-acceptance can be a powerful tool.

It rained this past week and the burn pile was really big, so I doused it with a modest amount of diesel and set it afire. Because it was damp, it burned slow and created swirls of dense white smoke and steam. The rain poured down in light to heavy pulsations, but fire is hard to contain. I love fires, but I don't like being out in the rain. But something primitive inside stirred and I stayed with it. I peeled my clothes off and felt the rain drops all around me. I stepped near to the fire with rake in hand and played with trying to get more leaves and wood to burn. The wind constantly shifted and I was forever finding myself engulfed in smoke. There was a meeting of the elements I rarely witness up close--the dance of fire interacting with a dousing of rain, then fed and renewed by a gush of wind, the organic, dying limbs and leaves and roots of plants transforming into ash. A dove landed on a nearby line and cooed and watched and had a hard time balancing on the wire.

Sometimes it's hard to balance our lives. We find we are doing too much and feel we have no freedom, that we have lost touch with the natural world. We take on more and feel strangled. We let go of some things and sometimes that works, sometimes we find we have too much free time and we don't know how to deal with it. We grow bored. We feel guilty that we are not being productive, or doing our part to save the world, to save the planet.

The smoke from the fire permeated my skin, my hair and I smelled like soot. My eyes watered. Stepping too close to the heat made me look like a blushing beet. I watched a confused cricket race towards the fire only to turn around to get away, circle around and come back into the fire from another angle. He was burned alive.

Sometimes when we get burned it's because we are running around in circles and not noticing that we are moving too close too danger, or we are moving too far from safety. We douse ourselves with water and feel cold and drenched. When we bleed like a wounded cat we feel we have lost our power, given away some freedom, and we want it back. We seek healing. We find freedom. But when we begin to rest comfortably into that sense of safety and permanence, it can quickly be taken away,
go up in smoke, bleed out onto the ground, we fall off the tightrope we've been walking on. We mourn like a dove. But we fly on.

I ran over a squirrel on the highway. It was a hard hit. I turned around and parked. He was partially crushed yet frantically hanging on for life, gasping for breath. I covered him with a rag and put him in a cloth grocery bag. I put him on the ground and he was bleeding and crushed beyond hope. I hated to see him suffering. I was at friend's house so I borrowed his father's shot gun and blasted the little squirrel into little fleshy, bloody bits and pieces. I felt horrible, not so much for putting him down, but for running him over in the first place, for being involved in his death. Stay with it.

When we get in too much of a hurry and we are not watching where we are going life can run us over and lickety-split we are smashed and broken and lay there bleeding. Maybe we survive, maybe not, sometimes a little part of us dies. All the things we have squirrelled away for the winters of our life we must some day leave behind, and that could be tomorrow. But always there is rebirth.

I can't seem to totally wash away the smell of soot. I stink in a way that has a slight appeal to my senses. Maybe it's in my lungs, or hangin on to hair in my nostrils. A squirrel ran out in front of my car today but I stopped just in time for him to make his escape. My cats grow fat and lazy and are afraid to go outside when I accidentally leave the door open behind me. It's a kind of freedom they've never known, so they don't want it.

The birdsong has been especially loud of late, or maybe I'm simply noticing it more. The doves gather around the birdfeeders and find it hard to balance, so mostly they eat seed that has fallen to the ground. They compete with the squirrels. Feral cats lurk in the bushes waiting for just the right moment to pounce on their prey. Buzzards were pecking out the eyes of a deer carcass on the side of the highway this morning. It truly gave me the creeps, but it is the law of the jungle, even the sometimes chaotic urban jungle in which most of us live. But always, there is harmony to be found, and always, we are challenged to learn, to try and find that often very small place of balance where we can rest.

Where is the Ground?

2009-04-16T04:54:00.000-05:00

It's interesting how small events can converge, accumulate, or even culminate in causing one to suddenly feel groundless. It's just a lot of uncertainty that seems to blow in on the prevailing winds, the kind of uncertainty that makes you want to grab a hold of something so you don't spiral down too deep into the unknown. So it's all kind of juicy sweet and bitter all at once, this getting familiar with a new unknown, or a new uncertainty--or even an old one that revisits often. These days that groundless feeling manifest itself in my heart. I will suddenly awaken from a nap with a palpitating heart. This is good news because no longer do my fears cause my blood pressure to skyrocket, or cause irritation to the lining of my stomach, or cause me to withdraw into myself and close down. There is something about a heart that beats harder and faster that heightens my awareness to sit up and listen. Time to pay close attention.

This afternoon on the drive home through the backroads I saw a pair of beautiful cream colored horses--one was lying on the ground and the other was standing over her. I had a flashback to another time a couple of years ago when I saw the exact same thing only to learn the next morning that the horse lying on the ground had been shot dead in a drive by shooting. I never told my friends whom I was visiting what I had seen because at the time I had no idea whatsoever that the one horse was dead. It just never occurred to me. But still, I remember having a queasy feeling, and remember asking why the horses hadn't come up to the house, and yet it wasn't that unusual. How could I have known with certainty that the deep queasy feeling might have been because part of me may have sensed that she was dead. The next day when we learned she had been shot I was totally overcome with guilt for not telling my friends what I had seen the day before. Could I have saved her had I said something? I think not. And today's sight caused me to remember all these things, and to notice and realize that the beautiful blonde horse lying on the ground was totally alive and well and just doing what horses frequently do--they just lie down on their sides for a while, enjoying the feel of the dirt, the feel of earth against their body instead of just their hooves. Sometimes my feet cannot feel the ground. Maybe I should go lay down on the ground and see if I regain my sense of foundation, but I know that it is from these moments of uncertainty when we feel groundless that we learn and grow so long as we stay with it and not try to escape from the uncertainty. Sometimes I want to ask for clarification but when you already know that much of life is all about mystery, it's best to just be quiet, and be still. I also know that in the end I will fall down to the ground and never get up again. Of that I am certain. "One of these days, my friend, we all fall down forever." The ground is never that far way.

Who Quiets the Singing Tree?

2009-04-08T11:11:00.009-05:00

Several years ago I cut, cleared, sawed, and mowed a path through the woods around the house. One day while walking this path I heard a strange singing sound, kind of eerie, unrecognizable. A sort of vibration. The wind was blowing that day and I thought maybe it was some distant sound traveling on the wings on the wind, but not so. Behind me was a tree whose branch had grown right up against the branch of another tree and as the wind caused the branches to rub against one another the friction made a distinct, musical sound. Over time this friction between the branches had formed a sort of tree wound, a place where the bark and more had worn away completely. I called it the singing tree and would go and sit under it and simply listen to the extraordinary sound. Recently I've tried to find it again and I can't. Today I realized that it is no longer there because the trees have grown and the unique contact between the branches is gone, the singing tree wound has healed and is no longer. I'm bummed about the pulled muscle in my back, and that I can't do asanas for a while, but it was suggested I take walks. Just as the lament of the wounded singing branches of the trees have healed and grown, so will my pulled muscle. I used to be afraid to walk in the woods but now I feel no fear, but rather at ease, and welcomed. Sometimes I see animal faces in the plants, in the dead decaying pieces of wood, in the unique rock formations. Gray writes that "spirit is not limited to human beings. Rocks, animals, the earth, and so on are seen as having spirits...in indigenous cultures, spirit can be directly engaged and used as a source for healing."

Kabat-Zinn writes: "The old fairy tales, we are told by their modern interpreters...are ancient maps offering their own guidance for the development of full human beings. The wisdom of these tales comes down to our day from a time before writing, having been told in twilight and darkness around fires for thousands of years...they are emblematic of the dramas we encounter as we seek wholeness, happiness, and peace. The kings, queens, princes and princesses, dwarfs and witches are not mere personages out there. We know them intuitively as aspects of our own psyches, strands of our own being, groping toward fulfillment. We house the ogre and the witch, and they have to be faced and honored or they will consume us. Fairy tales are ancient guidance, containing a wisdom, distilled through millennia of telling, for our instinctual survival, growth, and integration in the face of inner and outer demons and dragons, dark woods and wastelands...It is worth while to seek the altar where our own fragmented and isolated being-strands can find each other and marry, bringing new levels of harmony and understanding to our lives, to the point where we might actually live happily ever after, which really means in the timeless here and now."

The singing tree is gone, but the musical notes resonate with healing when I meditate upon them, allow the energy to pierce my outer bark. From a trash heap at one of the San Antonio missions I gathered some dying aloe vera plants, and have many times repotted them, throwing the tangle of roots in the woods where they continue to thrive and bloom despite the odds. There are little trails everywhere made by unseen animals scurrying about under the cover of darkness. Holes are dug everywhere to provide shelter and dens of refuge from predators or the elements. I observed a large branch growing vertically towards the sky from a seemingly dead tree stump, it's green leaves fresh and alive and fragrant. And I saw my first hummingbird of the season, and swear she looked just like a fairy.

The Prolonged Journey into Slumber

2009-04-02T08:30:00.009-05:00

Most nights I gently remind my partner that once again he is prolonging my journey towards slumber by engaging me in little last minute noctural projects that will only take a second. He smiles. The landscape lights need adjusting. Let's bring in some tools. The fountains need to be turned off. The cats know the routine, and go in the opposite direction when we try in vain to herd them into the kitchen that comprises my so called side of the house. The heavy wooden doors I had shipped from New Mexico create a sound barrier and serve as reminders that such boundaries are doors of freedom for our individuality. Free spirits, they say. I advise troubled couples to let their partners be who they are. Caged, we do not sing. I gaze out the kitchen window wondering when or even if the Painted Buntings will make their colorful appearance this Spring. They are beacons in a world of growing extinctions. I drink my coffee and throw the toy mouse across the room. My stomach gets kneaded with little paws. I hear songbirds greeting the morning as the day dawns. The wind causes a cacophony of sounds among the wind chimes hanging from the oak trees, and dead leaves dance in their spring fall and begin to recycle their nutrients into the soil. I read about the good red road which is our sacred path, how all my relations is a mantra of universal connectedness, and when we notice synchronicity in our lives we are in balance and vitality is with us. When something changes in your dreams it will be reflected in your life vs. when something changes in your life it will be reflected in your dreams. There is always another way of seeing things, of doing things. Other realities. I long for another sweat lodge ceremony. I want to step outside and fly and see the ground below through eagle eyes. I dream of diving into the underworld and communing with animal spirits. I record upcoming workshops, retreats, and classes in my at-a-glance calendar and ponder which ones I'll actually make it to. Edward told me that if I bought a bunch of little chickens the hawks and owls would visit often but that seems too contrived and unnatural to me, but still sparks a bit of interest. My niece writes her annual email and tells me she will be visiting orphaned children in Guatemala and that she is intimidated by yoga. I paraphrase the appropriaate sutra and urge her to go against the grain of fear and start where she is. My best friend tells me he wants to paint again this year, but isn't this the 7th year he has expressed such plans that have come to naught? We agree that he will attend a regular Sunday yoga class in his attempt to gain a sense of himself, begin walking a new path to find the elements of life that have become lost to him but he is a no show coming up on three Sundays now. I sigh and feel sad but remember I cannot save, only offer up some little bit of support and whisper a prayer when I remember. I forget so many things. I know I will be scattering the ashes of loved ones and wonder who will scatter mine and remember it doesn't matter one little whit. Still. Stillness. The creaking of a door like clockwork, the barriers of our souls are opened, it's time for breakfast. For errands. For another day.

Searching for Directions

2009-03-28T07:36:00.011-05:00

My younger sister has taken on a boarder named Edward, almost 20 years old, whom I met a few days ago, and had the opportunity to hear his story, which goes something like this: he and my nephew and a third boy had been best friends since grade school except the third boy was hit by a garbage truck on Congress Ave while riding his bike and was killed; my nephew witnessed a murder up close and personal; Edward was walking on Lamar and was struck by a hit and run driver, suffering severe head trauma. The head trauma was followed by followed by migraines, hallucinations, then a diagnosis of schizophrenia, hospitalizations, all this while grappling with the fear of being gay and finding no peer or parental support. A rough time. He's now stabilized and is searching for work, so I hired him for the day to wash windows and do some yard work. I was definitely playing the role of the Big Brother Mentor sort of thing that I'm not particularly familiar with, so I just played it by ear and did my best and I think it went quite well. I listened, I answered questions and gave feedback when prompted, and worked alongside him for many hours. We got a lot accomplished. There has been a slight escalation in my interactions with younger folks of late, and I feel especially responsible to set as best an example as I can and dispense the best advice I can when asked to do so. In the end, we make our own decisions and choose our paths, but I do think that every little interaction along the way can have sway over us, positive and negative, significant or trivial. Life swirls and spins, cycles and recycles all around us, throughout our worlds and the planet as a whole. Pretty fascinating. I find that everyone, no matter their age or circumstance, no matter their journey or history, deep inside longs for love and acceptance. We want our experiences to be meaningful and nourishing and we want to feel loved. We want to be heard and acknowledged. We want confirmation of our innate goodness. Sometimes these deep longings are left impoverished and starving. We want answers to the profound questions of life. The answers may be right in front of us but we haven't yet learned to see them. We want a guiding hand to reach out to us in our moments of darkness and pull us back into some kind of light. Sometimes the guiding hand leads us deeper into darkness. I know that Edward will go and buy drugs with the money he earned, but he assures me he will only play with the natural ones, as if that offers up some sort of organic consolation. Many times I had to say no thank you, I do not want to have a mushroom or hemp experience, I don't want to heighten my awareness in that way. Yet I felt I didn't have the right to judge or criticize. Oh what a world. Just some morning musings.

The Never Ending Removal of Obstacles

2009-03-23T04:34:00.019-05:00

I woke up at 4 this morning with remnants of a vivid dream swirling into the groggy transition of mind from dream state to consciousness, compelling me to reach for pen and paper, capturing with words those vivid and strange images that are the composition of a dream, all the while noticing the unfolding connections of the dream to the events of the day before. Yesterday was seemingly unique, perhaps because I was more awake and aware. In some ways the first half of the day turned out to be a parallel of the afternoon that was to come. On the way to Mark's 10 a.m. class at Castle, a light at Lamar turned red with my car first in the queue, which gave me the opportunity to have a conversation with a homeless guy and his dog. The story is vague, but went something like this: he jumped through a large pane of glass after being awakened by a dog, maybe the building was on fire, and after flying through the glass the dog followed him and landed in his arms. He spent 2 months in Brackenridge Hospital, near death, and kept the adopted dog with him the whole time, despite protests. The dog had saved his life by getting them both out of the building, and the doctors took over, suturing the deep, life threatening lacerations to his chest and face.

I arrived at class to learn that Gioconda was subbing for Mark. It was a good class and I'm always enriched by my beautiful "little sister's" presence, wisdom, and inspired teaching. The class was a challenge, my body temperature rising and sweat pouring off me. I needed to take several rests, nothing unusual in this. Sometimes these windowless studios that have just experienced a previous class seem stifling and devoid of fresh air to me. After doing a series of handstands and pinchas, followed by several urdhva dhanurasanas, my heart was beating furiously in my chest, yet my breath remained slow and calm. There was a sweet deliciousness in these moments of feeling my heart pounding so hard and fast, yet no feeling whatsoever of needing to breathe deeper, fuller, or faster. No sense of approaching panic. I remember thinking that because the asana is such a powerful heart opener, maybe a divine dose of prana had entered my body. I slowed my breath even more and it was even more delicious and unfamiliar.

I stopped at the car wash and the wait was long and they told me Jeff, my massage therapist, would be there in 45 minutes, long after I'd be gone. I left him the card Changing the World One Om at a Time with a note saying I hoped to see him there, got home around 1:30, just in time for lunch, a few household chores, a brief rest, then I headed out to another class. In this class I was aware of the breathing of others, which is always such a nice experience--the deep connected feeling of community in practice so often sensed and felt by the sharing of breath. I'm drawn to a new guy who struggles mightily with the asanas, and makes all sorts of moans and grunts with his voice and breath. He is a beginner and I relish watching his growth. The instructor announced "no grunting in class". I noticed that when he left class he appeared crestfallen. The theme of the earlier class was mudita, and I wanted to stay with that practice, so I emailed him and told him I admired how regularly he had been in showing up to practice, showing up on the mat, and how he was doing exactly what he needed to do, that he was exactly where he needed to be, and that with consistent practice he would notice shifts and transformations. In some ways I think beginners benefit the most from positive experience in class so as to keep them on the yogic path, if that's the journey for them.

As I was filling the car up with gas I was approached by a young man with his dog, reminding me of my experience earlier in the day with the other homeless guy and his dog. This guy was down on his luck, and yet this dog that he had rescued from an abusive life revealed to me, as earlier, that his owner was treating him well, feeding him well, and the bond between them was tight and bright. The calm and sweet nature of these faithful dogs reminded me of when animals come to our rescue and provide us with a much needed dose of empathy, a breath of freshness and companionship when we might otherwise feel alone in the world. This young man was living in a seedy hotel for which he was paying $190 a week. At such times I want to shake my fist at the unjust world, but must find refuge in knowing this is simply the way it is in the world, and far, far worse at any given moment with countless living creatures all over this mysterious planet. These encounters stir up a desire to save and rescue, which I cannot do. But listening, hearing their stories, caring, seeing their light, giving a few dollars here and there is good for me, and hopefully good for them. A few moments to stand and breathe with another may not be saving the world, but who's to know the outcome of sharing one breath, one om at a time with others?

When we sincerely rejoice and share in the joyous success of others, without expectation, we open ourselves up to receiving the same in return; likewise, when we are experiencing joy and success in our own lives, and when we listen and care and feel compassion for others, when we share our hopes for the betterment of the world, one moment at a time, perhaps we can make some positive difference.

************

The dream centered around my younger biological sister. Although her journey through life is radically different from my *adopted sister/teacher/mentor*, they share similar characteristics unique to those from the "red hair" gene pool--intensely passionate, fiercely independent. In the dream I was travelling in a very crowded bus where everyone was sitting on the floor on yoga mats in rows of four, and one woman wouldn't allow me to get off at my destination. Other women intervened and prevailed. Indicative of the powerful ebb and flow of feminine energy I've experienced of late. My task was to deliver the name of the color of paint being used to paint her (my sister's) house and the nearby ceiling of an open aired lobby. It was an extraordinarily rich and beautiful red, earthy red, adobe red, vibrant and alive, again representing the power of raw energy, aggression, profoundly deep spiritual and emotional characteristics. But this red had a softness to it, toned down, calm, soothing. The painter was conveying the name of the paint to me in foreign coinage and bills, which were spilling out on to the ground when a homeless man grabbed a handful and ran away with the money. I chased him and got it back, then chose to give him some of my own will, clearly representative of our free will, our freedom of choice, and how the decisions we make in our life can have profound consequences. When I arrived, in the dream, at my sister's house, she wasn't there, but I was instead greeted by a pleasant woman who was supposed to be her mother-in-law. Resolution of conflicts with good outcomes. The mythical symbol of conflict and interference transformed into harmony. The guilt and alienated (foreign) feeling I often have when I witness others with so little currency, but learning to come to terms with that seemingly unfair state of affairs.

Cats, Candles/Agapanthus, Aloe Vera

2009-03-19T22:01:00.010-05:00

The last two days have been devoted to yard work and I'm tired of it. I ache. Aging is for the birds. I lit candles tonight, put a favorite oil into a diffuser, drew a hot bubble bath, put on some beautiful, meditative music and soaked in Lavendar Chamomile with extracts of marigold, chamomile, soy, lemon grass, aloe vera, and vitamin E. Organic of course :-). Throughout the work day each time I came into the house I found my cats affectionately coiled up in my chair, on my towel. Sweet creatures. We hired a guy to help us, thinking maybe 5 hours today, 5 more tomorrow. He was young and did everything we wanted him to do in 1.5 hours! We forget that we move slowly. It was nice having a young strong worker to help us. We are simplifying our yard, moving more into a Zen direction with lots of gravel and far fewer plants, for the purpose of having less maintenance. Besides, I'm tired of everything we plant growing so fast and aggressively that in no time at all the landscape feels like a jungle. It's too much. I separated the agapantha clumps and replanted 6 small plants, tossing all the rest in the burn pile. The same with the planter of aloe vera plants, most went into the burn pile while 3 youngsters got replanted in the wooden flower box by the garage. It's a healing plant but the thorns can be nasty.

It's not easy going for 2 full days without doing yoga, I miss it. Dale is moving slower and slower with each passing day and yard work is becoming too much for him, even though he loves getting out and puttering around in the yard.

Time for bed. I've been leaving my roller shades fully open at night. It welcomes the night into the room, and allows the cats to peer out at all the nocturnal critters. Spring is here and the days are growing longer. I had lunch with Jeff and we both agreed this is one of our favorite times of the year. It's been fun catching up with friends for lunch and making it to more men's yoga classes.

Folks that are Dear

2009-03-11T07:13:00.029-05:00

This is my third blog attempt this morning. My mind isn't wildly out of control (I don't think), but it seems to be searching for just the right words, for the opening through which my thoughts can flow unimpeded. Have you (comments welcome) ever had a positive, meaningful, connected interaction with someone whereby when it was over and you were moving away you felt part of that person was still with you? Furthermore, the part of that person still with you took on the form of an animal? Something like the residual energy of that person was still contained in your energy field but in a mythical, symbolic way. Is this just utterly ridiculous? Is it simple projection? Is the mind/spirit on a deeper level connecting with something primordial? In a certain way it's like wakeful dreaming, and our thoughts take on *unfamiliar* forms that are not immediately accessible and clear.

Example: I dreamt the other night that I was in the company of a very angry woman. I think my mind was expressing a need to release something that I was refusing to acknowledge on a conscious level, something that I was suppressing, to do with anger, with anger towards the feminine aspects (of myself), or the life and people around me. Aha, now that makes sense. Because truly in real life I was pissed off at someone but I absolutely could find no way to constructively express or release that anger. In fact the anger was misplaced, and actually expressing the anger towards that person would have been totally inappropriate because that anger had nothing to do with that person, but everything to do with me. So the anger came out in my dream, through my subconscious mind, and found expression and release that way. When we don't act out, when we sit with stuff, it can be amazing how certain issues find resolution on their own, without our own conscious intervention and meddling. Besides, hell has no wrath like a Goddess scorned. Never underestimate the power of the Goddess.

After practice the other day I had lunch with a group of guys, five of us in all. It was quite an enjoyable get together, and the conversation flowed freely, moving from one topic to another in a somewhat stream of consciousness sort of way. In retrospect, I realize that I didn't have a clue what was being said half the time. Really, it was gibberish to me. So I just honed in on that which I could understand, listened and responded. Nothing unusual in any of this. But when you do find someone you feel deeply connected to, it's downright rich, and often transcends words and simply being in the presence of that person leaves one feeling sated.

Deer. Such majestic creatures whose bodies move seemingly without effort, gracefully defying the laws of gravity. Powerful yet vulnerable, feminine yet virile, swift with fleetness of foot yet unable to discern their primary enemy in the urban jungle (the SUV, the automobile). "The deer depicts meditation, meekness, and gentleness but also signifies love-sickness, solitariness and melancholy, when associated with the maple (in the Chinese tradition). In the Celtic tradition they are messengers of the divine, supernatural animals of the fairy world, fairy cattle. Deerskin and antlers are ritual vestments."

Personally, I have lived in the company of deer for the past 30 years, feeding them, observing their social hierarchy, matriarchal led herds of does and only young bucks who are kicked out as they approach young adulthood. It is sad to see the young buck literally being kicked and hoofed by his mother, aunts and sisters. He must leave and live alone, at times running with other males. I struggled mightily with the decision to ban them from our property a few years back, but decided that since they were eating our garden and all our deer-proof plants, especially in times of drought, it was the only thing to do, hence the 7 1/2 foot fence. Now when I gaze out I see the landscape devoid of deer, and find something lamentable about that, and so I lament as I inhale and exhale the reality of injustice.

*******

I just read in a newsletter put out by Spirit Journeys, the following, which I thought apropos:

"There is much fear swirling all around us these days. Let your Inner Warrior stand fast in the knowledge that fear is an untruth spoken by those hiding in the Shadows or living in the Dark; only Love is real and stands openly in the Light."

Still, it's a great time to be alive.

Spirit Energy Flowing, Taking Notice

2009-03-05T11:54:00.015-06:00

How often it is that I have to remember to just slow down, stop and pay attention to life as it unfolds. I felt drawn to a young man who is a licensed masseur when he asked me at the car wash if I wanted a chair massage. I said no, then something compelled me to say yes. His hands were healing and therapeutic. His spirit bright and energizing. I ended up taking his card and have had several deep tissue massage sessions with him. Yesterday after my first sports massage with him, we were sitting at his kitchen table eating tangerines, discovering those threads of connection and trust, moving into those first moments when you feel so at ease and bonded with someone new. He began sharing and telling me about the path he was following, the path of his heart, a path deeply connected to nature, and how it was leading him (and his girlfriend) down a very fulfilling and rewarding road, that doorways to discovery were happening for him, he was learning what touched him and made him feel in tune, and what made him feel free from dis-ease. Suddenly a door to the bedroom opened, and I looked to see his girlfriend walk through, but she didn't. A moment of complete silence. Apparently the wind very gently and noiselessly blew open the door just a few feet away. It was kind of eerie. It was kind of magical. Nothing superstitious, just one of those little moments where you feel that nature is answering back to you, confirming what you've just said. Good energy flowing. The cast of illumination.

I'm driving a friend to Kerrville this morning to visit his father who's in the hospital there. He's 83 years old and was in a pretty bad car wreck in which his car was totalled and he had to be pulled from the wreckage. For unknown reasons, an ambulance wasn't called, so he was not examined by doctors or paramedics, the cops simply drove him home after the accident. After arriving home he called his insurance company, and while on the phone he collapsed and fell to the floor, shattering his hip. So now he is confined, for at least 6 weeks, to a rehab center, unable to walk. The doctor has told him his fall had nothing to do with the car accident, which pretty much cancels out any compensation from the other driver's insurance.

Something strangely unpleasant and unusual is going on in my lower intestines this morning. Yesterday I dug up the crowded clumps of Irises in the Zen garden and separated the bulbs and replanted the new growths and discarded the old and rotting portions of the shallow underground root/bulb system that really should be done every 2 to 3 years. I love the feel and smell of earth, digging into the soil with bare hands. A google search answered my questions about Iris bulbs, and also said that the old, rotting bulbs should not be placed in the compost pile. When I snagged a fingernail whilst digging I automatically brought it to my mouth and immediately realized I probably should not have done that. There must be some chemical in the bulbs that is toxic, I don't know. Maybe that's why my lower belly is growling and misbehaving this morning. Another message from Mother Nature? Vata out of balance?

I received a very nice email from my massage therapist in which he asked if he could possibly practice some newly learned light energy healing on me. Of course I said yes, then read a little about energy healing in the Shamanic traditions. I was immediately struck by the word luminosity, and balanced chakras. After my sports massage J mentioned that the techniques he employed were motions that moved the blood back towards the heart, and also released many toxins.

I was reading from a blog I follow in which the blogger posted a quote from Jack Kornfield's "A Path With Heart". It was a quote I had underlined and put an asterisk by in my copy of the book. It struck me as very relevant to recent experiences. Page 158, first paragraph, begins "Initially, in our enthusiasm for our practice, we tend to take everything we hear or read as the gospel truth. This attitude often becomes even stronger when we join a community, follow a teacher, undertake a discipline. Yet all of the teachings of books, maps, and beliefs have little to do with wisdom or compassion. At best they are a signpost, a finger pointing at the moon, or the leftover dialogue from a time when someone received some true spiritual nourishment. To make spiritual practice come alive, we must discover within ourselves our own way to become conscious, to live a life of the spirit."

All the little connections can leave the mind reeling. Maybe that's why it's best to try and tell the mind to just leave things alone, and slow down, stop, and just pay attention with the heart.

Be Quiet, Hear the Roar

2009-02-22T07:15:00.004-06:00

I've been thinking of family, which began with a rare phone call from my Uncle James, my mother's only sibling, now 85, wondering what to do, where to live now that his wife's advanced Alzheimer's has permanently separated them both mentally and geographically. Struggling with health and financial issues, struggling with not knowing, yet facing life with an incredible sense of humor and independence. As a kid I remember him as tall and lean, thick light red hair, an outdoorsy kind of guy like an adult boy scout. For 7 consecutive years he drove from New Orleans and took all of us on extended camping trips to Camp Riverview on the Frio River, not too far from Garner State Park. It was always magical for me, sleeping on cots under an open sky, snorkeling and swimming every day, tirelessly riding the water on our air filled plastic rafts, nursing sunburns, listening to the constant flow of the river and the wind in the sycamores, late evening hunts in the shallows for crayfish. Always my uncle could built a campfire using only one match. I am guilty of all too often dwelling on childhood memories that were wounding--hence needing attention and processing--and forgetting the safe, nurturing, and peaceful moments that are also important collections of one's personal history. Is it me, or is it human nature to want to feel good, happy, joyful, contented, safe...most, if not all the time? My uncle reminds me, yet again, of the importance of learning to find peace with our troubles when they arise. Remembering to ride the breath, like all those countless moments of floating down the Frio, the fast moving shallow rapids, the slow moving calm of the deeper water, the step by step feel of earth and rocks beneath toughened feet.

Yoga training is nearing an end, and I'm glad for that, although I know I will miss the structured learning and growing process I sought, and found, and I'll miss my classmates (two are with child), and most of all, my teacher. It's been an enriching experience on all fronts--deepening my practice, meeting and interacting with new people, paying attention to that which resonates, moving into zones of discomfort, and much more, but in summary, feeling more awakened and alive to life and growing into that, growing into yoga. What I missed is staying home with my partner, and our pets, working in the yard. The accumulated projects will provide for a busy spring spent outdoors, getting my hands dirty, working with plants, painting the unfinished part of the gate and courtyard wall, digging up the bamboo and separating and replanting the lilies. Feeling the sun. Hearing the chimes. Hearing the quiet. Yes, the quiet.

We baked an Angel Food cake yesterday, and will serve it up today covered with sweetened, sliced strawberries and whipped cream in celebration of several birthdays. Little nieces running around the house just being kids, being very noisy, coloring one moment, crying the next. I look forward to it, and then I'll look forward to it being over. Yes, the quiet, but not too much quiet, not for me, not for too long.

I had a brief but wow moment yesterday when I ran into Mary K R, and she wanted to know why I didn't return to the immersion a year or so ago. So in response to her gentle probing I was totally honest and told her I found her to be cold, unloving, detached, and not very friendly! And in saying the words out loud, to her, the truth revealed itself so clearly. I just wasn't ready at that time. I had projected my hypersensitivity on to her, and made up a story which I bought into and acted on by leaving, by not returning. At the time, I think it's what I needed to do as I just wasn't up to that particular struggle and learning process. It was a moment of synchronicity. I hope to learn more from her in the future, if it's in the cards.

The Prevalence of Fear

2009-02-12T07:00:00.019-06:00

Lately, as I'm preparing for bed, I hear the haunting call of the owl. In the darkness of predawn I hear the owl again, but this time I hear two owls, engaged in their song of call and response.

Something deep within me stirs, something sacred, mysterious, and slightly foreboding. I wonder if I'm dreaming--each time I fetch my roommate to come and listen, there is only silence. Doubt arises. The sound I hear is deep and guttural, a string of connected multi-syllable vibrations, legato, that float like notes on the wind. It's very much like a chant, a mantra, coming from the darkness of night when the earth has spun us away from the light of the sun.

It's hard to read of the devastation the Australian wildfires have brought to thousands of animals--burnt, scorched, seared, wounded, dehydrated, frantic, panicked, and dying; for most there is nowhere to go. These kinds of disasters make me wonder about the realities of life that are baffling, both in their beauty and in their incomprehensible horror. My two cats have been acting particularly needy of late, vying for a spot on my lap, curling up against me so close that I wonder if something has triggered feelings of insecurity. Both are rescued and adopted from shelters with "no-kill" policies, while thousands of others are euthanized. Is it any wonder that most of us, who strive for some kind of awareness, are often visited by the many faces of fear?

In the Spring 2009 issue of tricycle magazine, Ezra Bayda tells us that by truly getting to know our fears, we begin to break the spell they hold on us. He describes three basic fears: fear of losing safety, fear of aloneness and disconnection, and the fear of feeling unworthy. Within each of these categories he includes just about every fear known to mankind. Bayda tells us that these multitude of fears are not just mental, but are written into the cellular memory of the our bodies, particularly in a small part of the brain called the amygdala. Therefore, he writes, simply knowing our fears on an intellectual level will not free us from the dominion they hold over us. So how do we deal with these fears? We face them head on, we do not run away from them or deny them, we sit with them and see them for what they are. And what are they? Illusions? Most of our fears are not rooted in reality. They are imagined and created. They are stories that our minds spin out like long threads of cotton candy, with thousands of sticky strings that melt away once we touch them. There really is not much substance there, but there's little comfort in knowing that. The recent issue of the Shambhala Sun has a series of articles on fear: Anxiety Soup by Alice Walker, The Fearless Lineage by Carolyn Gimian, Beyond Fear and Hope by Margaret Wheatley. The cover of the magazine invites us to "Smile at Fear".

I'm struggling much more than I'd like with an injured shoulder. I'm learning that I don't know how to align my shoulder properly, and despite all the attention given to this matter, I still don't have it down right--it's all counter-intuitive. The needed muscles are undeveloped. I'm still learning. I've been doing it incorrectly for so long. The physical therapist fusses at me and I tell him to be nicer. Fear creeps in and want to find another therapist, I fear I won't be able to do yoga again, I fear the pain won't go away. I make up all sorts of stories. But I do show up and I do the exercises, and I know my imaginative fears are like a runaway horse on the wind that I try to rein in. It's particularly comforting when I realize I'm not alone. That's only one reason why community is such a potent antidote to fear. Fear is with all of us, and learning to rest in that, to smile at that, is a task we are called on to tackle regularly. I guess that as long as we strive to be steadfast warriors on our paths to find truth we are doing all that we can do. And so that is that.

This most resembles the sound I hear. Click on this only if you have an updated version of Quick Time, otherwise one's computer gets "stuck".

http://www.naturesongs.com/ghow1.wav
Great Horned Owl

The Nonsensical Expressing of Pineapples with a Hoot

2009-02-02T21:54:00.012-06:00

We watched a whacked out comedy last night--Pineapple Express--filled with shoot em up pot smoking drug dealing bloody murder and mayhem with car chases and explosions and I was totally laughing my ass off. I really needed that--just crazy, nutty entertainment to let go off all seriousness and be goofy and silly. Comedy makes us laugh at life, at ourselves, at others, at our condition, and I think that holds high healing value. Hasn't it been proven in some scientific lab somewhere that laughter releases some chemical that is healing? At any rate, common sense says laughter is very good for us. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the movie, but it was certainly just what I needed after a weekend long yoga intensive that was both energizing and tiring. I am SO grateful for learning from Mark F how to position my shoulders (Anusara) during asana practice to prevent injury. The head of my right humerus bone has come both up and forward out of its stable position and therefore certain muscles need to be trained and strengthened to bring it all back into proper alignment. This has been bothering me for over 6 months, and gotten progressively worse, so I'm now working with a physical therapist 3x a week. After the long weekend of study and lots of asana practice incorporating the proper alignment of the shoulders, I noticed yesterday morning when I got up that I could feel no pain at all, as if some profound healing had taken place, which is pretty amazing. Recently I've been feeling slight discomfort in my left shoulder as well, which probably means the same thing is going on over there. Last night in bed I could hear the hooting of an owl, not that unusual out here, but very unusual to hear it from inside the house, so I knew the owl was perched nearby, probably doing a call and response with another owl. As I sit here writing, I can still hear the hooting. In most cultures the owl is ambivalent as the symbol of wisdom and darkness/death. Over the years more than just a few yoga teachers have told me to not be so serious; many more have corrected my shoulder position. Obviously there was wisdom and knowing in those words of advice, but I'm not sure I knew how to heed their cautions. Now nature is telling me to be wise with my body or I'm going to injure it, and perhaps I need to lighten up and come out of staying too long in the "darkness" of seriousness and step more often into the light of laughter. Hoot hoot.

Carry the Banner of Love and Acceptance

2009-01-24T05:52:00.023-06:00

I watched a powerful and touching documentary the other night--For the Bible Tells Me So.

I wept.

Earlier in the day, after class, I saw Devon and he continued his intense work on my shoulder, then I saw an excellent MD who gave his affirming opinion that I probably don't have a rotator cuff tear but rather tendinitis with some calcification in my upper right shoulder along with some impingement. Prescription: evaluation and physical therapy 3x a week for 8 weeks! (and a cortisone injection if I want one). No painkillers and no anti-inflammatory prescriptions! I like this doctor! I was so excited about his referral to a clinic that specializes in shoulders only to learn they do not accept my primary insurance carrier and therefore my secondary insurance carrier won't cover me at all. Just another Catch 22 in the American system of escalating medical costs and dramatic decreases in insurance payments, hence the epidemic dropping of many insurance carriers, especially Medicare.

So what now? Find a clinic that accepts my insurance, if there is one, get another referral to a different clinic, or work out a payment plan and pay out of pocket. This system is really broken. It's just shocking how many doctors and clinics no longer accept Medicare. What in the world do retired people do if they can't afford to pay out of pocket? (We should all know the answer to that if we simply watch the evening news or know retired people who paid into Social Security and MUST accept Medicare as their primary carrier).

How does this tie in with the documentary? Maybe it doesn't, but clearly the ignorant and uneducated leaders of the influential christian right propagate the totally false notion that the Bible, being the word of god, condemns homosexuality. It is hatred in action, which is rooted in fear, that's been used for centuries to condemn women, Jews, blacks; to justify slavery, to justify concentration camps, to justify condemnation of fellow humans. It's the opposite of love and acceptance. It's selective perception, literalism of a few select passages from the bible yet ignoring all the other passages that are equally absurd when interpreted out of the context of the time, the culture, and the language in which they were written.

"It's okay to have a 5th grade understanding of the bible so long as you are in 5th grade" stated one Biblical scholar. As a result of this preaching of hatred against gays, families are torn apart when they learn of a gay family member. Parents reject their children based on what their church leaders have been telling them--it really is brainwashing at its worse. Gay teens are 5 to 7 times more likely to commit suicide than their peers, and 20 times more likely to attempt suicide. It gets me all riled up, and brings to memory the homophobia I've had to deal with in the past. The homophobia that begins with oneself. The shock and total rejection that this could be happening to me. The painful loneliness and isolation. The excruciating fear, followed by the months of conversion therapy I underwent, thank goodness not with a fundamentalist, but with a misguided Freudian shrink, a Rhodes Scholar, who thought he was doing what was best for a frightened 16 year old who could barely utter a word. To be honest it wasn't so much conversion therapy as it was a means to get me back into high school, back into my home, stop the "incipient delusional formation"and get back into some semblance of normalcy in a typical small town high school filled with people I felt totally alienated from.

Years later, out of the closet and in a long term relationship, I learned how homophobia can be rampant in the workplace, and how it finally, in it's relentless berating and humiliation can bring you about as far down as you'd ever want to go. In a most dramatic exit, like a scene from high drama, I left my workplace on a stretcher, surrounded by medics wheeling me down the long corridors of learning, with throngs of curious onlookers, many of them sympathetic fellow co-workers, watching the scene unfold. Yet another crowd awaited outside, as the ambulance, with sirens screaming, headed for Breckenridge Hospital. I just didn't have the energy to wave at all my fans. :-). Act II, the hospitalizations, the therapy, the consultations with shrinks, social workers, psychologists, tests and more tests, and lawyers. Act III--he's totally nuts, he's so fragile, he brought this on himself, we were rather mean to him, he didn't have a clue how to take care of himself, it's all his parents fault, let's donate 12 months of paid sick leave from the pool! It's Religion! It's the worse of institutional bureaucracy gone awry! What do you expect from a deviant? Let's say he's mentally ill!

If only we can be taught to learn to love and accept ourselves and others as we are, as they are. It sounds so simple, it seems so easy, and in fact it is. But people are taught otherwise by people in positions of authority and the cycle of hatred begins falling like a long row of dominos, gaining momentem, spiraling out of control, and is easily justified because our great leaders told us so.

(As one of Hitler's henchmen said, "If you tell a lie long enough, people will begin to believe it." )

I like to think the same theory applies to telling the truth, and that ultimately it yields far more power. I hope so.

http://www.forthebibletellsmeso.org/

Touching Souls

2009-01-22T16:37:00.009-06:00

I'm sitting in a waiting lounge, in north Austin, at a car dealership, surrounded by 3 flat screen TV's, each one turned on. I can hear an unpleasant cacophony of sounds --cell phones, an intercom system broadcasting dialog, a crying baby, the voices of office workers in cubicles, the ssshhhwww of the cappuccino machine. In a mild, non-panicky sort of way, I can't wait to get the hell out of here. The lounge has bright red chairs and love seats atop a dull gray wall to wall carpet, brown grass paper contrasted with stark white walls, a sea of glass, a coffee bar with an assortment of goodies--caff, decaff, chocolates, ice cold beverages, cinnamon rolls. If there was grass nearby, I'd go sit on it. I'm waiting for this coaster looking device to start blinking red and vibrating and in general going totally berserk to signal that the car is serviced. I've been fantasizing about yoga retreats for this spring or early summer, set in the mountains, with secluded hiking trails, or on a beach, with the sound of rolling waves lulling me into total relaxation, guided meditations, a deep tissue massage, which reminds me of something I read last year regarding touch:

Unfortunately, we are a touch-starved culture. The deep wounds we suffer from the harsh, often brutal touch of caregivers--the wound of unlove--spirals outward and pervades the whole of our society, creating an epidemic--the fear of touch. However, true touch, when it comes from the heart, possesses profoundly healing qualities, and when we are able to both give and receive heart-felt physical affection from another, deep understanding and healing begins. Caplan writes:

"though we cannot heal the soul-wound by an affectionate pat on the back, for those who have felt unloved all of their lives, a small act of kindness can shake their whole perspective about who they are in the world. Touch, when done with heart, is always healing--period. Whether given by a trained professional or a nervous friend, IT HEALS."

Many of us suffer from not having true, intimate, connective bonds with others; all too often touch is merely a prelude to sex, so fear sets in and we frown upon touch. "TrueTouch"--that which comes from the heart, helps to counteract the effects of *damaging touch*....I like the book "Untouched, the Need for Genuine Affection in an Impersonal World" by Mariana Caplan.

Early one morning in a hospital setting I awakened to the sound of relentless pounding. Why would workers be busy at work long before dawn when everyone was fast asleep? In these kinds of settings, you are drawn to certain people for inexplicable reasons, a kind of fast friendship that gets you through your stay. At least that's my personal experience. Turns out it was my new friend and she was pounding her head against the wall, and the proof wasn't
pretty. She couldn't stop one of her selves from doing this. Such a condition used to be called multiple personality disorder and was/is very difficult for professionals to diagnose. Remember the book scripted into a movie called Cybil? The condition is now mostly called dissociative identity disorder. When the child has suffered severe abuse, and usually such abuse is inclusive of unspeakable acts of cruelty--mentally, physically, and sexually--the need to escape into a newly formed personality(s) who cannot feel the pain is created, and this is totally understandable. If you ever meet such people you may get your heart ripped out. You may want to love and save them. If you get very involved with them they may unknowingly screw with your mind and your heart until you just KNOW the only choice before you is to walk away. Usually, after you've tried your best to lead them toward some source of healing, you come to realize your own weaknesses and flaws. There seems to be a universal law that says when you begin playing the role of savior, you are playing a game of self righteousness doomed to come to naught. Such dissociative personalities, in my experience, are often highly narcissistic, from a pathological point of view. You love them, you feel for them, you show them compassion; however, the lies, the deceit, the manipulations, the very craziness of the dissociative personalities has the potential to wreak havoc on he who chooses to play caregiver. There's an inability of the narcissist to escape from his own prison of self-centeredness, and in the end, you count for nothing. Such has been my experience and I know there are exceptions. No two people are alike, no two syndromes or illness are totally alike. I find it fascinating. It's yet another facet of the bejeweled and beguiling human condition.

I like to recall how important and healing it can be to be touched by others, and also to touch others, in an appropriate and healthy manner. Mostly I'm talking about hugs. For some people, this can be extremely frightening when they might have a history of being touched from a place of "unlove." It may feel really yucky to them. It's important to learn to read people's body language, to try to hone in on what they may or may not be saying to you, to always honor and respect boundaries. But for goodness sakes, if someone makes a gesture of openness that's an invitation to a hug, and you just know it's a good thing, go for it. It can be healing. It's a complex proposition to fully understand the language of the body, both our own and that of others, but sometimes a basic understanding can be of tremendous value.

I can't seem to make this link work, so just google "you tube video hugs" or "free hugs campaign" and watch this very popular video on hugs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

The coaster just went berserk. Time to get the hell out of here.

"Old, Broken, and Ugly, But We Still Get Hot, Cold, and Hungry"

2009-01-17T06:42:00.001-06:00

On the way to practice Thursday afternoon with the loving (and fun-loving!) Anusara yoga group, at the Love Yoga Coop, I saw a woman at an intersection with a handmade sign in her hand that read:

Old, Broken, and Ugly, but We Still Get Hot, Cold, and Hungry.

I swear she looked like a saint, like a nurturing mother earth goddess with a scarf that framed the sweetest and warmest features of womankind, a Mexican mama with hordes of children at her feet as she moves with stoic deliberation through her primitive kitchen preparing all sorts of hot spicy dishes to feed the members of her large, extended clan. Or maybe one of those gifted doctors or nurses who really know how to make you feel comfortable and safe before the big old needle gets jammed into your vein, or before the catheter finally gets pulled out. I can even see the face of a pious nun caring for the masses of spiritual seekers who have made a pilgrimage to some holy site that has drawn her to assist them on their journey, maybe offering a drink of refreshing water or a garland of freshly strewn flowers. I can envision her lighting candles and offering them up as prayers to her god to please bring some much needed peace to so many parts of our troubled and suffering world. I can see her wandering the rows of a little garden, pulling weeds, watering, hoeing and tending to leaves and shoots as the sun makes his daily ascent lighting the sky. I couldn't seem to see the reality of a woman at an intersection begging for money so she could have her next meal and maybe find some respite from the cold winter winds blowing in from the north. She glowed with an earthy yet ethereal radiance. Clearly I was projecting, or was I? I wanted to know her story, her history. What brought her here to this busy intersection on far south Lamar soliciting money from people sitting behind the closed windows of their warm automobiles? I once read that it's important for us to try to get to know the names of the people who are often invisible--the janitors, the garbage collectors, the house cleaning crews, the people who perform the jobs at the bottom of the pay scale and who often play a significant role in the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables and many other goods that are available to us. Say hello to them, ask them how they are doing. Connect with them. Often these souls are the very essence of what is most humane in our world. Some people believe these underprivileged bodies are the temples of advanced souls, more evolved than most, hence they have chosen a life that is difficult and hard, knowing an easy time doesn't afford much opportunity for spiritual growth. A testament to spiritual stagnation--best expressed as an inner poverty--can often be seen in the empty lifestyles of the priviledged and powerful where there is no such thing as enough, and more is perceived as better but is in fact often ruinous to themselves and to so many others.

Earth mother, I hope you had a good meal last night and found warm and safe shelter. In my eyes you are not broken and you are not ugly. You deserve to age with grace and dignity, as we all do. I am sorry that hunger has become your companion. You touched me, you brought tears to my eyes, you triggered feelings of gratitude and the kind of humbleness I need regular injections of. It doesn't seem right and it certainly doesn't seem fair. The world is filled with injustices that often get mislabeled as mysteries. There is no mystery to being old, cold, or hungry with no place to sleep.

Andrew Harvey advocates "sacred activism." John Friend speaks of our interconnectedness and how we should honor that and suggests many ways that we can do just that. My friend Roger and his friend Maggie are a couple of examples of the good work many people do. Connect with someone you would normally not even notice. I'm going to try and do that. You can find Roger and others at:

http://www.discoverhopefund.org/

The Fruits of Compassion vs. the Blues of Aversion

2009-01-14T16:30:00.000-06:00

This blog entry, or blog entry endeavor, is going to be a difficult one, but I feel I need to own it and confess it, so to speak. I say endeavor because that's all it may be, an attempt, without an end, without conclusion. But isn't that part of the human experience? It's beautiful to view events and experiences as having a beginning, a middle, and an end. Maybe it's just NOT the end we wanted, or the beginning, or middle, or the whole package, for that matter. I got so totally caught up in my own anger and frustration the other day that I couldn't find any passage out of it. I just stayed there, stuck, in that pretty awful place the whole day. Angry, frustrated, stuck, knowing what was going on, even being aware that it would eventually end, but feeling totally helpless, totally unable to snap my fingers, or chant a mantra, and say okay, that's enough, I'm out of this shit hole. It didn't happen that way. Perhaps my ego, or some inner injury that got triggered, decided that I was going to be stuck all day long, and be pretty miserable the whole time. I felt embarrassed, humiliated, and immature. I felt small, like a child having a temper tantrum. Something failed, something collapsed, something came falling down, and until the tears finally came, and until I sat down with it and began reading passages from an inspired text was I able to sail out of the maelstrom and into a sea of calm. I lost touch with myself for most of the day. Or did I? I just love it when Pema Chodran tells us to stay with our stuckness, feel it to it's fullest, try to find peace with feeling really uncomfortable with what's going on, try to learn to be able to use that experience to go deeper. For me, when I'm in it, there's little peace or learning going on that I'm aware of--it comes afterwards, IF I put in the work. Like right now. I'm feeling pretty okay about it all. I suppose we are going to have visitations from our emotional selves that we'd just as soon slam the door on and say please, not now, not today, not ever!! Then we beat ourselves up for thinking we have not succeeded in working our program, or we have failed to reach into that healing part of ourselves that we've worked so hard to cultivate. In The Guesthouse, Rumi not only tells us to invite all these things inside, but to welcome them openly and with love. Pema writes:

"When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion, to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance."

"Stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion." For me I think that's a key. I can get all tangled up in struggling with distress to the point that I feel I like I'm tied into a thousand little knots.

One of my triggers centers around being told or asked to do something that I don't want to do. Really, it can be that simple. And I don't feel okay saying no. Or maybe more accurately, it's the whole concept of being told to do something when I don't know how to do it, and kind of want to. I think that happened to me over and over again as a child, in countless ways, and when I sense it happening again that very frightened little kid in me wants to shut down, wants to scream out please teach me how and I will do it, please show me how, please be with me and let's do it together, can we let it be a fun and loving learning experience? It's part of my history that I have to process and accept and learn from. Over and over I come back to the events of my childhood. Undealt with, these fearful experiences that are part of our history "take purchase of our souls" (James Hollis). As a child I was painfully shy, withdrawn, had very little supervision, no discipline, no structure, and an environment often shaking to its foundation with chaos, craziness, and at times a violence that can be difficult to revisit. When you watch someone you love getting beat up repeatedly and you can't do anything about it, and you really want to, it's quite a burden to carry, for anyone, especially a little child who thinks his mother will probably be killed. The scene plays out again and again. The child is called upon to be the adult, and of course he can't. He becomes hyper-vigilant, trying to become the protector, the keeper of peace, the one who soothes. He gets chastised and criticized for not knowing how to do something he's never been taught how to do. He wants to give up and simply be a kid. But there are times when that is not allowed.

So I conclude that the root of anger and frustration is fear. So what's the fear? For me, and for many others, the bottom line, the core, the center of the fear is fear of not being loved. Fear of not being worthy of love. It gets me every time, and it hurts like hell. You sort of hang your head in the most humble of ways and say I am afraid that no one loves me because I'm not worthy of love. Pema calls this buying into the old storyline, the old storyline that is not true, the old storyline that never was true. We were taught so many falsehoods, it can take a lifetime to unlearn them.

Noah Levine writes: "Aversion isn't the enemy; it is just the normal reaction of the mind and body to pain. Whatever the hurt we feel, our biological survival mechanism tries to get rid of it. The problem is that we don't actually have the ability to escape from all the painful experiences in life. It can't be done. Thus the revolutionary's practice is to learn to break the habitual reactive tendency of aversion and to replace it with a compassionate response. The good news is that although aversion or anger toward pain is common but unhelpful, compassion is a response that decreases suffering and brings about an internal and external experience of safety and well-being." "A compassionate response can, at times, be as simple as seeing clearly the pain we are meeting with anger or aversion, and just letting go of the attempt to push it away and relaxing into the experience itself with mercy and care."

Pema Chodran writes: "Befriending emotions or developing compassion for those embarrassing aspects of ourselves, the ones that we think of as sinful, or bad, becomes the raw material, the juicy stuff with which we can work to awaken ourselves."

A lot to think about, to ponder on, to work on, to process. It isn't easy and sometimes the going gets pretty rough, but if we can recall that if we stop and try to connect with the feeling of compassion that resides in our heart, and sometimes most especially self-compassion, it will help make riding the waves of anger, pain and aversion to those feelings a bit smoother.

Behind Bars or In Front of Bars?

2009-01-10T11:14:00.008-06:00

I dreamt that I was trying to squeeze my body through a small space in an intricately patterned wrought iron panel on an open window. Of course my task was impossible and I turned to a companion and said "you know, I used to be able to do this." I don't I think I meant that earlier in my life I was a contortionist, but that I was able to get to the other side of the bars and quite often found myself in that space, on the other side. I can't help but view this dream as a celebration of sorts that I am no longer able to easily slip into and behind those old and well known mental/physical/emotional bars that kept me imprisoned in so many ways for so many years. Not that I've discovered total freedom from all restrictions in my advancing age, but I think I can acknowledge a measurable leap beyond the countless restrictions that held me back, way back, from truly feeling alive and happy and yes, quite literally, from functioning in this world. The dream was filled with the theme of freedom and liberation. Freedom from addictive behavior, destructive behavior, learning to say no to life and learning to say yes, listening to my intuition and trusting what I feel in my gut, healthy boundaries, becoming pro-active in my own mental and physical health, and so much more. Something as simple as learning how to exercise patience has been a lesson decades in the learning for me. Learning to stay in that place of calm instead of reacting. Recognizing when I'm reacting, when I create scenarios in my mind that have nothing to do with anything remotely real, especially negative predictions about anything having to do with the future. Learning that quite often my near obsessive infatuations were a desperate grasping at others who were totally unavailable to me emotionally because they represented the love I never got from my father, who was totally unavailable to me emotionally (a WW II PTSD sufferer). Those extremely important, basic childhood needs that are left unfulfilled can haunt us for a lifetime if we don't process them and come to an understanding and deep awareness of them. No blame involved, but we need to explore those elements that comprise our dark side.

James Hollis writes: "The long-term neglect of the self will manifest itself somewhere, perhaps in physical illness, or depression, or more commonly in that crankiness that is the leakage of repressed anger. The difficult task is to balance one's own need for personal freedom and personal growth with the needs of others. It is never easy to find such a balance, but the failure to try will ensure burnout, resentment, and depression, which is typically anger turned inward. However great one's sense of responsibility, no good fruit comes from such a contaminated tree."

Like many others, I am drawn both to the masterpieces and the tragic life of Vincent van Gogh. The above photos were taken at the asylum St. Paul de Mausolee in St. Remy, Provence (except the first one, which is a *studies after* painting). He painted several paintings through the bars of his window as well as the grounds, the courtyard, and surrounding countryside (he also was hospitalized in Arles where he lived and painted). I've read that in his worse moments of madness (whether from a rare form of epilepsy or a severe case of bipolar illness, or both, combined with the high content of lead undoubtedly in his system from eating his paints) he wasn't able to paint. It was during his more lucid moments when there was a degree of clarity going on that he painted prolifically, some 200 paintings in one year alone. From van Gogh's small room I gazed out, through the iron bars, onto the green landscape, and tried to imagine the darkness that imprisoned him (recall St. John of the Cross). The deep, dark pain of his life compared to the brilliant bright light of his Provence paintings illustrates the profundity of his short, tragic life.

Hollis writes: "Just as there is a progressive energy at work within us, so there is a very conservative power that seeks to limit growth by limiting vulnerability. As all growth requires facing what we fear, we naturally learn patterns that protect against the fear. If we cannot speak the truth, our truth, to ourselves, we will be unable to speak it to the world either. Speaking it to the world requires that one learn to speak it to oneself first, and then to realize that our truth is who we are. To deny the complex truth we embody is more than a personal wound--it is a wound to the world by our refusal to participate in it, a reluctance to add our unique aspect to the whole. Seen in that light, it may fuel each of us to risk greater disclosure of who we are, for we are brought here to add our small portion of the truth to the world, our uniquely colored chip in the larger mosaic of being."

Hours can turn to days when sitting in front of an easel, brushes in hand, paints spread out before you, trying to produce a rendition of a favorite painting and trying to capture the emotions expressed on canvas by the artist, trying to see the world through his eyes, trying to feel her deepest emotions, find his vision, see her view out onto the landscape of life, all the way down to the study of the brushstrokes. It can be intense (and great fun).

Hollis writes: "Feeling good is a poor measure of a life, but living meaningfully is a good one, for then we are living a developmental rather than a regressive agenda. We never get it all worked out anyway. Life is ragged, and truth is still more raggedy. The ego will do whatever it can to make itself more comfortable; but the soul is about wholeness, and this fact makes the ego even more uncomfortable. Wholeness is not about comfort, or good, or consensus--it means drinking this brief, unique, deeply rooted vintage to its dregs."

"Every day the world is full of clues as to the will of the soul, if we are willing or desperate enough to begin to pay attention. If and when we do begin to take this inner life seriously, our locus of sensibility, our psychic gravity, begins to change. From this internal change, profound changes of the outer world become possibilities."

"Even when surrounded by many others, your journey is solitary, for the life you are to choose is your life, not someone else's. Alone, we nonetheless move amid a community of other solitudes; alone, our world is peopled with many companions, both within and without. Thus, this paradox stands before each of us, and challenges: We "must be alone if (we) are to find out what it is that supports (us) when we can no longer support (ourselves). Only this experience can give (us) an indestructible foundation.* Finding what supports you from within will link you to transcendence, reframe the perspectives received from your history, and provide the agenda of growth, purpose, and meaning that we all are meant to carry into the world and to share with others. The soul asks each of us that we live a larger life. Each day this summons is renewed

and leaves you, unspeakably, to sort out

your life, with its fearsome immensities,

so that, now boundaried, now limitless,

it transforms itself as stone in you and star.**

*Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, para 32.

** Rilke, "Evening," II. 9-12, (author's translation).

The Consequences of Saying Yes, in Hindsight (Opening Doors, Crossing Bridges...)

2009-01-06T06:44:00.015-06:00

I always look forward to the "Readers Write" section published in The Sun magazine. Submissions of personal, nonfiction writings are submitted by readers based on a given topic such as Yes, Anger, Narrow Escapes, to name only a few--with a wide girth to avoid subject matter restriction. In the January 2009 issue the topic is Saying Yes, and the writings are fascinating, thought provoking, and at times gut wrenching, which make me think of the times in my life when I said yes whereby the consequences had a significant effect on my life, which is pretty much what readers write about. When I was 22, I met a man in a bar who invited me to go home with him. I remember being very attracted to him and sensing something unique and wonderful beneath his somewhat nerdy/intellectual appearance--glasses, short stature, longish dark hair, big brown eyes, thick brows and long lashes, Mediterranean skin. Yummy!! It was 1974. It was agreed that I was to follow behind him in my car, so we left the bar in the wee hours that night after a fun evening of dancing and small talk, with me following in my car. My gas tank registered empty. Totally empty. At the time I was a student at UT living on a very tight budget. I grew nervous and apprehensive, fearing I would run out of gas. I decided that as soon as I found a gas station that was opened I would pull over, flash my lights, and hope he would figure out what I was doing. There were no open gas stations anywhere, and he just kept driving and driving, further and further away from familiar neighborhoods. I just knew I was going to run out of gas, my heart started pounding, my mind racing, it was very late, no other cars in sight, everything was closed. And, after all, this guy was a total stranger, and he seemed to live pretty darn far away in a relatively remote and scarcely populated area I was totally unfamiliar with. I pulled my car off to the side of the road and stopped, thinking that the only logical and reasonable thing to do would be to turn around, call it a night, and hopefully make it back to my apartment without running out of gas, but if I did it would be okay walking the remaining distance home. His tail lights grew dim as he kept driving, maybe not noticing I had stopped, or maybe deciding that he was going home with or without the company of this stranger in tow. I began to navigate a u-turn and head back towards familiar geography and my apartment. But something inside stopped me and said Yes, keep following him, take the risk, just do it. So I did and miraculously I didn't run out of gas. That was 34 years ago and I am so glad I said yes to his invitation, and yes to my intuition to keep on driving despite the odds.

In the ensuing months one of my best friends tried to talk me out of this blossoming relationship, but instead I listened to my heart that said Yes, this is a good relationship. I went home that summer to work for my step-father and my new love went abroad on a pre-planned vacation. He wrote me a much anticipated letter which my mother confiscated and read. I never saw the letter but knew he had sent it, and I began to suspect my mother had it, but she denied it for many years. Suddenly she seemed to turn against me, and made it clear I was no longer welcomed. What the hell was going on? In his letter to me, l learned later on, he declared his love for me and proposed that we move in together. My mother grew more hostile towards me, and finally asked me to leave the house, that there was no longer any place for me within my own family. I was totally devasted, as are many young people whose families reject them outright and toss them out (I was 22 and an adult, but I was still in college and they were providing much needed assistance just as they had promised they would). I had vacated my $45 a month apartment, given notice, but still had a few days left. I drove back to Austin and slept on a bare mattress and cried and wept for days.

In the end, my partner and I moved in together and are still happily together. A few years later after reading The Front Runner, my mother became a great friend to the gay community and one of my best friends, and remained that way until her death in 1996.

Sometimes in the split second of a situation where we are called upon to make an immediate decision, the only thing we can do is try to listen to the answer that we feel coming from our deepest gut and go with it. Usually, it's in our best interest, and can sometimes have an effect on our life in a most profound way. (Of course our gut can say No, in which case the outcome is usually, but not always, a mystery. And mysteries are part of the magic of life.)

Photos: Door, hilltop village, Provence; Bridge, painted many times (from below) by Cezanne, Provence; Dale and Ron long ago in Mexico

A Time for Drunken Horses

2009-01-02T10:26:00.012-06:00

I watched a movie last night titled A Time for Drunken Horses. It was not easy to watch. It dealt with life at its harshest--life as a persecuted ethnic minority living in poverty, in a remote mountainous region of extreme cold, a daily struggle for survival. In the trip across the mountainous border between Iran and Iraq, liquor is poured into the water given to the mules right before the long treks ahead, the colder the weather, the more alcohol they get. The movie is not about the horses, but the heartfelt tenderness and caring that binds a family together as a unit, in the midst of terrific strife, which in a moment can be torn asunder, split into pieces, awash with tears and sorrow, again and again.

Right after crossing the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco, we arrived at a site that our guide deemed important for us to see. It was a beautiful day, the ruin sat atop the crest of a hill, with a nice long walk along a winding country road with beautiful scenery and fresh mountain air. We passed a man with his two young boys and their wooden cart, the little donkey tied nearby. The boys were too young to work so they sat in the cart, the father nearby harvesting fresh grass to feed his animals. What a bucolic scene! As we rounded a curve in the road ahead, leaving the family behind and heading closer to the ruin, I heard the man loudly cursing in anger and could hear popping sounds that were quite alarming. I retraced my steps, and as I rounded the corner I saw him whipping his donkey, mercilessly, for eating some grass in the back of the cart. Strike after strike, he put all his muscle into hurting this little donkey, who was tied down and could only dance about trying to bear the deep stinging of the wooden stick which came at him in one blow after another. It just made me sick, and without fully realizing what I was doing, I let out a scream that echoed through the whole valley, some may say a blood-curdling scream, and suddenly everyone just froze and stared at me. The little boys appeared frightened, the man totally perplexed, the donkey I would like to think look relieved. The abuse ended. For the time being. These animals are the life line to survival of these impoverished people. I understand their anger and frustration at a world that has dealt them so very little in terms of material goods, making life a daily trial of survival. But the ignorance at play was more than I could stand, and the donkey was suffering needlessly for eating grass in the back of a cart right in front of him. I'd like to think I conscientiously did a good deed, but I think in reality something very primitive inside me just took hold and came pouring out of me through my voice onto the landscape and the wrongful act I was witnessing. Our guide was so calm about it all as he walked with me, calming me, and telling me that unfortunately that kind of thing happened way too often, and was born of ignorance about how to take care of and nurture that which is the very source of your survival.

Many young impoverished Bedouins thoughout the Middle East begin earning money for their families at a very early age, and for most, attending school is not an option. When I revisited St. George's monastery near Jericho I went alone. The driver just dropped me off and agreed to pick me up at a later designated time. On the long, winding switchback trail leading to the monastery a young Bedouin man joined me hoping to persuade me to ride his donkey for $25. I declined but he stayed with me, even though I told him I wanted to be alone. So I accepted his company and we walked along, donkey in tow, and he begged me to ride his donkey, at least on the return trip when he thought I would be tired. I knew he was only earning his living and tourism can be nonexistent for long periods of time in a country so often ravaged by conflict and violence. He volunteered to wait for me, even though I reiterated that I preferred walking. Nevertheless, I did tell him I would give consideration to his proposal but could offer no guarantee. A few hours later, after my visit, there he was waiting for me. I told him I'd like to offer him $25 as a gift but I didn't want to ride. He refused, saying it was not about the money. Well, of course it is, but I had wounded his pride. No handouts for him. So I swallowed my pride and in spite of not wanting to burden these poor pack animals I accepted his offer, we agreed on a price, and up I went onto the back of Ahmen the little donkey. I must admit that I totally enjoyed my visit with this young man, and learned all about his family. Our tour guides had told us that it's a longstanding tradition amongst the Bedouins to invite strangers into their homes for 3 days, but after that you are no longer welcomed and of course they will want money. This young man invited me to his home and I actually think I would have accepted had I been free to do so, but I wasn't. Imagine staying in a tented Bedouin village in the middle of the desert and meeting his uncle and his uncle's wives and their 15 or so children and the rest of the clan. What an adventure! But alas my driver showed up in his fancy white Mercedes and as I turned to my new friend to give him a final heartfelt farewell, I could only see his back as he rode atop his donkey, having made enough money to begin his homeward journey to some unknown, remote site.

Arc, Split and Shine Like a Rainbow!

2008-12-26T21:50:00.021-06:00

I've been wanting to write something about this past year, something that summarizes or encapsulates as succinctly as possible my personal journey through the year, but the words elude me. So I was thinking of a creative writing workshop I took with Jeff Davis, Journey from the Center to the Page, meaning the journey from deep within our center to words expressed on a page. There were several sessions spread out over several days, including the Yoga of Writing with Wonder. We did asanas, we meditated sitting, laying down, and walking. We stared at rocks, and other objects of nature, and pondered them. We wrote down five words that we felt were underused in our culture. Then from the five words, we were to chose one, marking out the other four. That one remaining word was to be the topic of our creative writing project, right then and there, spontaneously. I came up with the word rainbow because it conjures up so many images and thoughts and concepts for me as well as colors and experiences going back to early childhood. Before putting pen to paper, we were encouraged to walk outdoors, look around at the world from a different perspective, notice things we might not normally notice. Heightened senses, awareness. After wandering up and down the alley I returned and began to write of my experience interwoven with all the possible associations I could come up related to the word "rainbow":

"My pen ran out of ink, emptying it's last drop of blackness onto the page. The gray sky is dull and damp and evokes the need for shelter. The studio envelopes me. The rain fell and left Mother Earth wet with puddles, drips, and droplets. Falling, arcing over roofs, darkening the bark of trees, splattering, spilling downward and held in the bowels of earth. A dankness, the roar of clashing clouds, colliding and throwing down bolts of lightening, striking, hitting, tumultuous. As the storm subsides, the majesty of sun again shines forth his smile kissing Mother Earth and sending radiant rays upon all,. The magic begins in the near distance, beyond touch, just there, an arc of brilliant color, ground to ground, bowed up in the middle, a half sun, a semi-circle dancing with color, the prism of light broken into curving lines that are alive, transitory, a sight to behold. Never ending dreams brought always by the light, the element of water, color, the stuff of dreams, dreams that can be elusive, beyond grasp, always over there, beyond approach, but right there in front of you to behold. The bow of a ship afloat the waters of life, rivulets, bend your dreams into the rainbow of life, prostrate yourself before this miracle of nature, this perfection that is found only in the now, gone in the blink of an eye. The semi-circle of life, the richness that seems to be over there, just beyond reach, is really here, right now, the arc of rich color, of mystery, glimpsed in moments that quickly pass but with power to transform, just as light transforms the element of water vapor. Bend down, fall over, bow to the blessed, brilliant rainbow. The end of the rainbow is yet another beginning, a place anew, to find refuge and shelter. You are home, here, in this light of life, the stuff of dreams, this color of being. Dream your dreams and always follow your rainbows.

So for the new year I want to continue following my rainbow dreams, seeing past the illusions and false stories, seeking and finding the magic and the color, feeling the pain and sorrow, realizing and accepting impermanence, crying and laughing, loving and not pushing away the darkness when it comes, reaching skyward with an open heart towards that which at times seems so unattainable. I want to be a seeker, and know that whether I find something brilliant or nothing at all, what's really important is the journey itself.

May our hopes and dreams take us onward into the New Year, marching as spiritual warriors, steadfast and resolute in our hearts' quest for Truths.

(Photo downloaded from the internet)

Without the Fanfare

2008-12-20T17:35:00.018-06:00

I took my first class ever this past Thursday night with Christina Sell. The class really rocked, and I'm told there's a guy out there named Jesse who actually sweats more than I do! The class had such a positive and welcoming aspect to it, due to the wonderful people in attendance, something I love about doing yoga--you get to surround yourself with people who are open to life, and exude love and friendliness. It was a unique evening in several ways that really have no apparent connection other than they happened within a short space of time. I ran into a guy I hadn't seen in a long time, and he's in a place of fear and anger that took me by surprise, and I found myself having to establish a clear boundary with him, stepping up my assertiveness, and then walking away after realizing he would not honor my refusal to engage in scurrilous gossip with him. I saw another guy I hadn't seen in a longer while and got a nice hello and a warm hug from him, which was really sweet. Then during class the IT band of my left leg, behind the knee, apparently crossed over, or got crossed over, with the tendon and when it crossed back into position it made a loud popping sound that not only startled the hell out of me, it got the teacher's attention and I think most people in the room heard it. I now know that it's not that uncommon an occurence and I felt no pain, just a tiny bit of soreness yesterday, and during subsequent practices I found myself unable to do Garudasana and Padmasana with that leg, but I think in a couple of days or so all will be back to normal. Still, I wonder what caused that to happen?

Practice on Saturday with Cary was really special, and in recognition of the Winter Solstice he led us through a wonderful opening meditation, an intense vinyasa flow, then a closing meditation before Savasana. A trio of us did some giggling in class when our windshield wiper legs collided but it was fun and harmless. The essence of Savasana, stillness and silence, is not meant to bring an end to our playful endeavors, but to pay homage to the work our bodies have done and to touch in with inner waters of stillness, try to slow the ripples of the mind, and prepare ourselves for the many deaths and births we will experience, both literally and metaphorically. To die, but not to sleep.

Earlier this month my partner and I quietly and without fanfare, as is our style, celebrated our 34 years together as a couple. We had hoped that by this time in our relationship the political, social, and legal systems would recognize our partnership and grant us the same rights as those of opposite sex relationships but that didn't happen. It would be nice, but as Joni Mitchell sings, we don't need no piece of paper from the city hall, keeping us tight and true...

I always love practicing with Keith at Dharma, and did my second class observation with him on Sunday, then joined in the vinyasa flow class afterwards. In my opinion, he ranks among the very best teachers in Austin. A woman named Cherry I was talking with after class suddenly said "it's a great time to be alive". That really struck a note with me.

Peaceful Holidays

What's in a Name?

2008-12-16T16:12:00.009-06:00

I was reading a book for class that talked about the importance of play. Play being that sense of interaction we have with ourselves and others and the world around us whereby we just don't take things so damn seriously. When we play with a sense of awe, of wonderment, of openness, of genuine compassion and caring for what's happening and remain open to what comes, we make living and learning a more authentic and joyful experience. Don't we all need this? That's not to say we play carelessly or without regard for consequences--quite the contrary. The word that describes this in Sanskrit is lila. Although I may have read this definition before, my memory is quite sketchy at times but I knew that was the name of an Anusara inspired yoga teacher's blog that I find quite interesting and sometimes just awesome to read. So I went there and was really more than just a little moved that he (Jeremiah) had made reference to me in a recent posting, and called me his friend, and I wasn't sure he had a clue who I was (actually I thought he probably disliked me). Sometimes the smallest things we do that are of a kind and compassionate nature can have consequences of a positive nature that we may never know about. Sometimes a stranger will give me a smile that just reaches deep down inside and gently massages my heart in a way that feels so incredibly healing, sometimes in a profound way. And sometimes it's exactly what I really needed in that moment. But I must admit, I have to be open and vulnerable myself and awake to what's going on. (Of course sometimes I can get negative vibes from people that tell me they are deeply troubled by fear and suffering, and I just try to breathe in a little bit of their sadness and breathe out positive energy; who knows, it may do nothing for them but it makes me feel good.

And I think of all the times I've been in that place of fear.)

My friend Brian has talked a great deal about his close and his long time friend, an elderly woman in her mid to late eighties. I've never met her but I've heard so much about her over the years. My friend Hank, Brian's partner, is a very gifted artist and writer. His drawings are just phenomenal, and all the more so as he's visually impaired and yet his ability to see and express intense detail is just beyond understanding. His recent painting is of their good friend, Lylah. Check out his website.

http://www.henrycatenacci.com/

The Playful, Luminous Dance of Life

2008-12-14T15:32:00.012-06:00

I often experience the unique pull and push of paradox in life. The other morning, on the way to class, I was driving on a quiet country road, no other cars about, very few houses, 25 mph speed limit, and a couple of beautiful does (yes, female deer) crossed in front of my car. I stopped and watched them. The first one came to a fence and stopped completely in her tracks, calmly gazed about briefly then pushed herself seemingly without effort straight up into the air, tucked in her legs, and hung suspended in that split moment between going up and coming down, then glided downward to the ground on the other side of the fence. The perfect balance between sthira and sukha. The second doe following behind her also walked up to the fence, came to a complete standstill, then gracefully glided straight up into the air, hung suspended with her legs tucked in, as though some invisible string were attached to her center pulling her upwards toward the skies, and glided slightly forward just enough to clear the fence to land on the other side. I was so inspired I talked about the event in class, read a Hafiz poem about listening to the inner voice that shouts Yes! Yes! Yes! to every luminous movement in Existence. As I continued my drive to class, a few moments later I saw a flock of buzzards eating at the carcass of a deer alongside the road. It's paradoxical to one moment see the luminous life dance and grace of movement in a deer jumping effortlessly over a fence, and in the next moment see another deer that's collided with a vehicle and been sent, perhaps with excrutiating pain and suffering, into the bloody dance of death.

That morning the sun was shining bright and I made an unusual discovery before leaving the house. I was printing out some information on the chakras and my eye was drawn to the orange color of the Svadisthana chakra, right below the navel, the lower abdomen. Lesson: the right to our feelings; a connection to our sensing abilities and issues relating to feelings; our ability to be social and intimate. Imbalance: Eating disorders. Alcohol/drug abuse. Depression. Low back pain. and so on. I opened my book "Sadhus--India's Mystic Holy Men" to page 88 where there's a photo of a holy man dressed in bright orange holding his pastoral staff (danda), or rod of divination, a symbol of spiritual power, carried by brahman ascetics. I looked up on my wall, and again, there he was was in a photograph I took 17 years ago while traveling in Nepal and India (1991). I looked at the publication date of the book: 1993.

It's not really all that unusual that I would photograph an ascetic who would get photographed again by someone else a couple of years later and get published in a book. What is kind of strange to me is that I enlarged that photo and it's been hanging on my walls for 17 years and I've looked at the Sadhus book countless times, and never noticed the ascetic on my wall was one and the same as the ascetic in the book.

More paradoxical than all of the above are the false realities we create, then buy into them, then discover it was all an illusion, a story we made up. Maya. It can all change in a second. We reawaken again and again only to learn we were asleep. We learn to play with life, with ourselves, with others in a way that is liberating, that is alive and zesty and juicy and also compassionate and caring, where things are open to surprise, and that all that happens has consequences. To be genuinely playful is "revolutionary." If we revere and recognize the world as the play of the Goddess Shakti principle, we can join in and imitate this play in everything we do. In Sanskrit, it's called lila.

(See also The Yoga of Breath, a Step-by-Step Guide to Pranayama by Richard Rosen).

Surface dirt; Yoga school

2008-12-04T05:22:00.011-06:00

In a dream last night I noticed a few strangers had gathered on the lawn by the garage. Soon they came knocking at the door and wanted to know what ancient relics might be found below the surface of that particular area. I recalled that once there was an unusal sandy area, white sand with pools of deep blue water. But it had all been covered over by layers of soil planted with grass, and pipes that fed the sprinkler system. I walked out to explore and noticed the area was covered with fire ant mounds and as I attempted to explore, to do some amateur excavating, the ants soon covered my legs, but I washed them off with water and continued looking around. A few steps later I discovered the beautiful white sands and deep pools of fresh water, in an adjacent area, and a neighbor appeared to explain that it had been there all along. Upon further exploration I saw that the spring-fed pools of water in the white sand flowed down into a deep channel the water had carved into the hard stone that wound its way around a small island, then eventually emptied into the vastness of sea. People appeared and told me the route via canoe was a wonderful experience, potentially treacherous, but with care could easily be navigated and the journey was a great one. Soon large white stone carved benches appeared with beautiful views of the landscape below and people gathered to commune and share.

As in life, when we open our eyes there are dimensions of reality right before us that have been there all along. Sometimes the process of excavating through the surface dirt to see what lies below begins with first facing obstacles and "stings" that can, with effort, be overcome with a gentle steadfastness that will wash away those bites and begin to reveal new realities, new treasures, new journeys, and a vastness with no end. For me, a momentary glimpse into the infinite simply tells me "hey, I'm here, come explore", but more importantly stay the course of your journey, focus on what's right there in front of you less you lose sight of it.

As G says, so many new seeds of knowledge have been planted, be okay with feeling overwhelmed, and know that newly planted seeds must germinate. Delving into Patanjali's sutras, the study of pranayama, learning Sanskrit names of asanas, attending lectures and staying attentive and focused and taking notes, leading the class through Surya Namaskar Sequence A and B for the first time ever, watching videos that in the course of an hour summarize the history of yoga, continuing to maintain one's personal practice, attendng classes as participant, as observer, well, it can be a bit overwhelming. Dealing with the dynamics of a class setting, interacting with a group of new people, assisting, adjusting, sharing, learning together, all very challening, but definitely part of the journey. When I open my notebook it tells me to breathe and stay in the moment. It helps to regularly give myself permission to stumble.

In the above photos I'm 1. doing headstand on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea, covered in Dead Sea mud which is meant to pull toxins out of the body. It felt good, especially being applied. 2) Floating in the Dead Sea. Because of the high salt content, the body just naturally floats at and slightly above the surface of the water. If you attempt to dog paddle or swim or do most of the things we are used to doing in *regular* water, it becomes a struggle because the Dead Sea naturally forces you to the surface. I'm told that people will get caught up in the struggle, face down in the water, and drown. It's a matter of complete surrender to the water.

Full Circle

2008-11-28T05:32:00.017-06:00

I think it's so important that we frequently stop and check in with ourselves, touch base with ourselves, assess what's going on--emotionally, physically, spiritually. Use every tool we have, find new tools, dig deep, seek healing through truth, reach out, let our voices peal the air like cathedral or temple bells.

When I was six years old I returned home from school one day with my first piece of artwork. It was my rendition of a dog. I'd had no training or practice so it was uniquely primitive and today would be labeled as outsider art. My mother laughed at it and told me I had no artistic talent at all. She kept my drawing on top of the refrigerator and showed it to everyone that entered the house--friends, neighbors, relatives--always calling it the ugliest drawing she had ever seen. Over and over I heard that I had no artistic talent whatsoever. It hurt in ways a 6 year old can't really fathom except to never again bring home another drawing, better yet, never attempt to make another drawing. And so it permeates and sticks. I have no talent, why bother with trying? After all, my mother told me this, and I love her, and she must be right. I never took art in college, not even art appreciation. In my twenties I began traveling and visiting museums and so began my deep love and appreciation of art. Something other people do. I didn't know how deeply wounded I was over that incident.

When I began my most serious recovery work at the age of 39, magical and mystical things began to happen as I opened myself to new worlds, dug deep inside with the help of some incredible therapists and started on the path known as the one less traveled.

Serendipitously one cold but sunny winter day I met an artist, a painter, in a support group, who became one of my best friends. Through our deep friendship, I learned that there was an artist inside me longing to come out and express himself. I nurtured him, and learned all about oil paints, brushes, canvases, colors, etc. from my new friend. We got together and painted, we visited galleries, we bought supplies at art stores, and we painted some more. I struggled through it all and found a new voice of expression. He praised my work and over the next few years I produced approximately 200 paintings. I loved it. I took drawing lessons, and further art lessons. I had come home to that part of myself that had been imprisoned. It was liberating, I could make nice paintings and express myself in ways beyond my imagination.

Last week, I presented my first, simple, uncomplicated yoga vinyasa sequence in class. I struggled to put together a sequence that wasn't just a facsimile of one found in a book, or one that I had experienced in class. I wanted to focus on the standing poses. It wasn't easy, I felt pretty helpless, but in truth I learned so much during the process of putting this together. After all, it was supposed a very simple 3 to 5 pose sequence leading up to a final pose. Other than myself and my beloved teacher, only one other student was able to attend class that particular day. I called out my sequence, asana by asana, and the teacher wrote each pose on the board, one by one, and we talked about how that pose leads into the next pose, how it opens certain parts of the body, warms certain muscles, is a preparation for the next pose, etc. And we talked about parts of the sequence that weren't all that smooth. After all, I'm learning and I've never done this before. The other student seemed to find something very funny in all this as she broke out in laughter repeatedly during this process. How did you come up with that? How do you get from that pose to that pose. Giggle, giggle. Laugh, laugh. I won't say more, except that I must have just blocked it out, or decided that she wasn't really intentionally deriding me. Was she really laughing at my sequence? Yes she was, but I don't think she meant to intentionally hurt my feelings, but that happened and I refused to feel anything. I went numb and dismissed it as unimportant. Such things come back.

That weekend something felt wrong inside me. My sleep was restless, my dreams particularly disturbing. I felt fragile and vulnerable. On Monday as I drove to class, my heart screamed out in pain and I let lose a river a tears. It was then I realized that the deep wound inflicted unintentionally by my mother when I was 6 years old had suddenly opened up and I was bleeding, I was hurting, I was scared. This is all very therapeutic, fully feeling what you feel. I sat with the feeling, let the tears flow, and held back nothing. Not the best condition to drive in but automatic pilot can be a huge help. I processed.

That night I had a rare, near ecstatic dream. There was a dog, a big one, and a beautiful one, and a powerful one. In the dream when I thought of him, he would appear instantly, no matter how far away he might be from me, or how far away I might be from him. He was like an angel, a best friend, an animal spirit empowered with beautiful, magical, super-human qualities. In the back of a moving pickup I suddenly felt I needed him, so I thought of him and suddenly there he was, running behind the pick up, then magically flew up into the cab and took control of everything--he steered me in the direction I needed to go. It was like a miracle happening. This friend of mine, this beautiful dog, was always there for me in this dream. A dog. Like a god. Like my drawing that I still have in the top of my closet. I just read:

...to see a dog in your dream symbolizes intuition, loyalty, generosity, protection, and fidelity. The dream suggests that your strong values and good intentions will enable you to go forward in the world and bring you success. It can also indicate a skill that you have ignored or forgotten..flying signifies a sense of freedom where you had initially felt restricted and limited...

Loreena McKennitt sings:

Stars were falling deep in the darkness

as prayers rose softly, petals at dawn

And as I listened, your voice seemed so clear

so calmly you were calling your god.

Somewhere the sun rose, o'er dunes in the desert

such was the stillness, I ne'er felt before

Was this the question, pulling, pulling, pulling you

in your heart, in your soul, did you find rest there?

Elsewhere a snowfall, the first in the winter

covered the ground as the bells filled the air

You in your robes sang, calling, calling, calling him

in your heart, in your soul, did you find peace there?

Music and lyrics by Loreena McKennitt: Full Circle

from The Mask and the Mirror

And so as we traverse through life, we come full circle, again and again. And when in distress, we call out for help, when we reach deep into ourselves and remain open, answers, peace, and rest may come to us.

N.B. I was just remembering when I was staying with an Indian woman in her small home in Rancho de Taos, NM, and on the morning of Palm Sunday I woke up, looked outside, and it was snowing heavily. A late May snow, the last of the season, and it was heavy. I walked to Church and entered, received a palm frond, but felt suffocated and the need to be outside overcame me so I walked the neighborhood for a long while. The whole time I walked I was accompanied by a dog that seemed to come from out of nowhere, waited for me while I went into the church, and continued walking at my side throughout my walk.

Feeling yucky, great documentary, favorite shots

2008-11-15T13:43:00.014-06:00

I'm not feeling well today, so I've given myself permission to stay home all weekend if need be and stay in bed if I feel that's in my best interest, which is where I am right now, surrounded by Ralph and Pepe and some reading assignments. I caught a cold while traveling and although I experienced all the usual symptoms, I kept going and didn't slow down one bit as I didn't feel tired. Now I feel very run down. Somehow it's caught up with me and doesn't want to let go without my attention, so I'm listening. The cold has moved into my chest and I had chills last night and again this morning. I hear a deep gurgling when I cough. I know how fortunate I am to be able to rest, and to rest comfortably. It's a luxury not afforded to many people in this world. In all likelihood, this cold will run its course after briefly slowing me down and I'll resume the life and activity that comes with good health. I give thanks. But honestly, I'm a real baby when it comes to physical pain and discomfort, and if I experience a fever I have thoughts that I just might not make it! Really.

We watched an excellent documentary last night titled The Body of War. After 5 days serving in Iraq, a young US soldier is wounded and permanently disabled, and this movie tells his story. It's sad, frustrating, and paints, in my opinion, an accurate and unbiased picture of how war tears apart families, nations, and can do damage to the human body beyond comprehension. Medical care for these Iraqi veterans is poor and it seems they pretty much live out their remaining years in the shadows, often unable to perform basic bodily functions. The majority of our leaders turn a blind eye, disillusionment seems to be the norm with the current powers that be. I recommend this highly. P.O.V. on PBS.

I so want to have the energy to go get on the mat, or go to a yoga class. I really wanted to take a workshop today at Castle Hill Yoga, about cultivating a home practice. I'm sorry to have missed it, but for everything there is a reason, regardless of whether we have a clue or not, and so I'm parked here letting nature run her course.

I decided to select a few of my favorite photos from the trip and post them. I like to look at things up close and deeply personal. I'm drawn to photography that represents the natural world in an almost abstract vision. Hence, a open pomegranate in a food market stall draws my awe more than the engineering feat of a Roman amphitheatre. That's just me. A Reuben Rubins painting, a flower, a paper fan twirling in a garden, some thorns, palm leaves, red rocks in a garden landscape, the sun shining through the slats of a shed atop Masada, a painting outside an art gallery in the artsy district of Tel Aviv, a pot with a circle within a circle, a view of the Wadi Qilt near St. George's monastery near Jericho, earthy ochres, burnt siennas, raw umbers and deep yellows of sandstone at Petra, and so on.

Traveling

2008-11-10T05:19:00.019-06:00

It's Monday morning and I've less than 2 hours before leaving for the first class of my four month intensive teacher training program with Gioconda. Just before leaving for Jordan and Israel in mid October, I learned that she would be offering this training (beginning Nov 10th, today) so I enrolled, then had the following 3 weeks to think about it. This will be my 3rd time to enroll so maybe three's the charm.

Just as I knew it would be, the Jordan/Israel trip was a bit on the strenuous side, the rhythm of movement pretty intense, but I soon got into the swing of things and had a really great time. We walked many miles most days seeing as many sites as time would permit. It was pretty exhausting. We were a small group and for the most part got along beautifully, which I think is particularly noteworthy considering our diversity--3 fundamental Christians (Seventh Day Adventists), several Jewish couples (everyone was straight except for the 2 of us, which as usual was a non-issue), a couple of agnostics, and a couple of really super nice and worldly wise docents from Manhattan who were a total delight to be around. Their frequent injections of their extensive knowledge of the natural sciences into our discussions was absolutely refreshing. Our 2 guides, Mark and Marilyn, moved to Israel a number of years ago from California after spending their lives pursuing several interesting careers, including more than a few collective years with the Peace Corps in several countries. They are such good people. For me Jerusalem is a religious vortex that swirls with dogmatic and hence chaotic behavior. Religious conflict and fervor abounds yet simultaneously manages to find an acceptable level of slightly tense harmony most of the time. Unlike 15 years ago when I frequently prostrated myself before Christian alters throughout the city, called upon the intervention of St. John of the Cross, my patron saint at the time, to guide me into the depths of mysticism, attended mass daily and read the psalms with tears in my eyes, this time I found myself to be a far happier person, still a seeker with no absolute answers, but confident and accepting of things simply as they are without allowing the conditioned mind to interfere too greatly in the experiential. It was good, really good. I was photographed doing my more *advanced* yoga poses at Roman ruins, covered in Dead Sea mud on the sandy beach of the Dead Sea. We trudged along the banks of the Sea of Galilee, winding paths astride the Jordan River, and plunged many times into the salty waters of the the Dead Sea, dodged in and out of dark alleys and old, dusty churches, walked up and down ancient stone steps leading to obscure archaeological sites and marvelled at it all.

The above photos are, in order, flower arrangement in the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, St. George's Monastery on the Wadi Qilt outside Jerusalem near Jericho, man in prayer in front of the "wailing wall*, sunset over the Sea of Galilee, Gamala, Petra, Ron having an arabic moment, Bedouin dress as seen in the museum in the Roman theatre in Aman, Jordan.

A Mad Cat, No Electricity, a Turquoise Gate and The Moonstone

2008-10-11T12:21:00.009-05:00

Last night was downright eerie. I was awakened by the sound of an alarm coming from somewhere in the house but I couldn't tell where (much less why). My first thought was *smoke alarm*, but when I sniffed the air I could smell nothing. I quickly made my way to Dale's end of the house but everything seemed normal. Still, something wasn't quite right. It was so bright outside, and so dark inside. The alarm sounded again. Then I realized that none of the interior lamps or nightlights were on. I flicked the nearest light switch and nothing happened. The familiar glow of digital clocks was suddenly conspicuously absent. There was no electricity. It was so bright outside, but no bad weather. Then I became momentarily frightened. Had someone cut the electricity on purpose? I checked the phone and it was dead. I decided to wake up Dale and get his opinion. He suggested I call the 24 hour hot line and connect with our electrical coop. I found my cell and made the report, the 2nd one the operator had received from customers on our street. No big deal, back to bed. That infernal alarm was downright ear piercing and still I had no idea where it was coming from. I learned the next morning that the sound was driving Dale mad so he followed the sound to the freezer, which apparently has an alarm to let you know the electricity has gone off. Thank you Sears. Push the reset button and the alarm goes off. I found my earplugs and settled back into a deep sleep. I remember dreaming that my cell was ringing, the operator with the utility company was trying to call me but I couldn't find the phone. I managed to get up at 6:00 and barely made it to Anne's class at YYS.

I had forgotten how therapeutic it can be to paint. A wall, a picture, a gate, whatever. In the case of yesterday, I found sweet solace in painting the repaired metal gate that Alejandro fixed for us and then primed (Alejandro finally finished tiling the patio and doing various other little jobs). I just focused on that and nothing else and it brought me to a state of deep relaxation and contentment. No sounds other than that of the natural world. I'm looking forward to applying the second coat. Funny how we forget to do some of the things we particularly enjoy doing. Another example: Most of what I've been reading of late is associated with yoga, or Buddhism, or pranayama...I straightened up my studio and realized I needed to get rid of some books in order to shelf all the newer ones. In doing so, I came across Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, which I had never read, but bought ages ago when I took a Detective Fiction course. It wasn't on the reading list but was highly recommended. The pages are yellowing and the print is small, but I'm managing just fine. I believe that Edgar Allen Poe is credited with writing the first *detective story*, but the Moonstone is recognized as a masterpiece of detective fiction (and over 500 pages long). It's a great read and I'm totally enjoying it. I've always liked the genre and it's been too long since I read a delicious British detective story!

Poor Ralph! I took him in for a dental cleaning and he ended up having 2 extractions. The stitches will dissolve in 10 to 14 days. He's still mad at me. Mostly because he hates the taste of the pain medication and the antibiotic, both liquid. I'm stopping today with pain drops but will have to finish the antibiotic. Just about the time he'll forgive me, I'll take him in for a 3 week stay at the boarding kennel. Pepe got 2 different shots for his allergies, but since I didn't given them he's not mad at me at all! Cats are such wonderful creatures. Today when I returned from yoga I could hear a squirrel by the garage fussing quite loudly at one of the neighbor's cats that roams free and seems almost ferrell to us. Sure enough the beautiful Siamese mix took off running when I approached, and his front paw is still causing him problems. I hate to see it, but there's nothing I can do other than breathe in his pain and breathe out compassion. That probably helps me far more than him, but who knows for sure?

The Higher Your Expectations, the Greater Your Disappointments

2008-10-02T10:03:00.004-05:00

It has been so long since I've blogged. Long ago a friend wrote on a piece of paper for me "The higher your expectations, the greater your disappointments." This pithy gem of a statement has proven itself to be true over and over again; nonetheless, I do have expectations and sometimes they are set pretty high and when they don't come to fruition, I'm greatly disappointed. Again I
observe yet another issue to deal with over and over again--that of having expectations that are too high in the first place! (Having hope is a wonderful thing, but when one has expectations about some future event that may never come about, those expectations are often time spent dwelling in the future and not staying present, which is okay, but not so great when a lot of time is spent doing this.)

I was so excited about enrolling in the yoga teacher training program this fall. I bought my books in advance. Then the program got cancelled for lack of enrollment and I was so very disappointed. I knew exactly what was going on, I was falling into a depression, but I just couldn't control it. So I just accepted it and let myself cry and feel all the things that were coming up for me, and alas it passed quickly after running it's brief course. I met with an admissions counselor at YogaYoga and that was a good meeting and certainly an excellent alternative, but I
decided to just wait for now, give myself some time to process things, see what might happen, stay open, accept that there are some things that I have no control over, and that things happen for a reason. I wanted to just sit with all this, sit with this sense of groundlessness, and try to be comfortable with it. Something else opened for me that has a bit of magic in it, but before I go into that I want to reminisce:

About 12+ years ago I had some strong urges to go out into the world and find myself. My partner thought I was leaving him but that was never my intention. Nevertheless, I did move and bring about significant changes. One of the things I did was travel to Israel with a small group of *patrons* of Monastery of Christ in the Desert, Abiquiu, New Mexico. I also bought a house there, moved there, it was a very rich and exciting time of life for me. My doctor had
given me some medication that actually made me rather manic. So while traveling in Israel I simply never slept and was already sleep deprived from several months of experiencing this mania. Long term sleep deprivation can have dire consequences. I ended up in a state hospital for the mentally ill in Tel Aviv. I only stayed for a few days before I was *rescued* but it certainly cut short my trip, although it was a fantastic experience. Most people don't understand how I can describe a 3 day stay in a state mental hospital in a foreign country as fantastic but it was. I met some incredible people. Fragile and broken. Sensitive and unable to cope with all the sorrows of their lives. Tragedies. Yes, I got kicked around while trying to sleep on the floor, and yes we had to disrobe and stand in a line, then sit in a large tub and have barely luke warm water poured over us--that was how we were bathed, no privacy. I painted a post-impressionistic-like painting for the head psychiatrist (she was from Russia) and she called me van Gogh and then allowed me take a nap which was normally forbidden. I felt a lot of love from many of my fellow patients.

But, getting back to the present: I told my partner that I wouldn't be doing the teacher training program beginning this fall (maybe this spring, maybe very soon, maybe never). Because he didn't get the opportunity to travel with me to Israel, but only got to fly to Tel Aviv to bring me home, he has always wanted to go there and I have always wanted to return. The available tour options that interested us were all booked up for this fall, so when he learned I didn't have the commitment of the yoga program, he put us on a waiting list and within 2 days 2 people cancelled. So, we are now all booked to go first to Jordan and then to Israel for a total of 20 days. We leave the middle of next month. It is quite fascinating how things happen. I'm enthralled, a bit mystified, somewhat humbled, but above all, grateful. I like a recent email I received, which had the following quote attached:

“It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I've gone and come back, I'll find it at home.”-
-Rumi

Ahimsa, Marma Point(s) and Canterra Columns

2008-08-14T21:41:00.004-05:00

Today was the last day of a 4 day intensive which was preceded by a 3 day workshop, all led by Murti with Ahimsa as the theme and a focus on the tripod of the foot and drawing energy up from the marma point located at a point near the heel and arch of the foot in a variety of poses. It's just magic and so beautiful. The focus on the marma point on the heel was inspired by recent work with Richard Rosen who is dealing with Parkinson's. Amazing stuff. It's nice that tomorrow I'm free to just get things done around the house, the bathroom guy is coming to reattach my glass sliding doors and we ordered the canterra columns that will replace the Michohuacan columns on the porch/patio on my side of the house outside my studio. The wooden columns are beautiful but they are rotting. The canterra installer will come tomorrow and give an estimate although we have already ordered the columns. I met some really wonderful people at the workshop and classes and will miss them. I decided to opt out of the party tonight at Valerie's place, I'm just not a particularly social person. Besides, two trips into town today was tiring enough!

I reconnected with my masseur last week who's been having some health issues that have prevented our continued work together--actually, preventing him from doing any massage work at all for many months now. I found out he has given up his practice entirely for the time being and has taken a job with Apple, full time. I miss him and my weekly massages, but more importantly I miss our conversations. Robert, you are a fantastic guy and I wish you the very best and I totally enjoyed our visit.

Trunks, Trains, Crocodile Tears

2008-08-08T15:32:00.014-05:00

As I opened my eyes this afternoon upon awakening from a particularly deep sleep, I looked out the window from my bed and there in the sky was a most beautiful cloud that had taken on the shape of an elephant. It was so magical, I jumped up to grab the camera, resume my exact place on the bed but alas my first shot was no good and by the time I got the camera positioned and focused for the second shot the cloud no longer resembled an elephant; however, I could still see the shape of an animal head, sans the trunk, now looking more like a large dog.

I've always associated difficult times and suffering with transformation. During a particularly difficult time a number of years ago I had a powerful dream that left a lasting impression on my mind. I can't remember the details although I'm sure it's recorded somewhere in my papers, but I was on a train, traveling, and somehow a baby elephant came to me in the dream and offered me great solace, almost as one would imagine a spirit animal to do, or a guardian angel. It was such a powerful and emotional dream that I found myself literally out there in the world in search of a baby elephant the very next day! Well, not a *real* one, but one that's like a teddy bear. I desperately wanted a baby elephant that I could hold just like a child holds a cherished teddy bear or a security blanket. I had no idea where to find one but I didn't care, I jumped in my car and drove until I came to a Toys R Us. I found a large bin at the bottom of a shelf that contained a variety of stuffed animals, but I could not find an elephant. I searched and searched, reaching deep inside the bin, trying to rotate all the stuffed animals around in such a way that I would be able to see each and every one of them before giving up. No luck. Just as I was prepared to go elsewhere or dismiss my quest as something silly and stupid I heard the sound of a baby elephant coming from the bottom of the bin. Reader, I swear to you this is true. I started crying because it seemed so totally unreal. Even now I have to take some deep breaths and get my bearings as I revisit the memory. I reached my hand deep into the far corner of the bin towards where the sound had come and pulled out the cutest little baby elephant I'd ever seen! (Photo attached). (Press on him and voila, you get three recorded sounds of a baby elephant.) At this time in my life I was learning all about nurturing one's inner child, and the baby elephant came to symbolize this for me. They are fascinating animals. Gentle giants, powerful yet vulnerable, social, living in groups with a matriarch, usually the oldest female in the group, a great aunt, a grandmother, a great grandmother. Just like my childhood. All the love and compassion and strength and safety I could find came from my grandmother and my great aunts. As a child, I loathed my father and most men in general. My, how things change.

I rarely win anything free, but I did win a free consultation with a practitioner of Chinese medicine and acupuncture. We met yesterday and it was pretty powerful. She could really see right through me and I was quite delighted by that albeit somewhat unnerved in the sense that deep emotions were beginning to emerge, which meant I felt safe with her and she was definitely hitting on some difficult truths. She says my chi is out of balance and although she has some very clear and specific suggestions for bringing this into balance, it would involve weekly visits plus all the herbs plus a pretty radical change in diet and I'm just not up for all that right now. I want to transition slowly into trying to find the balance myself. I'm going to look at it as a fortuitous encounter but not take on obligations. I do have a whole page of suggested changes I can work on. More importantly, I need to exercise prudence in my money management at this time. I do want to keep her in mind for possible future work when I have more readily available cash.

After finding the baby elephant my journey took me to live for a year in a remote cabin in the wilds of Northern New Mexico. One of the monks at a neighboring monastery who befriended me gave me his teddy bear that he'd had since childhood, and already he was in his late 40's. I was very touched. Many of the village people accepted me and I learned much of their personal histories, especially through a book written by a native villager who now teaches in Coyote. In some ways it was like living in another country, another culture altogether. Years later after moving back to Austin then to Dripping Springs I noticed something in the middle of the highway one day that particularly grabbed my attention. I turned around and found a discarded baby elephant, lying the middle of the highway. How he eluded being run over I don't know. I cleaned him up and now he lives with the teddy bear and my inner child symbol.

Last night after a great workshop I dreamt I was being chased by a crocodile! I fled to my car and with key in hand I tried to open the door but alas the croc was too fast and I awakened with quite a physical reaction which sent my cats fleeing from the bed in a momentary panic. It's all good, but since he didn't bite me, or devour me, and I escaped by awakening, maybe I've made some not so bad decisions after all, of late.

What Would St. Francis Do?

2008-07-30T16:38:00.007-05:00

It's been a good if relatively uneventful week. I enjoyed a 3 hour ANY partner yoga and Thai massage workshop with Jeff as my partner and Andrew as our leader this past Sunday, as well as a couple of ANY classes. I had a long chat with Murti today about his upcoming workshop and week intensive at Austin Yoga, Castle Hill, as well as the retreat he and Gioconda are planning in October in Hawaii, which I'm hoping to attend. I enrolled in Keith's Boddhisatva workshop this weekend which I'm looking forward to, dropped by Castle Hill and purchased all my required books for the upcoming teacher training program and enrolled in Murti's events. Yoga and community is good.

Saw my dentist yesterday for my regular six month check-up and his wife and assistant Rhonda really needed to talk about all the difficulties they have been facing of late--an aging parent in a care facility, the devastating effects of Alzheimer's, and a whole range of medical issues she's been having to deal with. I felt so honored that she was comfortable confiding in me, sharing life's difficulties. I realized later that I've been going there for about 28 years. Of course it was impossible for me to do anything but listen as Dr. Heckmann was at work in my mouth the whole time, but sometimes it's best to just listen and let others talk without giving feedback (unless it's asked for). We all need to be heard, with understanding, and sometimes without any feedback. That was good.

I finally found someone who can repair my bath tub/shower without tearing everything out and having to do major construction. He came up with an excellent solution that will preserve the original design yet fix the problem without it all looking like a patch job.

I don't know what to do about all the raccoons we have around here. I started feeding them and now they expect dinner every night---all of them, and they've grown in numbers. Sometimes I count as many as 8. They come around like clockwork. It's so hot out there but I fear I've made a mistake in allowing their population to grow beyond what would be normal for the amount of food nature provides, but I am finding it exceedingly difficult to not feed them. However, we have decided it's probably the best thing to do as they can become dangerous pests. So I've withdrawn food. Well, I noticed one very persistent adult staring at me through the glass, with such a pleading look. They are still wild animals and run off when I approach with food, or step outside, and when this one took off I noticed a significant limp in his/her back leg. I've seen her several times now and wonder if her leg is broken, of if she has a thorn/infection. Dale doesn't know it, but I'm still feeding her. I love all the animals, but did erect a 7.5' wildlife fence around the property to keep out the deer that were eating all our plants. The fence also keeps out all roaming dogs, which is good, but the property is now a haven for raccoons, squirrels, foxes, and neighboring cats. There are so many birds out here too. But about the raccoons, I wonder what St. Francis would do? I suppose that as long as I continue feeding the birds and squirrels, there will always be grain scattered on the ground that the raccons will find.

I made reservations for dinner tommorrow at San Miguel for Dale and I, Gary and Chris, and Richard and Fred. I look forward to that.

A, B, or C

2008-07-24T13:37:00.010-05:00

I never know how long it's going to take me to get somewhere, and I mean that both literally and metaphorically. Getting from here to central Austin can take from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours, it all hinges on traffic. Yesterday when I left for practice I had in mind the possibility of 3 different yoga classes in 3 different studios, all beginning at 9:30 a.m. Should traffic be slow, the plan was to get to the closest one in time; if traffic was *normal* then I might just make it to the studio in north central Austin, the one that is further away in distance than the other two. I'm sure there is little logic to this, but such was my thinking. So keeping an open mind I left the house not knowing exactly where I'd end up for my morning practice.

Stephen Levine writes: "The mind creates an abyss, but the heart crosses it."

Certainly I can get totally lost in my mind and that can include the process of making decisions. It easily leads me nowhere. Into an abyss, round and about mazes, puzzling over nonsensical conundrums, in general pretty useless stuff. I like the notion that our hearts are indeed our *second* brain, and in many ways the far more important one. Most times when I follow my heart, something pretty rich happens. All sorts of things open up, and I don't mean just positive, candy-coated stuff. The real stuff, the stuff of life that really lets me FEEL. Laughter and tears and all that stuff. No doubt it would be far easier to follow my mind but I don't seem to ever get anywhere when I do that. Gratitude, love, grace, touching souls, connecting, being a part of, moving deeper into, listening, hurt, pain, sorrow, grief, being totally raw--all things having to do with feelings are associated with the heart.

Traffic was light so I ended up at the yoga studio located in north central Austin. The substitute teacher was just awesome. The class just totally blew me away. It was what I needed and wanted. I'm humbled when awesome things happen and feel that when such richness and ripeness suddenly makes an appearance I'm experiencing grace. Interestingly, I don't know or even think for a moment that had I chosen studio 1 or studio 2, that grace wouldn't have happened there. I think all we can do is open our hearts, and when we do that, we are open to grace, we are open to gifts, to love, and as well to pain. We are open to growth, to living life authentically.

I need to make some decisions: my bathtub/shower area needs to be repaired. It leaks and is causing damage. I don't know if a simple repair will do the trick or if I'll end up needing a whole new tub, tiling, essentially a complete redo. I do know that dealing with house doctors as they call themselves, contractors, salespeople, plumbers, carpenters...can cause me quite a bit of anxiety. Actually I should say I react with stress when I have to do these kinds of things of which I know very little. I just want it done, but there is no wand to wave, no one person to call and say please take care of this asap, thank you. Like so many other things it's a process. You have to do homework and learn stuff you may have no interest in, and hope you don't end up spending thousands unnecessarily. The only thing I know to do is sit with the anxiety and listen to my what my heart says. The sales lady at Moore Supply entices me to buy the deluxe, homeopathic, bubbly, aroma therapeutic, holistic, essential oils-friendly 60 gallon tub. My heart says Oh Yes, my body is a temple, this is really a healthy thing to do, but my pocketbook says No Way. As Jack Kornfield says, in dealing with all things spiritual, mental, physical....sometimes you simply have to rely on you own common sense. I have a folder with a handout that I sometimes refer to entitled How to Make Decisions. Often there isn't a right or wrong involved, but in the end if you feel pretty good with the outcome then I'd say you made a good decision.

I think I'll revisit that handout.

A Simple Perspective--Who Best to Listen To?

2008-07-20T12:45:00.008-05:00

I'm not an expert on anything, and the few things that I feel relatively knowledgeable about, well, there are countless people out there that know far more than I do. I'm not an intellectual, nor am I an academician. I say all this because I want to write about a subject that has the potential to be a sensitive one, but I feel compelled to put my thoughts out there, on this blog, because it has hit close to home. So, in the vein of mostly thinking out loud, in typewritten words, I want to send out a caution to all who are in a serious student-teacher relationship.

Quite a few years ago I began taking yoga at one of the very few places in Austin that offered yoga classes, and I mean literally that there were no more than a very small handful of yoga teachers in Austin. I loved it. It was such a wonderful discovery. I was going through one of the more difficult stages of my life and I was hypersensitive, depressed, and very frightened. I found refuge at this beautiful yoga studio, and the small community of people there. In particular I will never forget one very long afternoon when I simply burst into tears and my teacher wrapped her arms around me and held me, for a long, long time, offering unconditional love and comfort. No words were spoken, just her being totally and unconditionally available to me, giving of herself selflessly. But things began to unravel there and I didn't want to be a part of that unraveling as I had experienced about as much unraveling in my life than I could handle at that time. Briefly stated, the yoga studio owner became pregnant and her husband, a Buddhist monk or priest, left her--abandoned her. Anger, sorrow, fear....ensued and penetrated every aspect of her teaching. Understandbly so, but that's all I wanted to know and that's all I came to know. I just never went back and the studio closed shortly thereafter.

It was an important lesson for me to learn that people are people, people are human. No matter how we represent ourselves to the world, no matter what extraordinary heights we may achieve, we are still human. The Buddha taught to always question everything we are told, including his teachings, and if they don't resonate with truth for us, then don't accept them or believe them. We have an innate tendency to place others on pedestals, to look up to wise and learned people, to draw upon their wisdom, their enlightenment, their teachings, and this is a beautiful thing. But we must always keep in mind that even the most enlightened people we know, the wisest of the wise, the master teacher, he/she is human. As humans, we all make mistakes.

"As far as Buddha Nature is concerned, there is no difference between sinner and sage...One enlightened thought and one is a Buddha, one foolish thought and one is an ordinary person."
---Zen Patriarch Hui Neng

In one of my all time favorite books, A Path With Heart (A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of a Spiritual Life), Jack Kornfield dedicates an entire chapter to the topic of teachers, leaders, and gurus (Ch. 18, The Emperor New Clothes, Problems with Teachers). So very often, in fact more often than is generally realized, when a person achieves an elevated status within a spiritual community, and members of his/her flock begin to grow, so does the temptation of the ego, the tendency towards thinking oneself to be somewhat superior, and when that kind of power sets in the consequences are a common theme throughout history--greed and abuse of power (all too often sexual abuse, and the stealing of money). "Power replaces love."

Kornfield writes: "Another student followed a charismatic Indian guru whose powerful love and teachings brought great joy and peace into his life. The student was a gay man, who had lived in a caring and committed partnership for more than ten years, and when the guru later stated that all homosexuality was a terrible sin that leads to hell, the student's life was nearly destroyed. His relationship was torn apart, and the secret guilt and self-loathing that had plagued this man throughout his childhood returned. Finally, with outside help, the student came to see that while his guru might bring him visions and wonderful meditation teachings, he was really quite ignorant about homosexuality. Only when he realized this, was he able to hold both the teachings he so valued and his own life with equal loving-kindness."

This is almost exactly what happened to me, and in one form or another has happened to many others.

"We can see over and over again how one dimension of life does not automatically bring wisdom in other dimensions. Every teacher and every practice has its strong points and its weaknesses."

Andrew Harvey discusses the falling out he had with his guru, a world renowned guru whose name I do not know. One of my all time favorite yoga teachers, someone I admire, respect, love, and care about, fell victim to this very thing. The leader of a spiritual community begins telling his/her flock to not question what he/she is saying. Remedies and cures of a spiritual nature can be obtained through more generous donation of monies, and worse of all, through sexual interaction with the master himself/herself. This is called abuse. And it happens all the time. Because these people are human too.

When things become dogmatic, one should sit up and take notice. When one's leader seems to hold all the answers, and those answers are very clear, those answers are black and white, those answers are the one and only truth, one needs to beware. Something has gone wrong.

There is nothing wrong with the centuries old yogic tradition of having a master and student. In fact, I'm particularly fond of working one-on-one with a teacher. It's a rich and rewarding tradition. This is how precious knowledge is passed on. It's just another way for us to learn and grow from those who have much to offer. In Universities and college we flock to our favorite professors to impart their knowledge to us. We read books by writers we admire, and we learn and grow. I strongly advocate for all these things. But I also advocate for listening carefully to one's one heart, and most especially, listening to one's gut---one's intuition. Intuition is a powerful tool we can all tap into, it is the wisdom that resides in all of us, and if we listen and then follow our intuition, we can navigate through life without falling victim to bad things quite so often. Most spiritual traditions teach that each and every one of us really has all the answers we need inside of us. Easier said than done, but I think there is much truth in that.

Today, Untitled

2008-07-18T13:37:00.005-05:00

I feel totally yucky today. Something has gone awry with the functioning of my lower intestines. I feel so tired. I didn't even go to the Iyengar workshop today, the last day, although I did try. Something in me feels out of balance and I can't figure out what. Did I push myself too hard? Do I need to change my diet? Do I need to do a cleanse? Always I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with me, I get totally caught up in that, just totally lost in it before I realize, hey, this is just an old habit. An old core belief. The belief that I'm totally worthless and not worthy of love. It goes so deep. Sometimes it takes all I have to fight it, but usually when I'm worn down by it all something slowly comes back to me that I learned long ago that all those negative core beliefs are just lies. The old story line that I should know better than buy into, especially after all these years of work. Just maybe it's totally okay to feel rotten from time to time. So I feel rotten, tired, weak, vulnerable, lonely...and so does most of the rest of the world. That doesn't make it any easier, but it is a truth. Yesterday, in front of two yoga teachers, a fellow student in the workshop started talking about me and suddenly burst out with "he is just amazing." The teacher said, yes, he is amazing. My face grew really hot and I knew I was blushing red as a beet. It really bothered me that she said that about me, and I kept having those inner dialogs, the monkey chatter stuff, and then it came to me that I was totally rejecting a compliment. That's all it was, nothing more, nothing less, just a compliment, with loving intentions. I certainly thought of her as amazing, and the two teachers are quite amazing, and so why do I find so many other people just fantasically amazing in so many thousands of ways but I can't accept it when someone sees that in me? Ok, here come the tears, the weeping, and the sadness. I just need to sit with it and let it be, rest into it, feel it. So that's all.

Queerily Questioning

2008-07-15T15:23:00.009-05:00

I woke up from my nap a while ago wondering why I wonder? Not to be confused with "I wonder as I wander...". I mean really, it is a pretty queer world in which we live, don't you think? Why yes I do, thank you very much. For example, "isn't it rich, isn't it queer, losing my timing this late, in my career?" Bring in the clowns. Very funny, eh? I never really had much of a career, wasn't born knowing by the age of 4 "oh yes, I want to become a concert pianist" or "I knew from a very early age I was born to do great things in this world." None of this ever happened to me. I'm still searching like a lost soul for answers wherever I can find them, and honestly, I don't spend much time even doing that.

We all have our priorities, I mean really, if I can't have my bowl of Fiber 1 in the morning then you might as well put me in front of a firing squad, and take away my coffee and I'll voluntarily put myself in front of that same firing squad. I've taken to walking the long sidewalk outside from my studio to the garage, probably a distance of about 150 feet, one way. At night when I wake up to piss. Barefoot. Actually, totally naked. (I cannot wrap my mind around how in the world people can sleep wearing clothes). I look up at the marvelous night sky and feel overwhelmed and yet joyful, somehow absurdly safe. Which is quite ironic, what? Those bright lights up there that are coming at me at the speed of light are hitting me after about a million years. Is that queer or what? Take your pick--the phenomenon of this whole incredible universe or me walking outside at 2 in the morning star struck and naked, and feeling pretty damn vulnerable. I wonder if wandering bands of armadillos ever attack humans?

If you take time, which is "a conscious dimension created by man", whatever that means, and put it on a clock, not a digital one, but an analog one, and say that this planet's age can be summed up in its' totality by assigning it a 24 hour life span, then we, as human beings, have been here for about the last second. Or is it 2 seconds? The point is, it's a minuscule piece of the circle. Pretty strange for an animal that has managed to nearly destroy the planet, huh? The dinosaurs were here for millions of years and the last theory I heard was that a huge meteor hit the earth like a thousand and one atom bombs and a heavy cloud dust encircled the globe, hence no sun, no grass, no something--saurases anymore. And here I am worried and denying it to all who might ask that I can't do half moon pose. One day in class a yoga teacher, in describing something like a difficult hip rotation said "it really is just ridiculous" and I thought, wow, you just said something pretty funny and pretty profound. It is ridiculous, it is strange, it is queer. Another something I find exceedingly odd is why do so many people like to fantasize about what it would be like to be rich. REALLY rich. Most people that I've met in my life that are pretty darn rich are also pretty darn unhappy. In fact, some are raving mad lunatics who bemoan the tragedy that they were born into wealthy families. They wonder how rich life might be if only they were like the rest of most of the world, NOT rich (monetarily, of course).

I read about a very poor Indian man who went daily to his local temple and prayed before the statue of a goddess to "please, please, let me win the lottery" (in the spirit that this would bring an end to all his suffering). This went on for days and days until finally the statue of the goddess came to life and said "hey you, would you please, please buy a lottery ticket?" You get the point, but in reality isn't winning the lottery close to impossible? I think I've read that you are more likely in your lifetime to get struck by lightening 54 times before winning the lottery. (not Cash 5 or Two Step and some other exceptions). I've also read that a study of big time lottery winners has shown that most find their lives shattered in a bad way, big time. It's just too much to handle for most. They learn that their money cannot buy happiness. Still, knowing all this, I bet most of us would still like to win. Weird.

My nocturnal walks on the sidewalk leading to the garage have me wondering what it would be like to sit my butt down on the sidewalk and try meditating, without moving, until sunrise? Could I possibly do that? Would I want to? I spent a small fraction of 2 afternoons this week picking up trash that someone threw out their window onto our property. Plastic bottles, empty packages of cigarettes, Taco Bell wrappings and drink cups, can after empty can of tree wound paint. That's right, people who would spend their days trimming and pruning trees, painting the cuts with a thick, gooey black dressing so as to prevent any sort of boring insects from infecting the tree would, without thought, toss the equivalent of 2 large plastic garbage bags of trash out onto some unsuspecting person's property. Don't they know it's been over 100 degrees out here in the afternoons and it ain't fun picking up someone else's trash? So as I picked up all this trash I kept wondering what it would be like if I could be out here in this sweltering heat picking up this trash and just be in the moment and enjoy myself? Stop thinking about the who, or what, or why of any of it but just slowly and mindfully pick up the cigarette butts, the rotting jalapeno wrapped in saran wrap, the cans of tree wound goo and just put in the my black garbage bag and say to myself, I can be totally contented doing this right now, in this moment? I tried it and it worked, sort of. Well, it did, sort of. Well, not totally, but I gave it a good effort. Then I found a piece of paper amongst all the garbage with some names and phones numbers listed and made a couple of calls. My messages were like this: do you know who might have thrown garbage on my property? Don't they know it's illegal? Don't they know someone has to pick it up? And so on like that. And yet calmly (well, kind of). The next day *they* sent someone out to the house to pick up all this trash! Excuse me, I said, but in my message I thought I had stated that I had already picked up all the trash? Whatever, it was all very strange.

I'm doing an Iyengar workshop every day this week and still making it to my focus on form class. It's not really an immersion, but still, we are a very small group and get lots of individual attention. I can never get it totally right. Who can? It's a process that has no end, no ultimate goal whereby you can say eureka! I've gone as far as possible with this and now I'm going to be out there amongst all those stars in another dimension totally enlightened.

I highly recommend Vanda Scaravelli's beautiful book Awakening the Spine published by Harper Collins. In her 80's or 90's there are photos of her doing viranchyasana, yoga nidrasana (sleeping pose), kapotasana (back-bend with knees bent on the floor, top of head touching the floor, elbows to the floor, tops of fingertips touching bottoms of toes). It really is just totally ridiculous. :-) But beautifully rich and queer.

Day Bangs and Night Knocks

2008-07-11T14:52:00.021-05:00

Regularly, since we built this house eleven years ago, a wide range of birds have come crashing into our windows with a loud bang that sends me running to see what has happened every single time. Even the cats prick up their ears at the sound which can be more than a little disconcerting. One day I watched in amusement, which quickly turned to dismay, then horror, as a beautiful red cardinal, perched on the branch of a very old red bud tree, kept flying and crashing his body into the large, north facing window of my studio. At first I thought he might be trying to destroy or knock down this newly constructed obstacle in a quixotic show of bravado. Thinking that to be an unlikely explanation, I wondered if he was seeing his reflection in the window and, thinking it a rival, was laying claim to his territory in a battle of dominance. No, that's what lions do. Hmm. To the best of my recollection, male Cardinals have always lived in harmony with one another. But as I watched, this determined bird continued to hit the glass over and over until blood began to appear on the glass, and I decided I didn't care why he was doing what he was doing but I wasn't going to stand there any longer and just be an observer. This bird was seriously injuring himself. Why such aggression? I chased him away and hung a large piece of fabric from the rafter directly in front of the window. Mission accomplished until the next day when he was back fighting with his reflection again on the other window. Soon I had ordered colorful banners to hang in front of the suspect windows and watched them blow in the wind as bird after bird continued crashing into windows. Was this a bird flight path? Even today, all these years later, I don't know the answer. Mourning doves make the loudest bang of all and nearly always leave a large imprint as well as a few feathers either stuck to the glass or floating to the ground by the time I arrive to investigate. A beautiful red bellied woodpecker crashed into the window but a few days ago and I watched as he lay on the back porch stunned into near unconsciousness, only minutes later to fly to a nearby branch where he stayed put until he gained back enough equilibrium to take off in flight. (Just this very moment a cardinal flew up to the kitchen window and hit with a light bang of his beak).

Each year we have a pair of painted buntings that come to hatch their eggs and raise their young. Last year I found the mother painted bunting on the ground outside the large pane of glass that frames the view from my shower, dead. I've learned that many birds are knocked unconscious long enough to attract fire ants which begin eating them alive, starting with their eyes. I place the stunned the bird in a shoe box on the patio table until it recovers the strength to fly away. Of course the unlucky ones break their necks and never know what happened. It's a strange phenomenon. I once read that birds crash into trees with some degree of frequency in the wild. How many of us have wished we could sprout wings and take flight? Apparently, it isn't as easy as it looks.

During the year I spent raising my nephew he expressed fear, especially at night, at the sight of the many windows I insisted be part of the design of this house. It was never my intention to have curtains or window coverings but now we have accumulated a few, although most of the glass remains unobstructed so as to bring the outdoors inside. I love that feeling. I was awakened one night by a loud knocking sound. Pretty scary, until I decided that my friend Gary, who never rings the doorbell but always comes to the studio entry and knocks, must be having domestic problems and had come for a visit in the middle of the night. But Gary was nowhere to be seen, after all, it was 1:30 in the morning. This happened more than a few times and I've got to tell you, it scared me and had me wondering if there might be a lunatic on the loose who likes to peek in windows, knock loudly and then run off. While napping one afternoon I was awakened by the mysterious knocking, jumped up and ran outside as fast as I could to see the culprit flying away from the apex of the roof on the far east side of the house, right outside my bedroom. Yes, a woody wood pecker was flying away. He came again for awhile, the powerful pecking of his beak in search of bugs in the wood replicating the exact sound of a person knocking at the door. Strange things happen to those of us who live in the middle of the woods.

I went through a phase that lasted for many years whereby I'd hit my head pretty hard against all sorts of things. When mowing the lawn I'd hit my head on low hanging tree branches--big ones that would have me seeing stars. It happened over and over again on kitchen cabinets, pieces of furniture, I've even opened doors with too much force while moving forward only to get knocked on the head. Cuts, bruises, and bleeding. It was just absurd. By the time the wound would heal, I'd do it again. My therapist told me these were not accidents. I guess I was trying to knock some sense into myself, or trying to get myself to slow down and be present. Rarely am I fully present and I still have to work hard at slowing myself down, but I haven't had a bang on the head for quite a long time. Knock on wood.

Dark Shadow of Self

2008-07-09T06:48:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, on the drive home from practice and a brief stop at Whole Foods, I must have listened to Gary Jules sing Mad World half a dozen times. I just love that song, the lyrics are simple yet beautifully encompass elements of the human condition. I'd venture to hypothesize that such songs as this elicit as many meanings and associations as there are people listening. Here's the refrain:

And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very mad world

Many of us have seen the "crazy of the busies" in ourselves and others--running around blindly doing so many things for the purpose of avoidance of coming face to face with ourselves, our unique and beautiful qualities as well as our demons. Busy is wonderful when it's organized, efficient, productive, and examined. But running around keeping busy, busy, busy just for the sake of being busy can easily be labeled as a sort of madness.

I want to hone in on the lines "The dreams in which I'm dying Are the best I've ever had" as dreams have been a topic of much interest to me. For me, when one dies in a dream it can represent the death of an aspect of one's self which is usually a very good thing because after death there is rebirth. We die to the old and are born to the new. We rise as phoenixes. We shed our skins and re-emerge to face the world anew. We let go of those parts of ourselves that no longer serve us, or that are harmful and toxic to ourselves or others and in doing this

We enlarge our worlds ("Enlarge your world" Gary Jules sings).

There is a particular dream that many of us have had in which we come face to face with our darkest side, our most scary aspects, our Dark Shadow. This can be harrowing to say the least, and is usually the prelude to a significant transitional period. Here is how mine played out:

In the middle of the night he appeared at my bedroom door, a dark figure cloaked in black, faceless, not at all unlike Darth Vader. He never speaks, and I find it so very hard to look his way, and I'm very scared. It's a nightmare that's happening in the worse way. I am paralyzed with fear. I try screaming but nothing comes out. He walks over to me and I close my eyes. I can feel his presence right next to me. He plunges a knife deep into my chest and the pain is so excruciating that I awaken from the dream in a panic and feel the pain of the stab until it slowly subsides. Was that a dream? It was so real. He comes again week after week always moving next to me on the bed and stabbing me. These nights are agony when he comes.

I book an appointment with my most beloved therapist, my spiritual guide, teacher, a man I totally love, admire, and respect. I haven't seen him in months. He tells me that my visitation is that of my Dark Shadow. It's those dark parts of me whose very existence I have refused to acknowledge, deal with, accept...this part gets complex so I'm going to gloss over and move on. How do I make him go away and stop scaring the hee bee gee bees out of me? You embrace him, I'm told, you make yourself face him without fear and let him know you want to befriend him, get to know him, love him.

I cannot imagine actually doing this but once I understand this shadow is really me, and that I must go directly into and through the fear to understand it and for healing to begin, I make up my mind that this is exactly what I MUST do. And so I do it, nothing really dramatic, I just do it. When next he comes I somehow manage to sit up in my dream and face him and send out feelings of acceptance, of fearlessness, of a willingness to get to know him. He vanishes and never returns, but my work has just begun. Lots of work. Never ending. Learning to take "the road less traveled", the "path with heart". Fears fall away and I trust this spiritual/psychological process of healing, of recovery, of being real with myself, of being honest with a rawness I'd never known. I brought my dark shadow into the light, hence integration began. Transition.

Jung calls this the Shadow Self. St. John of the Cross writes of the Dark Night of the Soul. I needed to die unto myself in order to move into a new world of being awake, paying attention to me and my needs. (At first this may sound selfish but until we are in touch with ourselves, until we learn to heal and to love ourselves, we are of little use to others). I had to let go, forgive, seek guidance and understanding, and this has been very hard work. Over time we gather the tools we need to help us on our journey.

Last night I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love and within seconds came upon the following passage:

"I explained to the medicine man that I've been having the same horrible nightmare since childhood, namely that there is a man with a knife standing next to my bed. This nightmare is so vivid, the man is so real, that it sometimes makes me scream out in fear. It leaves my heart pounding every time (and has never been fun for those who share my bed, either). I've been having this nightmare every few weeks for as long as I can remember."

The medicine man goes on to explan that this man is not her enemy...

Wow.

Momentary Lamentations

2008-07-06T22:54:00.012-05:00

There is always so much yard work to be done around here, and at times I enjoy it immensely, it puts me outside and more in touch with the natural world. I refilled all the bird feeders, cleaned the bird bath, gave the hummers fresh sugar water, trimmed the Jerusalem sage, made a quick trip to The Natural Gardener and helped Dale select and plant a shrub--Elaeagnus x ebbingei--, watched the buzzards fly overhead in search of dead carcasses. So many slaughtered deer by the roadsides. As I scooped up a bunch of trimmed algarita branches destined for the burn pile I could feel their sharp thorny leaves piercing my skin and noticed little splotches of blood here and there. Suddenly I felt an eerie sense of heightened awareness, almost as if I'd traveled some distance away from all that is familiar. With a crispness of tone I hardly recognized, the nearby cooing of a mourning dove gives me pause to wonder at my surroundings and look at things from a totally different perspective. The ground is dry and powdery in spots, as I walk along I step into heat spots, like walking through a warm ghost cloud. I'm prone to peeling off my clothes, and feeling what little breeze is blowing, the warmth of sun. A few clouds have rolled in and I think I hear the distant clap of thunder. A brief shower of very light rain falls gently like a half-hearted baptismal rite, just a little tease from above. Mixed with sweat and perhaps a drop or two of rain, little trickles of blood flow down my scratched skin and I wonder how it would feel to lay down and roll in the dirt amongst the thorny leaves of the burn pile and let myself bleed into the earth and feel the sky pounding down on me as I listen to the sad lament of doves.

Once upon a time, after ascending the stairs from the smoky depths of the grotto with the 14 pointed silver star marking the birthplace of Christ, on which I planted a kiss, a friend whispered in my ear that she found nothing holy or sacred at all about that place, certainly not even closely comparable to the holy and sacred sight of a field of flowers. I agree.

A Measurement of Time

2008-07-06T06:48:00.015-05:00

I have been totally confused as to the day/date the past few days. It all started with my watch which has a little window that shows the day of the week and the date, like this:

SUN 6

Of course I have to already know it's July and it's 2008, which I can usually manage. But when a month such as June comes along with its 30 days, my watch isn't programmed to know that--it assigns each month 31 days. Therefore, I have to remember to make the correction manually, in a timely manner or I'll get all confused. So all week I've thought July 4th was on Saturday, at least on and off. One moment I'll get it straight, but the next moment I'm in sync with my incorrect watch date, fluctuating back and forth in my mind as to the date and day of the week. My friends tell me I have way too much time on my hands. There's a pun or two in there somewhere.

Which brings me to one of my all time favorite yoga teachers David Moreno (Ahbi). I love him dearly and would take as many of his workshops and classes as possible, if I could. We've tried to work out a schedule whereby he returns to Austin and teaches a workshop for my gay yoga kula in conjunction with doing a workshop at Castle Hill, and/or Yoga Yoga but he is so busy that this idea we've discussed several times may or may not ever happen.

David does not like me to wear my watch in his classes. Period. He says it interferes with my internal clock. Even if I never look at my watch during his class, he says it still interferes with my internal clock through some process akin to osmosis. Ironically, David has issues with watches and clocks, and I say this endearingly, because he is always (BEFORE class) asking me what time it is, and he has brought an assortment of little clocks to class that invariably are either not working, have the wrong time and need adjusting, he can't read them because he forgot his glasses, and so he will hand me a little clock and ask me to read it or fix it or adjust it. It's really just hilarious.

Which brings me to my issues with watches: growing up, I didn't know my Dad well at all. He worked in the oil fields of south Texas and was often gone from home for weeks, depending on the rig location. I now know he had a difficult childhood and saw atrocities beyond my comprehension during his time as a WW II soldier. So when he had time off, he would go straight to the bottle and would usually be rip roaring drunk by the time he got home. He and my mother would have awful fights and I spent a great deal of my early childhood living in a state of fear and hyper vigilance (trying to protect Mom). He often presented gifts to my sister when it wasn't her birthday or Christmas, just something he enjoyed doing. But I got nothing, and that hurt a lot. My mother and grandmother would try to compensate for this, but that really didn't help. On Christmas during first grade I got an Elgin watch, presumably from Dad. I wore it with pride and had that watch until I was 16 and it was stolen. Now I feel nearly naked without a watch and have quite an assortment of them. I think they represent a subconscious connection with my longing for Dad and his love.

I must say how delighted I was to see that Kale, a superb yoga teacher from Australia who has been teaching for 30 years, now at Castle, wearing a watch while teaching his classes. He is truly a great teacher and yogi. And he wears a watch! Yes! I'm vindicated!

Feelings have just come up for me and here they are: my mother made many mistakes during her life (who hasn't?), beginning with her choice to get married young and drop out of high school and to stay stuck in a bad marriage for 18 years. But something did shift for her and she set about making many changes to her life, and even though I always loved her deeply, it wasn't until later in life that we became best friends and I admired her in many ways. But our early years were difficult. She died in 1996 after a long and difficult battle with COPD and bladder cancer. I was with her during her final hours, and held her and cried. The last words she ever spoke in this world were to me, and she whispered in my ear "I'm so sorry." So I say to Mom, it's all ok, all is forgiven, we all struggle with life and making decisions and screw up. I miss you. You did your very best. And Dad, I know you loved me but you were suffering with so many issues that you just couldn't cope with, and were so overwhelmed. It's okay, I have only forgiveness and love in my heart for you.

Often, along with our work, it takes time to heal, sometimes a long while. There is liberation and freedom in forgiveness of others and of yourself. For me, letting go of long held resentments, deep seated anger, self-pity, etc...is always the beginning of healing.

"Sacred Activism" (Rifts and Chasms)

2008-07-05T11:13:00.011-05:00

I watched a documentary recently featured on P.O.V. (an excellent program that airs on public television stations, and yes, in liberal Austin, Texas, this program seems to usually be aired after 9 p.m., or after 10 p.m.) that profiled the pretty awful plight of elderly GLBT members of our society. I'd no idea how many GLBT elderly people struggle so hard to make ends meet, how rare it is to find GLBT friendly nursing homes, assisted living homes, and general health care. AND, we are talking about a majority of retired GLBT members of our society, NOT just a few. A majority. It must be remembered that these folks grew up in the 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's and the world as we know it now, in this country, was very different. It was not always easy to find and hold decent paying jobs unless you lived a closeted life. There was a lot of discrimination. Few of these domestic partners knew to go to an estate planning attorney. Who would suggest that to them, and how many could afford it, and how many available attorneys were there at that time that dealt with such matters? Many have lost partners with whom they were in long term relationships, and find themselves being evicted from their homes because the title of the house was in the partner's name. There are no social security benefits to be had from one's partner, hence the exclusion of Medicare. Even today if you are in a long term relationship and do not have Durable Power of Attorney/Medical Power of Attorney you are not allowed to visit your partner in the hospital if anyone objects, and yes, families do object. You may be not be invited to speak at your partner's funeral, or have any part of that whole process. Horror stories abound, even today. So many of these folks are invisible, they are marginalized, they are disenfranchised. No rights or benefits in regards to their partners. Some companies are making exceptions these days, but these people have little to no governmental representation. We don't know who they are, or where they are. An interview with one young gay man said he feared older gay men would only want sex from him, but if he could be guaranteed that wouldn't happen, he'd welcome having coffee every morning with an elderly gay man. Unfortunately that paints a very sad picture in my mind, the fear of our elderly based on such assumptions and in my opinion, very unsupportive reasoning. Another young gay man said he didn't know anything at all about elderly GLBT people, they were indeed invisible. There is a great rift, a real chasm between younger GLBT folks and older GLBT people, and I find this very sad indeed. I can easily imagine a mentoring program between young and old. It has been an incredible blessing for me personally to have a gay yoga kula that is accepting, loving, and embracing, and to find myself accepted into the yoga community at large--in general they are a group of uniquely special people with great big loving hearts. This makes me cry with tears of gratitude. I'm also blessed to have a wonderful life-mate, and we are going on 34 years together soon!

I only recently became aware of Andrew Harvey, a gay writer, yogi, mystic, scholar, etc....he advocates "Sacred Activism"...not dissimilar in my mind to prayer in action. Getting out there in the world and doing something to help others. Really putting your beliefs into action. Reaching out to touch someone. Sometimes a smile given to a stranger on the street can work miracles. We are all connected.

http://www.andrewharvey.net/sacred_activism.html

Faces and Facets of Fear

2008-07-04T08:40:00.011-05:00

I started watching Eckhart Tolle's DVD The Flowering of Consciousness I (based on his book(s) which I haven't read) last evening with my partner and wasn't surprised at how the *pointing of his words* resonates with much truth for me. There is no end to self-improvement, no end to seeking, no end to the path, the quest, the search for meaning in all things. Do we ever really discover exactly or totally who were are? Of course not. Answers are enriching when they come, but they are often accompanied by even more questions. I think this is all very good and is the nature of things. Ebb and flow, wax and wane, stumble and fall, stand steadfast, try to be a good warrior, stay fit and healthy in body, mind, spirit, and then stumble again and fall. And cry.

I am reminded of a woman I met and befriended who had a sad look in her eyes that was visible beneath the defensive arrogance and cocky self confidence she exuded. She told me her husband had committed suicide and her high school age son was experiencing similar signs of depression. "Sometimes you just have to put one foot in front of the other and not think beyond that." I thought to myself at the time what little understanding this woman has regarding the complex issues of depression, suicidal ideation and succumbing to the suicidal impulse, the deep scars that many of us bear that pull us down hard. But now I look back on those words of hers and in them I see wisdom, in the sense that if you are focused on just moving one step at a time you are focused on being in the present, and in this there is much relief from suffering. It really isn't that different from focusing on just taking your next breath. I grew to love this woman and to admire her for all her suffering and her constant seeking of solace in the solemnity of an isolated monastery in NM where I too sought answers. Her worldly wealth made issues such as food, shelter, health care, etc., all of which are extremely important to every single human being on this planet, non-issues for her, but in lieu of having to focus on survival issues she had to cope with issues such as deep despair, loneliness, isolation, abandonment, and not feeling loved in this world. (That last one has been a recurring one for me that comes from my core and can have a profound effect on me and my sufferings). Again I quote Bayda:

"Suffering is guaranteed as long as we demand that life be free from discomfort."

"You believe you can't be happy because your life is difficult. This is backwards. You can't be truly happy until your life is difficult."

"Suffering is the result of insisting that something be other than it is."

And so one day while traveling my own deep rooted fears caught up with me, deep depression and despair set in, and I didn't feel I could possibly go on any longer. This same woman saw the fear in my face and when the armed soldiers came to take me away she intervened and spent many hours of her time helping to get me into a hospital that could take care of me. For this my dear E I am forever grateful.

So for now I'm going to simply put one foot in front of the other and not give a whit about knowing anything about anything.

Inner Courtyards of Quietitude

2008-07-02T12:27:00.016-05:00

I find it interesting when a yoga class theme (if there is one) closely correlates to my own recent musings whether it has to do with thoughts, feelings, love, relationships, forgiveness, compassion, awareness, letting go and so on. About thoughts, we clearly are not our thoughts and I think I'm finally getting my mind around that, so to speak. (I'm slow). Our thoughts are not who we are, they can often be just mind chatter, a pretend dialog with another, a fantasy, and my favorite is the trio that comprises the IFS of addiction--what if only? (about the past), what if only? (the now), and what if only? (about the future), we can truly become addicted to such thinking. It's natural for the mind to do this, and I don't think I'll ever come close to stopping it, but it's revelatory when one can recognize what's going on and know what the mind is doing and say to oneself "that's just my mind being active, nothing more and nothing less." I don't think that's where our deeper/higher selves reside. We are to find ourselves beyond all that clatter and clutter and clacking. Today during my drive in to Austin I decided to imagine all the cars around me as though they were thoughts, and when someone decided to drive on my tail I decided to be aware of what they were doing but not react or respond. And the same for the cars that rush past me only to find themselves many car links behind me at the next stop light. I merely observe but try hard to not respond. Be aware but relaxed. It's a bit of a meditation that I think may make driving safer for myself and others. Perhaps meditation isn't the right word here because all meditation techniques I'm familiar with should never be done while driving (except maybe short ones at stop lights).

Bayda writes: "See your thoughts for what they are; Just thoughts. And see them for what they aren't: the truth about who you are and what life is."

Anxiety is always about the future. Bring your mind to the present, to what is happening right now, and you can recognize anxiety as just another thought."

"Notice how often thinking and talking are detours from the painful work of being present to life."

In class today Gioconda read a poem by Hafiz that repeats this same motif. Sometimes we can just put our hand up in a gesture of "no, more" to our thoughts to quieten them, to let them know they are familiar companions but they are not wanted in this moment. As Elizabeth Gilbert says, they are like our neighbors, always there, and we can live in harmony with them, but distance is good. I like the metaphor of fences make good neighbors---I think we need to erect fences to our thoughts and tell them from time to time to just stay on their side of the fence!

Fortuitous Encounters

2008-06-30T21:21:00.017-05:00

No doubt my favorite living contemporary painter is Alyce Frank. She lives near Taos NM in a small town with her husband and produces paintings that reach out and touch me ever so deeply. I believe one of her favorite painters and source of inspiration is Vincent van Gogh. Alyce is represented in several galleries. I had read a little about her but had never met her, seen her, nor seen a photo of her, nor had I actually seen one of her paintings *in person*--I had viewed them first on postcards I found in Abiquiu NM near to where I lived for nearly a year a few miles beyond the village of Canones, then in books and online. I knew she loved to paint plein air especially in NM. A couple of years ago my partner and I took a driving trip out West, heading for California. One day while touring Yosemite Park in one of those large tour buses we made yet another stop to take in the breath taking scenery. I noticed a couple of painters parked in an old station wagon with large easels set up by the side of the road. Something stirred in me and told me that I just HAD to go over and say hello and introduce myself. I walked away from the group and headed over to the painters some little distance away. I walked right up to them and introduced myself and then blurted out "Are you by any chance Alyce Frank?" To which she replied, yes, I am, and this is my painting partner Barbara Zaring. I was both in awe and shock at this so called *coincidence*, and it turns out Ms. Frank also got quite a little thrill from the whole event. She was the artist in residence at Yosemite and I had no idea of any of this. Wow, what magical things can happen, especially when we take that risk and move right through our nervousness and doubts and fears and follow those inner urgings. A few weeks later I received a call from the owner of the Fenix Gallery in Taos who informed me that Alyce Frank was so impressed by the encounter that she wanted me to have one of her paintings!!! I simply couldn't believe it--her paintings typically sell anywhere from $4000 to $10,000 and more. Well that part proved to be just a bit too good to be true as I learned that what was meant was that Ms. Frank was offering me a painting for less than half price, plus shipping and handling. In that case I kindly asked if I could chose a different painting than the one she had set aside for me and she indeed approved my request. Now I have an original Alyce Frank oil painting hanging in my living room titled El Salto. I love it, and I love how I came to be the owner of such a beautiful piece of art by my most revered contemporary painter in the whole world!!

Another fortuitous encounter happened one day at a support group meeting I was attending weekly at the Austin Men's Center (Co-dependence anonymous). What a great group of guys! We came together weekly and shared our stories without judgment, offering one another support, care, and love, and many of us coming to the knowledge that we are not alone in this world with our problems , issues, and suffering. It was my plan to make a trip to the bank and retrieve some documents from the safety deposit box after the meeting. I had placed the safety deposit key in my bag. The key itself is tucked away bright red little envelope. It was cold outside and so before getting in my car I decided to get the key out of my bag and put it in my pocket so it would be readily available when I got to the bank. I searched and searched in my bag and could not find it. Eventually I removed every single item from my bag, sorted through everything, placing everything on the floor, then carefully sorting through everything again and slowly putting everything back into my bag (a small backpack) but the key was NOWHERE to be found. Suddenly I heard someone in the adjacent room crying and I went to see what was going on. One guy, who was needing to leave to get to work was listening to another guy who appeared to be in deep pain about something, and his sobbing was intense. I went into the room and sat down and held him while he cried, and cried, and cried, then told me his problem. Later, when he had recovered his composure for the time being we exchanged names and phone numbers and he became one of my best friends in my life. He taught me to paint, something that I had never done before. I had a deeply ingrained belief that I had absolutely no artistic ability whatsoever and therefore had never taken an art course, not even an art history course. My first piece of art that I brought home from first grade and proudly showed to my mother turned out to be the object of unintentional, but very hurtful ridicule. My mother told me and everyone else who came to the house that I had brought home the ugliest piece of art she had ever seen in her life. She repeatedly displayed this artwork of mine and had many laughs at it's ugliness. She told me I had no talent whatsoever. Hence, I had avoided the visual arts my entire life up until I was 39 years old. But that was soon to change. This beautiful man I met that day was a gifted artist and he taught me to paint. He encouraged me, he praised me, he inspired me.

After our meeting that day I got into my car to head for the bank, realizing that I had been unable to find the safety deposit key, something that had kept me there at the center longer than was normal as I had searched my backpack extensively, which had allowed me to meet my new friend. I just KNEW I had put that key in my bag before leaving home so sitting there in my car, I opened my bag to again begin yet another search for the elusive key and there it was, sitting right on top of the contents of my bag, in plain view.

I have learned the hard way (naturally) to look at such mysterious events with complete openness and try not figure out the meaning. Conjecture, theories, interpretations that may lead to certain actions on my part have proven to be not the best course of action, not the best way to understand these things. Rather I've learned, and still learn, to be still and watch and go slowly and be introspective but without coming to all sorts of self misguided conclusions, because when one does that, it removes the mystery, it removes the element of the mystical, it seeks to concretize that which may very well need to remain ethereal.

Note: the first painting above is El Salto by Alyce Frank as are the next two; the fourth painting was done by me.

Blessings to Open New Doors

2008-06-30T06:34:00.022-05:00

I drove Zachary to Beeville yesterday. Dale went with me. Oftentimes it's a bit strange going back to my home town, sometimes I'm flooded with memories--both pleasant and not so pleasant--and other times I feel as though many lifetimes have passed since I once lived here. There is one feeling that's consistent and that's that I'm glad I no longer live here in this depressing place. When my friend from High School Brian moved back to Beeville from NYC a few years ago, I began going down there quite often, but it was different. Brian lives in the country outside Beeville on 75 acres in a large, beautiful house built by his parents. It's totally private and secluded and Beeville seems worlds away, most of the time. Brian put in a pool with a large deck and upgraded the outdoor half-bath in the carport area. We've had so many fun times by the pool, so many parties. One weekend about this time last summer I drove down for a visit. On the way there I caught a momentary glance out of the corner of my eye of Buck and Meg (two horses) in the pasture adjacent to the highway. Buck was standing over Meg who was laying on the ground, something horses enjoy doing, rolling in the dirt. Later while lounging by the pool I noticed that neither Buck nor Meg had made an appearance. Usually they show up when we are out by the pool and I always love to walk down to the fence and pet them, and Brian usually gathers a bucket of grain pellets to feed them. I asked Brian where they were and we all puzzled over why they hadn't yet shown up. They never did. Something in my gut was troubled. Something in the back of my mind felt uneasy, but I couldn't figure it out. The image of Buck standing over Meg while she rolled in the dirt kept coming to mind. Did I actually see her rolling in the dirt? The next morning Brian got a call from a friend, who had driven by on the highway, with dire news--"you have a dead horse in your pasture." The sheriff was called, Brian's brother came out and it wasn't long before news filtered up to the house that someone had driven by and shot Meg in the head with 22 caliber rifle, and she was dead. While they dug a deep hole in the field for burial, I watched over Buck who had been coaxed into a corral near the house. He was so upset, running about trying to get to Meg, almost busting through the fence, whinnying over and over again. I spent hours with him that morning, calming him, soothing him as best as I could. Obviously he had witnessed the murder of his companion, the beautiful mare Meg. He was afraid of me at first, then slowly moved closer and closer until finally I was rubbing the entire side of his long neck, and I could see he was calming down and feeling soothed.

Immediately after returning to Austin I went to a yoga class and Keith read the following poem aloud which totally blew me away:

A Blessing

By James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans.

They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

And nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body

I would break
Into blossom.

I was haunted by this for a long while. I was confused about a recent (and ongoing) *infatuation* that had me torn apart and weeping daily for weeks on end, which eventually turned into months. I stayed with it all and worked hard at processing it, understanding it, going to the core of the issues that were coming up for me. This is not easy work. The next month I attended a retreat at Bodhi Zen Center in Jemez Springs NM, A Gathering of Men, sponsored by Spirit Journeys. It was a profound experience. Just totally profound. The next month I traveled throughout Tuscany for several weeks, then a few months later I found myself on a yoga retreat in Bali. Doors had opened and blessings bestowed. I worked with a wonderful therapist and joined a group-therapy-group. It was all so very rich and rewarding and such hard f***ing work!

Staying with our pain and feeling it fully without trying to suppress it is the way of the heart, it's the way to healing, understanding, growth. So many doors open to us when we stay the course of our heart, listen deeply to what our best self is telling us, often heard through the words of others, passages in books, poems, dreams (including nightmares). Archaeological digs into our deeper pits, no matter how dark, will reveal many truths.

Links to some of my photoshows, with more to come soon. These shows can take a while

to upload, so be very patient. Also, try clicking on beta version, and you may need to install

a flash player:

http://www.photoshow.com/watch/Bg3tG2cQ

http://www.photoshow.com/watch/Xw9pZ4kn

http://www.photoshow.com/watch/FT2cv7Jh

http://www.photoshow.com/watch/gD7ZF4ip

Words, information, knowledge, wisdom

2008-06-26T06:36:00.017-05:00

We are bombarded by information, especially if we cruise the Internet, watch movies, TV, read books, magazines, yet we retain so very little of this information, which is probably a good thing. I suppose knowledge comes when we spend time and put forth the effort to learn something new, or master something, we come to know about it, to some greater degree than before. We retain information that captures our interest and we delve into it. We have knowledge about it. And wisdom, yes, that rich form of guidance that is etched deeply into our psyches and tells us what is right vs wrong, what is healthy and good for us and what isn't, helps to lead us on the path we choose, helps us to choose the path that is best for us...

It's interesting how one may come upon a word and decide to use that word in one's writing or dialog. Suddenly it seems that word is to be found everywhere. It just pops up like magic all the time, that is after you become aware of it. Yet, it was there all along, you simply didn't notice it. And so it goes with so many things. Awareness is an important word, an important state, a concept well worth pondering, contemplating. A word(s) that I've noticed to be so prevalent for many months now is moon. Or lunar. In Sun magazine I read an interview with Andrew Harvey. I saw his books in Whole Life Books, the feminine comes up a lot in his writings, Mother Nature, Goddess, and so on. Elizabeth Gilbert writes: "...but for millennia there have been others who choose instead to get up before the sun and wash their faces and go to their prayers. And then fiercely try to hold on to their devotional convictions throughout the lunacy of another day."

LUNACY of another day? A day of sun, a day without moon? A day with the feminine hidden? The complexity of the lunar cycle was explained (rather an attempted explanation) in a recent meditation session let by Abhi whereby he played a tape he had made that must have lasted 20 minutes or so about the moon, her cycles, blue moon, full moon, new moon, so many days, hours, minutes...it went on and on with an incredible amount of information. I retained so very little. Lunar breathing to cool down. Mary Keator said most of us, including most women, are far more in touch with our masculine aspects than with our feminine aspects. I find this endlessly fascinating, and often wonder how in touch am I with my feminine aspects vs my masculine aspects?

Pema Chodron wisely tells us to not take ourselves so seriously. To simply lighten up. Which allows me to free associate, similar to the year or so I spent writing my morning pages every day as Julia Cameron suggests in The Artists Way.

I can hear the TV in the other room and try to tune it out. My nephew---Ok, we've gone to the movies--yesterday we saw Wall E, which was really good, clothes shopping, ice cream parlor, swimming at Hamilton's Pool, dined out, hair cut, purchased books for summer reading...and I'm ready for my freedom again! My body is protesting the change in diet and other routines. Still, I'm having fun but will take my nephew home this weekend--tomorrow. It surprises me how easily he gets bored and how much TV he watches! I wish there were other kids around for him to play with, but he gets plenty of that at home, and at school...