Changing Places

My freesias are blooming and it’s 90 frickin’ degrees outside!!

What the hell happened to spring?!

(No, we’re not talking about Spanish appetizers, kids…)

Self-discipline burns away impurities and kindles the sparks of divinity. — Yoga Sutras

“Now” he thought, “that all these transitory things have slipped away from me again, I stand once more beneath the sun, as I once stood as a small child. Nothing is mine, I know nothing, I possess nothing, I have learned nothing….” He had to smile again. Yes, his destiny was strange! He was going backwards, and now he stood empty and naked and ignorant in the world. But he did not grieve about it; no, he even felt a great desire to laugh, to laugh at himself, to laugh at this strange, foolish world. — Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

The next niyama is tapas, or burning zeal in practice…. Tapas is simply an enthusiasm for health. All of us have it in our nature. The genius of yoga is that it encourages us to cultivate this enthusiasm. Rather than cloak our childlike wonder in cynicism, we are encouraged to develop an appetite for life.

…

Most of us begin a spiritual practice having known only our false selves. And so, as those layers begin to fall away, it actually feels as if we are going backwards at first, instead of forward; our practice strips away the edifice we built to our false self. Suddenly our whole way of knowing, of doing, of being comes into question. .. Many of us find that we have built our houses on sand, that the lives we’ve created cannot stand up to the heat of our practice. We may lose a job, relationships, the old playmates and playthings. We stand once more as a child in the world, open and empty. This too, is tapas.

In my own life, I felt just as Siddhartha did– amazed at all I had lost, and at the same time just as amazed that I no longer valued what I had lost: my old self, the old world, the old friends… When two people who have experienced this aspect of tapas discuss it, it is invariably an occasion for much laughter — the laughter of relief at no longer needing to be our false self, and the laughter of joy at such good fortune — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat

I read Siddhartha years ago as a teenager, and have to say it was probably one of the formative books of those years for me. I think even then I knew not to hang on to anything too tightly, since it might slip away.

Of course over time and in the midst of my undiagnosed bipolar disorder, I forgot that lesson, and my manic episode came about as almost a direct result of the depth of those losses when I clung too tightly to friends who slipped away. Or rather, that I drove away by my maddening clinging.

One of the best things about coming out of the other side of the bipolar rabbit hole though is that freedom and that laughter. It’s not that I don’t value the things and the people in my life now, but I don’t cling to them too tightly. I don’t try to control anyone’s life, including my own, really. I know things will happen that are simply out of my control and am all right with that.

I suppose some people consider that childlike, to simply let your life exist and appreciate all it has to offer you each day. To me, it’s simply the way I am now.
Yes, I still plan things and make things happen, but with enthusiasm rather than out of a sense of trying to manage everything around me. And I do love to meet someone else who has been through that hero’s struggle and come back to the world – and we do laugh when we meet. Anyone who knows how hard life can be and appreciates how easy and simple life can be on the other side of that struggle — that is a person worth knowing. Listen to the stories they tell, and how much they can laugh about them, and you’ll find someone with a true zest for life.

… those bits at the end of Darwin’s belly. Darwin is off to the vet to get “tutored” today….

You can’t show the Far Side cartoon (that might be here) cause Larson’s people are insane about enforcing copyrights, but here’s the punchline, imagine the dog hanging his head out the window:

“Ha, ha, ha, Biff. Guess What? After we go to the drugstore and the post office, I’m going to the vet’s to get tutored.”

UPDATE:

Darwin is doing fine and sleeping right now. He’s a trooper.

Seems like whenever the hubby is home, the TV is on.

I hate it. I really hate it.

Television bores me – it’s so passive, just sitting and watching. I prefer the interaction of the internet, or even just reading.

The blaring of the television really annoys me, and I much prefer quiet. When nobody is around, I soak up the quiet, rarely even having music on.

But the weekends, with the TV on, my nerves just jangle constantly.

I really need a weekend from the weekend….

We took Darwin to the San Diego Golden Retriever Meetup today. We had a really good time meeting lots of new golden friends! And Darwin got a cheeseburger on the way home! Here’s the whole group:

We were trying to line up by color, like this photo of the “golden rainbow” from the AKC:

All in all, it was a great day, even with the van breaking down on the way home. Much better than yesterday’s being in the hospital for tests! (None of which showed anything, of course).

One nice benefit of fasting for my medical tests today – it makes these numbers look good!

DATE WEIGHT BMI
3/9/2007 153.5 lbs. 25.5

DATE WEIGHT BMI
2/27/2007 157 lbs. 26.1
2/5/2007 157 lbs. 26.1
1/19/2007 159.5 lbs. 26.5
1/3/2007 160.5 lbs. 26.7
12/20/2006 163.5 lbs. 27.2
12/7/2006 163 lbs. 27.1
12/4/2006 167 lbs. 27.8
12/3/2006 172.5 lbs. 28.7

UPDATE:

Tests showed nothing new or unusual, so still don’t know what’s causing the anemia.

Wonder what they’ll look at next. Oh well, at least I’m feeling better, anyway.

When you’re itching with hives from taking a medication with polyethylene glycol in it, make sure the anti-itch cream you’re using doesn’t have propylene glycol in the ingredients….

Please – just move to your new home in Paraguay already, Dubya. We don’t want you back. Really.

Bush Embarks on Longest Trip to Latin America – washingtonpost.com

President Bush embarked today on his longest trip ever to Latin America…

I awoke this morning and came out to find Darwin tearing up my copy of “Meditations from the Mat“. I wasn’t angry or upset; it’s what puppies do and I had left him alone a bit too long out of his crate. I just gently told him, “Darwin, this is a “no”,” and put him outside while I picked up the pieces. As I picked them up, one quote jumped out at me from one of the ripped up pages:

We show up, burn brightly in the moment,
live passionately, and when the moment is over,
when our work is done, we step back and let go.

Victory to our spirits, Peace to All Beings

And I felt at peace, not even angry at all.

Huh. Something here is working…

As a result of contentment, one gains supreme happiness. — Yoga sutras

We can easily practice santosha in the beautiful moments and joyous experiences of our lives. But Patanjali asks us to be equally willing to embrace the difficult moments. — Judith Lasater

Everyone is already the living Buddha, complete, whole, perfect as you are. All this action and effort to become special is maing you very unspecial and creating a tremendous amount of pain and suffering. — Zen master Dennis Genpo Merzel

The second niyama is santosa (santosha) , or contentment. This is the choice to end our war with reality… Santosa is… an alternative way to move through the world. Instead of seeking contentment from the outside in, we find contentment from the inside out…. When we view things in this light, there are no good events or bad events, only moments in which to shine. — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat

Santosa is having a sense of modesty and the feeling of being content with what we have. To be at peace within comes from fostering contentment with one’s life, even while experiencing its challenges. When we accept that life is a process for growth, all of the circumstances and experiences we create for ourselves become valid teachers and vehicles for expressing our highest nature. Accepting that there is a purpose for everything – yoga calls it karma – we can cultivate contentment and compassion, for ourselves and for others. Santosa means being happy with what we have rather than being unhappy about what we don’t have.

BTW, John, I think this one is brilliant – kudos….

And of course there’s Scooter as the tip of the iceberg of this corrupt administration:

Cleanliness of the body and mind develops disinterest in contact with others for self-gratification. — Yoga sutras

When the body is cleansed, the mind purified, and the senses controlled, joyful awareness needed to realize the inner self also comes. — Yoga sutras

When cleanliness is developed, it reveals what needs to be constantly maintained, and what is eternally clean. What decays is the external. What does not is deep within us. ~ T.K.V. Desikachar

The first niyama is sauca, or purity. Practicing sauca, we keep ourselves clean on the outside by ordinary means, and we keep ourselves clean on the inside through asana, pranayama, right eating practices, and right attitudes…Unlike the other yamas and niyamas, sauca receives two sutras of explanation. The work we do with sauca is primarily physical, but in both sutras the desired effect is in the mind. … On the mat, begin to experience the asanas and pranayama as purifying your body as well as strengthening it. Off the mat, cultivate consciousness and care around the choices you make concerning your mental and physical environment. Begin with your physical cleanliness, your grooming habits, the cleanliness of your clothes, and then work outward. How are your surroundings affecting you? Make your bed, clean the bathtub, and wash the dishes — then ask yourself the question again. How are my thoughts creating my emotional reality? Think of five things to be grateful for in this day, and then ask yourself the question again. Over time, as you apply the principle of sauca to your life, you will find a peace settles over you. As you no longer turn to “contact with others for self-gratification”, you will begin to experience the freedom and joy that is sauca. — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat

“Girlhood…is the intellectual phase of a woman’s life, that time when, unencumbered by societal expectations or hormonal rages, one may pursue any curiosity from the mysteries of a yo-yo to the meaning of infinity. These two particular pursuits were where I left off in the fifth grade when I discovered a hair growing in the wrong place and all hell broke lose.” — Alice Kahn

About ten years ago when most people were just becoming aware of the wonder that is the Internet, I wrote a book on encouraging girls to use the Internet to get involved in math and science. It was never published since the potential publisher went under, but it is on the net to this day and still linked to as a resource from many math and science programs for girls.

I was lucky to grow up in the 70s when girls were truly encouraged to do whatever they wanted, including pursue careers in technical fields. I would like to say that support is stronger today, but I really don’t see it in our society. If anything, the discouragement of technical careers now seems to extend to everyone, with religious leaders seeming to feel it is their duty to dumb down American science classes. I don’t fully understand why we seem to have changed so much as a nation — from pursuing space programs and huge technical advances in my youth to developing cuter cell phone ring tones and obsessing over celebrity deaths and misfortunes now. But I miss those glory days when we all could feel we were doing something spectacular.

I read a lot of science blogs, so I know many people out there are still doing spectacular things. I hope still to see a renaissance era in this country when we can recover for everyone that wonderful feeling of progress, that we are going places and doing great things. I was very inspired by Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, in its hopeful tone in spite of possible impending ecological disasters. I read books like Storm Cunningham’s “The Restoration Economy” and Bruce Babbitt’s “Cities in the Wilderness“, and see the potential for a new type of America, one that isn’t dependent on foreign oil and once again invests in itself. I read green blogs like Treehugger and World Changing to see how the green economy is growing, and what new things I might be able to do to green my own life. I have a blog that I update all too infrequently these days on growing native plants, which are more suited to their natural area and require less water and fertilization than imported, potentially invasive plants.

I guess what I keep looking for is the America of my girlhood, when we got the first oil shock and everyone started to focus on ecology, conservation, and natural products. I felt we lost so much in the 80s, when everyone turned to making more money and buying bigger houses and fancier cars. I remember reading the quote that stopped me in my tracks on that path and turned things around for me: “In a hundred years, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, or how much money I had in the bank… But one hundred years from now the world may be a better place, because I was important in the life of a child.

When I was a girl, our family took a lot of camping trips and spent a lot of time in the outdoors, enjoying the spectacular scenery of our national parks. I really enjoyed those trips. My mom seemed to enjoy them until the one where we all got mumps and all our stuff was full of red dust from monument valley and the truck broke down, and funny we didn’t camp much after that. Well, I don’t think all those happened on the same trip, but maybe it felt like that to her. I had a few great trips with my dad after that – hiking the grand canyon with my dad and brother while mom and my sister stayed at the lodge, and going cross-country skiing with my dad.

I guess what I’ve taken from my experiences is a great appreciation of nature and our duty to take care of it. I don’t see most people around me having a lot of awareness of that. I also appreciate technology and scientific advances. For me, those things don’t conflict, and I see them as necessary pieces of America’s future. What I want for my kids, for their kids, is the America I dreamed of in my girlhood – one full of natural, beautiful places with unspoiled scenery – where you can still access the Internet from anywhere. OK, the Internet didn’t exist in my girlhood – but that’s a part of what I’m proud to have done my small part in creating. And I’m even more proud of raising two bright boys who hopefully will help move us in the right direction – assuming they ever stop playing role-playing games and get serious about their lives.

But then again, maybe it would be better if we all got to stay and play in those exciting mysteries of our childhood.

Via Bartcop

My mom’s sister, Aunt Helen, passed away this afternoon. She was my favorite Aunt, always remembered our birthdays and anniversaries. I wondered why she hadn’t sent Christmas cards this year.

I’ll miss her….

I thought this was Bark-lays bank… | Metro.co.uk
The pooches are among an army of ‘assistance dogs’ who have been trained to withdraw money from cash machines for their disabled owners.

They are adept at inserting and withdrawing cards at ATMs to help owners in wheelchairs who are often not able to stretch far enough to do it themselves.

A spokesman for charity Canine Partners, which trains the dogs, said: ‘They put in the card and take it out and take out the money and give it to the person in the wheelchair.

‘They can’t put in the Pin but a person in a wheelchair can go sideways on and do that.’

Up to 30 dogs are trained each year and the charity is hoping to double that figure next year. It takes two years to train them, in which time they also learn to load the washing and pick up items from shop shelves.

One of the graduates of the scheme is ten-year-old Endal, who helped start the ATM service by chance.

The labrador’s owner is Allen Parton, a Gulf War veteran who lost the feeling down his right side after an accident in 1991 while serving as an officer in the Royal Navy.

Now in a wheelchair, he said that one day he was struggling to retrieve his cash from an ATM when Endal jumped up to reach for the card, money and receipt with his mouth.

Mr Parton said: ‘It was amazing, as he had never been taught to do this.’

The feat helped Endal earn the Dog of the Millennium award in 1999.

(Via Neatorama)
(See why I want to raise service dogs? They are too cool…)

Darwin has graduated “Puppy Elementary”.

Not that this has made him any smarter….

Onward to “Basic Beginners!”

The niyamas are the fundamental practices that sustain a life based on love. They sustain the change….

Purity, contentment, zeal in practice, self-study, and devotion are habits that keep us from spiritual harm and sustain us in our faith as we live in this world. — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the Niyamas are the second limb of the eight limbs of Raja Yoga.
They are found in the Sadhana Pada Verse 32 as:

1. Shaucha: this word means purity.
2. Santosha: contentment.
3. Tapas: austerity.
4. Svadhyaya: self-study or study of spiritual scriptures.
5. Ishvarapranidhana: self-surrender.