Changing Places

from Wikipedia:

Mudita is a Buddhist (Pali and Sanskrit) word meaning rejoicing in others’ good fortune. Mudita is sometimes considered to be the opposite of schadenfreude.

The term mudita is usually translated as “sympathetic” or “altruistic” joy, the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being rather than begrudging it. Many Buddhist teachers interpret mudita more broadly as referring to an inner spring of infinite joy that is available to everyone at all times, regardless of circumstances. The more deeply one drinks of this spring, the more secure one becomes in one’s own abundant happiness, and the easier it then becomes to relish the joy of other people as well.

The traditional example of the mind-state of mudita is the attitude of a parent observing a growing child’s accomplishments and successes.

Mudita is also traditionally regarded as the most difficult of the brahmaviharas to cultivate. To show mudita is to celebrate happiness and achievement in others even when we are facing tragedy ourselves.

The “far enemies” of mudita are jealousy and envy, two mind-states in obvious opposition. Mudita’s “near enemy,” or quality which superficially resembles mudita but is in fact more subtly in opposition to it, is exhilaration, perceived as a grasping at pleasant experience out of a sense of insufficiency or lack.

Somehow, I am still working on this one. I received some excellent news from a friend this week, and it was a bit hard to just be happy for him. He’s one of those friends who has cut me off to a great extent, though not as completely as others, and sometimes I simply miss those people very much. The saddest part of bipolar is that people are often so unforgiving of things that happened during a manic time, in a way that is hurtful. And even when they do forgive, the closeness that was there is lost and can’t be recovered.

Still, I am happy for my friend and wish him all the best. He has all that I ever wished for him and all that I tried to show him how to attain - so I should simply be pleased with that. But intentions are often misunderstood, especially when they are expressed by someone in a hypomanic state, as I’m sure anyone who has dealt with bipolar disorder knows all too well. Even those fun shopping sprees can have repercussions we don’t expect later on. It’s good to not be in that state anymore!

So while I don’t work to “just be normal” anymore, now I think I work beyond that even, to try to come to a place where I can be glad even for those who do not wish me well. And finding joy even for those who cannot let me be a part of their lives is a difficult, but necessary, step for me.

Man, I wish I was still in this good of a shape…. I do pilates and yoga, but was never a runner. I can sprint pretty fast, but distance running just never was a good thing for me. Run, Joan, run!

Marathon Matriarch Is Still in the Race - New York Times

She keeps a home for her husband, Scott, who was her college sweetheart and is now a marketing executive. She keeps an eye on her 20-year-old daughter, Abby, a sophomore at nearby Bates College, and her 18-year-old son, Anders, a high school senior.

She confers with neighbors on how to replace an old neighborhood bridge that was recently closed. She makes speeches and appearances.

And she runs an hour or two a day in preparation for the women’s United States Olympic marathon trials next Sunday in Boston, which raises questions:

Why would a 50-year-old woman (51 next month) want to run 26 miles 385 yards against potential Olympic medalists?

Why would she compete as the oldest of the 160 or so starters? (The next oldest are four 46-year-olds.)

Because she is Joan Benoit Samuelson, the matriarch of American distance running, the winner of the first Olympic marathon for women in 1984 and a pioneer in bringing acceptance to women’s distance running.

In a recent interview at her home, she said she would be running “just because it’s an Olympic trials and I qualified. But if the weather turns up terrible, I might not run and just race in the Boston Marathon the next day.”

The first three finishers in the trials will qualify for the United States team for the Beijing Olympics. Can Samuelson make the Olympic team?

“Oh, God, no,” she said. “It’s just me against me. I want to run 2:50 at age 50.”

If she averages 6 minutes 30 seconds a mile, she will reach her goal of 2 hours 50 minutes. Her career best is 2:21:21, but that was 23 years ago over Chicago’s flat course.

“This will be my fourth Olympic trials,” she said. “I qualified for all of the previous six, but in 1988 I just had Abby and in 1992 I had a full mother load with two small children. But I’ve always had the urge to run.”

Samuelson said she used to run 120 miles a week. “Now I’m down to 70 or 80,” she said. “That’s all I can do.”

In spite of knowing,
Yet still believing.
Though no god above,
Yet god within.

There is no god in the sense of a cosmic father or mother who will provide all things to their children. Nor is there some heavenly bureaucracy to petition. These models are not descriptions of a divine order, but are projections from archetypal templates. If we believe in the divine as cosmic family, we relegate ourselves to perpetual adolescence. If we regard the divine as supreme government, we are forever victims of unfathomable officialdom.

Yet it does not work for us to totally abandon faith. It does not follow that we can forego all belief in higher beings. We need faith, not because there are beings who will punish us or reward us, but because gods are wonderful ways of describing things that happen to us. They embody the highest aspects of human aspiration. Gods on the altars are essential metaphors for the human spiritual experience.

Faith shouldn’t be shaken because bad things happen to us or because our loved ones are killed. Good and bad fortune are not in the hands of gods, so it is useless to blame them. Neither does faith need to be confirmed by some objective occurrence. Faith is self-affirming. If we maintain faith, then we have its reward. If we become better people, then our faith has results. It is we who create faith, and it is through our efforts that faith is validated.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

The point of faith is to become better people. Not to force your religion on others, but to better yourself. Not to strengthen your religion or return it to its traditions so you can glory in the past, but to allow yourself to face the world as it is now, and deal with life as it is now. Tao doesn’t encourage us to live in the past or long for some past glory days of Taoist rule, or go around converting everyone to Taoism, or to force our governments to meet some holy standards of justice. Tao tells us to live our own lives in harmony with natural forces. The “faith” of Tao is to know that if you follow its principles and move in harmony with the Tao, your life will naturally become better.

And it does. That’s the beauty of it. It works. Just as Christianity does if you truly follow its teachings, and don’t reinvent your own interpretations of it to suit your misogynistic tendencies. Just as Buddhism does, if you follow its logic. Just as Islam does, if you follow its true tenants and don’t use them as ways to control the women in your society, or enforce the power of the Mullahs over the people to their detriment. Just as any faith does, once you get past the “rules” you’re “supposed” to follow and understand the heart of what it is trying to tell you - to treat other people well, to better yourself before complaining about others, and to live your own life in accordance with what you believe, and not impose that on other people around you.

For the unified mind in accord with the tao all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power. Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value. In this world of suchness there is neither seer nor other-than-self.

To come directly into harmony with this reality just simply say when doubt arises, ‘Not two.’ In this ‘not two’ nothing is separate, nothing is excluded. No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth. And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space; in it a single thought is ten thousand years.

Emptiness here, Emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes. Infinitely large and infinitely small, no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen. So too with Being and non-Being. Don’t waste time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this.

One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.

Words! The tao is beyond language, for in it there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.

–Hsin Hsin Ming (Verses on the Faith Mind)
Attributed to Chien Chih Sengtsan, ca. 600 C.E.
Translated by Robert B. Clarke

I am beginning to understand that there is much of the trickster in my personality. I’ve always identified with Loki, and often use humor to try and defuse situations (not always successfully, like any trickster…)

I’m currently reading Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift” right now, but I think his “Trickster Makes This World” will be in the reading stack soon. (It’s been on my wish list for a few weeks now).

Lewis Hyde

“An important part of any sacred activity is marking a boundary between the sacred and non-sacred. It’s important to build a container so the action is conducted inside sacred space,” he noted. “So, when you get to a character like the Trickster, you now have somebody who is the critic of the boundary, whose position is that all boundaries can be become too rigid and too impermeable, causing the life to dry up inside the container. So you need, both … some way to make the container and some function that is smart about how and where to break it. The Trickster is the sacred boundary crosser. And it’s not just that he crosses boundaries, he does it as a needed sacred function. If all you have is sacred forces who are maintaining their fiefdoms then you can end up with a fragmented heaven. Trickster gets a commerce going among the various sacred powers.”

Speaking of “heaven” - Hyde related in his book the story of C.G.Jung when he was a twelve-year-old schoolboy in Basel, Switzerland, admiring the glorious cathedral in the town square.

Said Jung, “I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the sight, and thought: ‘The world is beautiful and the church is beautiful and God made all this and sits above it far away in the blue sky on a golden throne and … Here came a great hole in my thoughts, and a choking sensation. I felt numbed, and knew only: ‘Don’t go on thinking now! Something terrible is coming …’”

For several days Jung struggled with the thought of whether or not God, who controls all things, could allow him to think a thought he shouldn’t think. Finally, having worked himself around to believing that God wanted him to have the forbidden thought, he relented: “I gathered all my courage, as though I were about to leap forthwith into hell-fire, and let the thought come. I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky. God sits on His golden throne, high above the world - and from under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder … I felt an enormous, an indescribable relief. Instead of the expected damnation, grace had come upon me. I wept for happiness and gratitude.”

Hyde said he was indebted to C.G. Jung, particularly one of his students, Marie-Louise von Franz, and their work with the idea of Mercurius. To the medieval alchemists, Mercury was the metal symbolizing duality - metallic yet liquid, matter yet spirit, cold yet fiery. Mercury was the metal uniting all the opposites. This Trickster energy was known to the Greeks by way of Hermes, the messenger god; in the Roman pantheon, Hermes becomes Mercury.

“C.G. Jung was a fabulously smart guide,” Hyde continued. “The Jungian insight is that the psyche is a community of forces and you need that whole community of forces working together. The pathology is when one member of the community begins to dominate in an individual, so some other part - your Warrior, say, or your sense of justice - gets muted. Or if we’re speaking of a group rather than one psyche, it’s when somebody begins to take over through display of one singular force. In a healthy community, every force will have a counter force. For example, Hermes steals the cattle from Apollo, but at the end of the story, Hermes and Apollo are friends. They find a way to relate. They need each other. You can’t have a boundary crosser unless you have someone who cares about the boundary. Hermes needs Apollo to be able to play with the rules and Apollo needs Hermes to keep things lively.”

To help people come back to a place where they’ve been trapped or lost requires them to become a ‘Hermeneut’ of their own life. They have to be helped to understand that there is an active learnable role to play in relating to the story you tell about your own life, the story you’ve inherited, the story you’re going to create as you live your life. Most Americans are passive recipients of the story that the media wants them to live by and only when you realize it is a story are you able to make different choices. You can interpret the story and be converted - from a passive object of commercial pitchmen into an actor living a life that you yourself create.”

Hyde said he believed a lot of Americans were “numb.” I liked the quote he used from child psychologist Donald Winnicott: “It is a joy to be hidden, but disaster not to be found.”

To explore within ourselves all the limiting behavior we’ve been taught takes a kind of “imaginative amorality,” the author said. It’s not an immorality, but an archetypal motivation in our own psyche to “play with the rules rather than observe them.”

On a day when I am not at peace with myself or my surroundings, Ascender comes along and kicks my cage door wide open. I was going to write something about how I am feeling today, but I think I’ll just link to her good wishes instead. Please click on her link below to visit all the bloggers she lists; I don’t have the time to fix all the linky love at the moment here.

Namaste, to all.

Studio Lolo tagged me with this ‘peace and love’ meme; to spread the word to send loving energy and thoughts to the places and people that need it. Rather then tagging others I hope to pass on some urls of my virtual pals who could use some of your loving energy and thoughts. Please leave some virtual peace and love to some people who could really use it right now.

Red Moon at the loss of her daughter

The Daily Warrior successfully fighting ALS for 16 years

Studio Friday is closing down. Stop by and show her some love for her dedication all these years.

Check out these bloggers who address peace and love almost everyday: 3191, a poetic justice, another poster for peace, anti-war us, Art For A Change, Art of Mark Byran, Artists Helping Children, Blog Like You Give A Damn, Blood For Oil, bricalu, Buddha Project, Change Me, Changing Places, Crafty Green Poet, No Blood For War and Profit, Inhabitat, kamurawayan, Light a Candle, Military Families Speak Out, Miniature Gigantic, Paris Parfait, Peaceful Societies, Pinwheels for Peace, Poets Against the War, rambling taoist, smile, smile, Take it Personally, The Peace Train, Treehugger, Visual Resistance, We Are What We Do, Betmo, Bloggers For Peace

I was reading Sally’s latest article in Yoga Journal today, “Waking Life”, which is excellent, by the way, and decided to check out her web site. She has a number of other excellent articles posted there, including this one which appealed to the engineer in me. Surrender is probably one of the most difficult concepts on Yoga for me (or any spiritual practice).

Sally Kempton, meditation teacher, Swami Durgananda

My favorite surrender story was told to me by my old friend Ed. An engineer by profession, he was spending some time in India, at the ashram of his spiritual teacher. At one point, he was asked to help supervise a construction project, which he quickly found was being run incompetently and on the cheap. No diplomat, Ed rushed into action, arguing, amassing proofs, bad-mouthing his colleagues and staying up nights scheming about how to turn the tide. At every turn, he got resistance from the other contractors, who soon took to subverting everything he tried to do.

In the midst of this classic impasse, Ed’s teacher called them all to a meeting. Ed was asked to explain his position, and then the contractors started talking fast. The teacher kept nodding, seeming to agree. At that moment, Ed had a flash of realization. He saw that none of this mattered in the long run. He wasn’t there to win the argument, save the ashram money, or even make a great building. He was there to study yoga, to know the truth—and obviously, this situation had been designed by the cosmos as the perfect medicine for his efficient engineer’s ego.

At that moment, the teacher turned to him, “Ed, this man says you don’t understand local conditions, and I agree with him. So, shall we do it his way?”

Still swimming in the peace of his newfound humility, Ed folded his hands. “Whatever you think best,” he said.

He looked up to see the teacher staring at him with wide, fierce eyes. “Its not about what I think,” he said. “Its about what’s right. You fight for what’s right, do you hear me?”

Ed says that this incident taught him three things. First, that when you surrender your attachment to a particular outcome, things often turn out better than you could ever have imagined. (Eventually, he was able to persuade the contractors to make the necessary changes.) Second, that a true karma yogi is not someone who goes belly-up to higher authority, but a surrendered activist—a person who does his best to help create a better reality—all the while knowing that he’s not in charge of outcomes. Third, that the attitude of surrender is the best antidote to anger, anxiety, and fear.

I often tell this story to people who worry that surrender means giving up, or that letting go is a synonym for inaction, because it illustrates so beautifully the paradox behind “Thy will be done.” As the god Krishna told Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, surrender sometimes means being willing to get into a fight.

A truly surrendered person may look passive, especially when something appears to need doing, and everyone around is shouting, “Get a move on, get it done, this is urgent!” Seen in perspective, however, what looks like inaction is often simply a recognition that now is not the time to act. Masters of surrender tend to be masters of flow, knowing intuitively how to move with the energies at play in a situation. You advance when the doors are open, when a stuck situation can be turned, moving along the subtle energetic seams that let you avoid obstructions and unnecessary confrontations.

Such skill involves attunement to the energetic movement that is sometimes called universal or divine will, the Tao, flow, or in Sanskrit, shakti. Shakti is the subtle force—we could call it cosmic intention—behind the natural world in all its manifestations.

Surrender starts with a recognition that this greater life force moves as you. One of my teachers, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, once said that to surrender is to become aware of God’s energy within oneself, to recognize that energy, and to accept it. It’s an egoless recognition—that is, it involves a shift in your sense of what “I” is—which is why the famous inquiry “Who am I?” or “What is the I?” is central to the process of surrender. (Depending on your tradition and your perspective at the time, you may recognize that the answer to this question is “Nothing” or “All that is”—in other words, consciousness, shakti, the Tao.)

I first discovered this article in May of 2003. I did a search on my posts for the word “present”, and this is the second post that came up. The first is this one on a trip to Disneyland. This seems to be around the time when I actually began to wake up from my deep depression.

Perhaps what it is really all about is simply learning to be present, to be here now, as they say. It seems trite, but once you’ve really learned that, everything else becomes so much easier. Just to be present with yourself, with how you really actually feel in the moment, seems to be what makes us most alive.

Shambhala Sun - Six Kinds of Loneliness

The experience of certain feelings can seem particularly pregnant with desire for resolution: loneliness, boredom, anxiety. Unless we can relax with these feelings, it’s very hard to stay in the middle when we experience them. We want victory or defeat, praise or blame. For example, if somebody abandons us, we don’t want to be with that raw discomfort. Instead, we conjure up a familiar identity of ourselves as a hapless victim. Or maybe we avoid the rawness by acting out and righteously telling the person how messed up he or she is. We automatically want to cover over the pain in one way or another, identifying with victory or victimhood.

Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It’s restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.

There are six ways of describing this kind of cool loneliness. They are: less desire, contentment, avoiding unnecessary activity, complete discipline, not wandering in the world of desire, and not seeking security from one’s discursive thoughts.

Via CharityFocus.

Which also gives us this valuable lesson for the day on giving time instead of money gifts:

More than the amount of time, the sincerity with which we spend our time is far more important. I remember a friend of mine giving me a gift of a story one time — driving up the freeway tollbooth, the driver behind him became very visibly upset thinking that he had cut him off. He could’ve yelled back, but when it was time to pay the toll, he instead paid toll for that car behind him! “That’s my contribution to peace,” he proudly remarked. Underneath that story was a subtle transformation of two lives, and that was much more valuable than a Macy’s gift card.

Giving time doesn’t necessarily take more “time”; rather it requires a shift in one’s mindset. The simplest thing everyone can give is the gift of a commitment to a value — practice meditation daily, work out three times a week, donate money to a charity every month, whatever it is.

It’s so cool when people get it…..

Be Alive Believe Be You : The Myth of Success and My Creative Process

no one has it figured out…we are all working on whatever it is we are working on. everyday. I think Dreams can be realized but never quite be completely fulfilled because the moment we are almost there we Dream a new Dream. That is the beauty of life! I think frustration and unhappiness is believing there is one true way and that eventually you figure it out, eventually you win the race, get the prize.

I believe happiness is reveling in the beauty of the truth that the journey really is the destination.

The Agonist | thoughtful, global, timely

In his Statement to Disorders Inquiry Committee January 5, 1920 (The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi vol. 19, p. 206), Ghandi describes satyagraha this way:

Its root meaning is holding on to truth, hence truth-force. I have also called it love-force or soul-force. In the application of satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on oneself.

The three characteristics of Satyagraha are:

1. Satyagraha is a weapon of the strong;
2. it admits of no violence under any circumstance whatever;
3. and it ever insists upon truth.

Kansas City Daily Photo:

Oct. 2, 2007, is the first International Day of Non-Violence, commemorating both the anniversary of Gandhi’s birthday, as well as satyagraha.*

I’m currently reading Gandhi’s autobiography, My Experiments with Truth. It really is an interesting look at the man behind the “image.” A friend of mine made the comment that it’s likely very hard being the little people who surround the genius. I think that’s right on, as Gandhi had very specific ways he wanted to accomplish things, and much of it was experimentation–and everyone who was a part of his life had to go along with it. I appreciate that he’s not painted as perfect, but as quite human and fallible.

The most remarkable element of his story, is his willingness to forgive. He sees that people hate, make laws that are unfair, and hurt each other because of a wrong understanding of some sort. He also determined when and where he would pick his battles, which to me, showed great humility and insight.

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

*Satyagraha is the practice of non-violent resistance, which Gandhi used in his early days in South Africa and then later in India. The concept of satyagraha also greatly influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. in his efforts during the U.S. Civil Rights movement.

Gandhi made a clear distinction between passive resistance and satyagraha (which basically has no translation). Satyagraha is always based in truth, meaning that unjust methods can never be used … even to achieve justice, and the goal is not to “win” but to actually convert the opposition to recognize the just way.

Our high is forecast at 88 today - 20 degrees cooler than two days ago.

Ah. This is better….

Not a lot going on this week other than enjoying the boys being back in school after the long weekend and this much cooler weather! My great-nephew’s birthday is tomorrow and of course I’ve gotten nothing sent yet. Greg was so casual about his 18th birthday and Jonathan about his 21st that I think I’ve stopped realizing that birthdays are actually important to other people. My apologies, Evan and Courtney - I will get my act together eventually.

Sigh.

Hubby and I have started working out with a personal trainer, which is great fun but making me a bit sore today. The pilates and yoga has paid off, though - my abs are in much better shape than his! Hah.

My reading pile is growing again - currently reading “Bones Would Rain From the Sky” , a wonderful book on dog training that I keep wanting to quote from here but I can’t pick out just one part, it’s all so good! I also have Pema Chodron’s latest “No Time to Lose” on the stack and Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Sixty Days and Counting” to get to. And four more on the way from paperback swap….

And lots and lots of blogs I need to get to, of course!

And people wonder what I do all day.

Whoa. There are people out there who are crazier than I am!

Cool.

Introduction to The Hedonistic Imperative

A small minority of humans do in fact experience states of indefinitely prolonged euphoria. These states of involuntary well-being are usually pathologised as “manic”. Unlike unipolar depression, sustained unipolar mania is very rare. Other folk who just have high “hedonic set-points”, but who aren’t manic or bipolar, are sometimes described as “hyperthymic” instead. This isn’t a common mindset either. “Bipolar disorder”, on the other hand, is experienced in the course of a lifetime by perhaps one in a hundred people or more. Popularly known as manic-depression, bipolar disorder has several sub-types. Mood characteristically alternates between euphoria and abject despair. Cycles may vary in length. It is a complex genetic condition which runs in families. Typically, bipolarity is marked by a genetic variation in the serotonin transporter as compared to “euthymic” normals. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter involved in sleep, sociability, feeding, activity, impulse-control, mood, and a lot else besides. The serotonin transporter mops up “excess” serotonin released by nerve cells into the synapses. Very crudely, manic states are associated with enhanced dopamine and norepinephrine function; in mania, serotonin function is dysregulated or low.

Sadly, among today’s “bipolars” manic exuberance can spin out of control. Euphoria may be accompanied by hyperactivity, sleeplessness, chaotically racing ideas, pressure of speech and grandiose thought. Hyper-sexuality, financial excesses and religious delusions are common. So is rampant egomania. Sometimes dysphoria may occur. In dysphoric mania the manic “high” is actually unpleasant. The excited subject may be angry, agitated, panicky, paranoid, and destructive. When in the grip of classic euphoric mania, however, it’s hard to recognise that anyone might think anything is wrong. This is because everything feels utterly right. To suppose otherwise is like going to Heaven and then being invited to believe there has been a mistake. It’s not credible.

Today, euphoric (hypo-)mania is liable to be clinically subdued with drugs. ["Hypomania" denotes simply a milder mania.] Toxic “medication” can depress elevated mood to duller but “normal” levels. Such flatter and supposedly healthier levels of emotion enable otherwise euphoric people to function within contemporary society. Compliance with a medically-dictated treatment-regimen (lithium, sodium valproate, carbamazepine, etc.) will be enhanced if the victim can be persuaded that euphoric well-being is pathological. (S)he can then look for warning signs and symptoms. By the norms of our genetically-enriched posterity, however, it is the rest of us who are chronically unwell - if not more so. Contemporary standards of mental health are just pathologically low. Our super-well descendants, by contrast, will enjoy a glorious spectrum of new options for mental super-health. They may opt to combine emotional stability, resilience and “serotonergic” serenity, for instance, with the goal-oriented energy, optimism and initiative of a raw “dopaminergic” high. Post-humans will discover that euphoric peak experiences can be channelled, controlled and genetically diversified, not just medically suppressed.

For there is a cruel irony here. Clinically prescribed mood-darkeners would be laughably redundant for the great bulk of humanity. At present, life for billions of genetically “normal” people is often very grim indeed. No amount of piecemeal political and economic reform, nor even radical social engineering, can overcome this biological reality. Today’s billion-and-one routes to supposedly lasting happiness are pursued in the guise of innumerable intentional objects. [Intentionality in philosophy-speak is the 'aboutness' or 'object-directedness' of thought]. We convince ourselves that all manner of things would potentially make us happy. All these peripheral routes to personal fulfilment are not merely vastly circuitous and inefficient. In the main, they just don’t, and can’t, durably work. At best, they can serve as palliatives of the human predicament. If the mind/brain’s emotional thermostat, as it were, is not genetically and pharmacologically reset, then even the greatest triumphs and successes turn to ashes. Lottery winners, cup-final hat-trick scorers and blissful newly-weds are left time and again to discover this fate anew. Even those of us who tend to lead a relatively happy day-to-day existence will, in the course of a lifetime, undergo spells of wretched unhappiness and disappointment. If we opt to have children, our corrupt code ensures they will periodically suffer a similar fate.

As hard as Krista’s work is, I’m glad she is so devoted to it. We need more Kristas in this world….

Experiencing psychosis is a difficult thing, recovering from it even more so. But finding those people willing to stick by you during it, even those willing to walk into your life at that point - that’s just so special. Thanks, Krista, for all you do. I hope you can stay strong with all you are going through.

The Silent K » Blog Archive » the corner in which the ultimate mystery of things…

For those of you who aren’t familiar, psychosis is an experience that people have where they see and/or hear things that other people do not, and have unusual beliefs that other people don’t hold. Essentially it is a chasm between internal reality and shared commonly accepted reality.

There are times where it seems the families accessing our services are deepened and transformed by the experiences of distress and healing that are happening to themselves and their respective relatives. It is beautiful, moving, and humbling to see families on this road supporting someone, and learning and growing themselves in the process. This job blows my mind everyday. When I decided to take this job on I am not sure I recognized the major life shift it would cause in me, in my personhood, in my outlook on life.

I worked in mental health before too, but it was a different, lighter job in many ways. My heart didn’t hurt as much working there.

In this job, I feel infused with spirit, and deeply connected to the work with such intensity that it creates a very real vicarious ache. The work creates fertile ground for my spiritual practice, but as awe-inspiring it can be, lately it has left me feeling extremely emotionally spent.

There are times when the theoretical/philosophical aspect of the work enraptures me so completely. It feels like my mind is a magnetic sponge absorbing, retaining, and reverberating the vast knowledge and experiences of others who’ve spent their lives studying, writing about, and/or living these unexplainable experiences of the mind.

Via I can has cheezburger

Who are we, not to shine? — Nelson Mandela

All of us have experienced moments of profound connectedness — the caress of a spring breeze on bare skin, the feeling in our chests when we look into another’s eyes with love, the holy awe of gazing at a star-strewn summer sky. There is a greatness right beneath the surface of everyday life, and every once in a while we catch a glimpse of it. Those are the sudden, lucid flashes when life beguiles us out of the prison of our minds and leads us right into the moment. On our mats and on our meditation cushions, we begin to experience this deep connection as an everyday occurrence. Isvara-pranidhana is about making the experience of greatness a priority.

And why not? We can live in the light with the same ease with which we live in our darkness. We are surrounded by mentors, by men and women who have chosen to live life on a higher plane, for a higher purpose. The music we listen to, the movies we watch, the books we read — all abound with references to the sweetness of “amazing grace”. This final moment in the eight limbs of yoga is about allowing grace to happen. Not hoping for it to happen, not trying hard to let it happen, not believing that one day it will happen — this final moment is about letting it happen. It is about shining, and who are we not to shine? — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat

Isvara-pranidhana - This niyama doesn’t require that you believe in a god or follow any religion but comes from an understanding of the mind. Our neural networks wire according to the paths most frequently fired in our brains. That means the more you think something, the easier it is for your mind to follow the neural pathway of thinking that way. If you don’t think in new ways, learn new things or have different experiences, your brain will not form new neural pathways. You quite literally become ‘narrow-minded’. Living like this is unconsciously habitual, what yoga calls living with samskara (mental ’sludge’ or buildup from repetition). Isvara-pranidhana encourages you to always “open your mind” to the opportunity of something bigger, different, or new. It’s an acceptance of the fact that your own desires, will to power and actions are not the only thing going on in reality. It encourages you to stay open to working with forces out of your control instead of fearing, resisting, or battling them, clinging to a desire to predict reality through habit. — Asia Nelson

As we remember, relaxation is very important!

A steady continuous flow of attention directed towards the same point or region is meditation. — yoga sutras

“Meditation is to religion what the laboratory is to science.”
–Paramahansa Yogananda

The seventh aspect of yoga’s path is meditation, or dhyana. Once we have learned to practice dharana, to quiet the mind through focused effort, something else begins to happen.We can already bring our mind to one point and keep it there; we have an awareness of the mind and the object of concentration, the seer and the seen. Now dharana leads to dhyana, attention becomes effortless, there is no longer a seer, only the seen. We experience this kind of effortless absorption in love when our love for a child or partner transcends all thoughts of our personal safety or comfort. Because it is an intrinsic aspect of our nature, we also experience dhyana in our everyday activities. As a waiter, I would count the tables I was assigned at the beginning of the evening. “I have two tables”, then “I have four tables”. After long months of practice, I came to understand that I was not really working until I no longer knew or cared how many tables I had. At that point, I was simply in the flow. There was only the moment, and the next task to perform. Counting tables was dharana, and dharana became dhyana when the tables disappeared and there was only the task. — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat.

Dhyana is the seventh limb of Ashtanga Yoga. Dhyana means worship, or profound and abstract religious meditation. It is perfect contemplation. It involves concentration upon a point of focus with the intention of knowing the truth about it. During Dhyana, the consciousness is further unified by combining clear insights into distinctions between objects and between the subtle layers of veils that surround intuition. We learn to differentiate between the mind of the perceiver, the means of perception, and the objects perceived, between words, their meanings, and ideas, and between all the levels of evolution of the nature. We realize that these are all fused in an undifferentiated continuum. One must apprehend both subject and object clearly in order to perceive their similarities, for a clear grasp of real identity of two apparently different things requires a clear grasp of their seeming difference. Thus Dhyana is apprehension of real identity among ostensible differences.

Dharana: Concentration is the process of holding or fixing the attention of mind onto one object or place. — yoga sutras

Concentration is sometimes identified with “one-pointedness” (ekagrata), but this is not quite correct, for the latter simply represents the arrest of the mental flow, while concentration implies a fixation of the mind in order to gain understanding; as such, dharana is a creative act.” — Georg Feuerstein.

Dharana means ‘to bind, to focus, to hold the mind at one point’. It comes from the word dhri, which means ‘foundation’ or ‘basis’. The foundation of the mind must be stable. Right now none of us has that stable base. Just as the earth shakes during an earthquake, in the same way we are also shaking like that much of the time. The practice of dharana comes when we have become steady, stable and unshakeable. We are unshakeable because we understand ourselves. We understand our mind, our emotions and our thoughts. We have come to terms with them so we are unshakeable. Whatever faces us and whatever situation arises we can manage it without being affected. Dharana is a higher stage, not just in meditation but in life. –Swami Satyadharma Saraswati

I was a bit annoyed at many of the definitions of dharana as focusing on one thing — that just didn’t feel right to me. I like this definition of being able to focus the mind at a stable point - it seems to fit better what I feel and observe when I am in my yoga practice.

“There is a part of each of us that would like to miss the point — a part of each of us that wants to believe that there will be no magic, no mystery, that our own life is not blessed and sacred, that our days are not a miracle, and that we are not connected to all living beings as a leaf is to a tree. In response to this predicament, we have created yoga.” — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat

Eight random things about myself

Whig tagged me.

1. All right, here are the rules. 2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts. 3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves. 4. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. 5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1.) I absolutely adore golden retrievers currently have three of them, Roxie, Darwin, and Chance, and want to have a golden retriever ranch one day to raise and train service dogs.

2.) Like Jane Pauley, I have bipolar disorder.

3.) I spent a couple of years studying and blogging about Taoist philosophy. A search for “Tao” on my blog will turn up hundreds of posts. It is the defining philosophy I try to live my life by these days.

4.) My current philosophical and physical passion is yoga. I’m studying yoga this year mainly to get in better physical shape, but also to enjoy the mental and spiritual benefits of this ancient practice.

5.) My other main physical practice is pilates, which is wonderful for the core strength it gives me. It is an excellent complement to my yoga practice. I also need to do a lot more of both, since I’m not very good about practicing regularly.

6.) I got politically active over the last few years in frustration at how screwed up our country has become. When I started, I couldn’t see how people could be so fooled by this administration. I’ve found great comfort and gained tremendous knowledge from all the political bloggers I read, and am grateful that so many devote such energy to informing us all about what is happening. It saddens me deeply that so many people in this country really don’t even seem to care, or don’t feel that they can create change. One of my main hopes is to present my own examples for change in my blogging, and encourage others in making changes in their own lives, and in our country’s path.

7.) I love to garden and watch things growing. There are lots of posts here about my garden, as sometimes it has been one of the few things that has kept me going when I was very depressed. My own garden has taken a lot of effort since i only have like a foot of soil in my yard to garden in. The house is on a cut on a granite hill, and literally has about a foot of top soil in some places. It is a difficult terrain that I’ve worked hard to make both beautiful and practical for this area. I have another blog called Native Growers that I don’t post at often enough, trying to encourage people to learn about and grow the plants native to their area. It is so important for us ecologically to become more aware of our environment and live more in harmony with it.

8.) I love poetry and used to write a lot of it as a way of sorting out my thoughts, but haven’t felt the need to write much lately. I still enjoy reading poetry, though.

Tagging:

Whoever would like to blog on this meme. I think it’s gone through most of my blogging community already! Please comment with a link if you take up the challenge! BTW, tracing back through the tags takes me to PZ’s place. His stories are pretty good there.

Returning to the Self: the practice of pratyahara

For years I interpreted the teachings I heard about pratyahara to mean that I must physically and literally withdraw from the world in order to be a true disciple of yoga. I would react with dismay at this teaching; I was an engaged person, busy studying physical therapy in school to improve my yoga teaching, additionally I was married and contemplating having several children. I sometimes worried that unless I learned to separate myself from the world I was a lesser or inferior yoga student.

Today I feel differently, I realized life is about interaction and that many of those interactions are about conflict: conflict with those I love and conflict with those I do not. In fact, I do not even need another person to be in conflict. I can be, and occasionally am, in conflict within myself. How am I to withdraw when I am so completely enmeshed in relationships, in life, in the world as a whole?

I like to believe that Patanjali means something different from a simple
withdrawal from life. Today the practice of pratyahara means to me that while I participate in the task at hand, I remain separate from my reactions. In other words, no matter how much meditation and postures and breathing I practice, I still continue react to the people and situations around me. This reaction in and of itself is not the problem; my attachment to the reaction is. Where the practice of pratyahara is manifested is the space between the stimulus that comes into my nervous system via the sense organs and my reaction to that stimulus.

Practice gives me the choice about my reaction. I can choose to dance with that stimulus or I can choose to step back and not add my conscious participation with the stimulus. In other words, the variable is me and how I choose to use my energy. If I physically retreat to a cave in the mountains I can still agitate my nervous system; I can still generate thoughts and re-live past reactions which are stimulating. To me the practice of pratyahara is not about running away from stimulation which is basically impossible anyway, but rather practicing pratyahara is about remaining in the middle of a stimulating environment and consciously not-reacting to it.

Pratya comes from the word pratyaya. Pratyaya are the internal seeds, the basic tendencies in our nature which are there from birth to death. They are the basis of our personality. The word ahara means food or nutrition. Normally in our day-to-day lives, we are concentrated and extroverted in the outside world, so the mind, the senses and the pratyaya, these internal tendencies and seeds of consciousness, are receiving nutrition from outside, from objects, events, situations and interactions in the external world. So, pratyahara means a practice which internalizes the senses and the mind so that the mind begins to receive its nutrition from within. The pratyaya begin to receive nutrition from within. This is said to be the first stage in mental training, when we can learn to internalize the senses and the mind at will. –Swami Satyadharma Saraswati