Dhikr

 

         The Sufis have a contemplative practice called the dhikr.  I am spelling it this way because that is the phonetic spelling of this Arabic word that I am most familiar with; others might spell it zikar, or any one of numerous spellings.  I add this because I have been chided by self-proclaimed experts before, and if that’s what they think is important, so be it.  It is the essence of the teaching and where it takes me that I find meaningful.  I have forgotten most of the “Sufi Lore” I learned when I was a spiritual infant, and I gather this is considered important among my brethren, but… no matter. 

         This reminds me of one of my favorite “soul food” stories, one told by Alan Watts in his wonderful book Tao:  the Watercourse Way, where an old woman (probably) explains how she attempted to give the Tao to a very important man of great intellect.  She comments that he had the intellect but not the Tao, while she had the Tao, but not the intellect, so she had to find a way to convey the ineffable to him by breaking through his intellect and ego.  She succeeded eventually, but as I recall the story, it was only because she really, really had the Tao, and the patience inherent to women who bring up small children and turn them into useful adults. 

         I make no claims as to whether I do or do not have the Tao, nor do I call it enlightenment, realization, God-consciousness, or any of the names we as various religious communities and cultures give to what Maslow termed the “peak experience.”  But I will say that I am at least far enough along not to put much importance on whether or not I pronounce my wazaif (aka mantras) in the prescribed way, nor how long I “sit” daily.  It has been many years since I was able to assume the lotus posture, nor do I own a fancy bench for my meditations, one that stabilizes me in order to be able to concentrate on what I’m attempting to do.  I do recommend some of these things early on, because learning to meditate is just about the hardest thing most of us humanoids ever do, and whatever helps one to get to the point where one looks back and laughs at it all is worth looking into.  But I digress…as usual.

         Dhikr is possibly the central practice of most Sufi Orders, and of course there are many ways of doing it and saying it and chanting it and singing it.  It is the core of the Dervish ceremony, of course, there is a great deal of lore out there about its practice and the miracles it brings.  All I can do is tell you about it from the perspective of what it has given to me over nearly 40 years of practice.  

         My teacher, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, pointed out early on that the most apparent difference between dhikr and wazifa—or mantra—is that the practice of a mantra is about experiencing and enjoying the divine qualities of whatever it is we call God. Dhikr, on the other hand, is beyond that:  it is about coming to the reality of God, beyond the qualities, beyond worlds and universes and beings…  Dhikr is the way God is.  And if one is going to come to That,  one must go beyond all these things and into the Absolute…where one finds oneself emerging.  It occurs to me, as I attempt to think about all this, that Dhikr is somewhat akin to the Samadhi practices of the Yogis, to contemplative Buddhist practices, to the Kyrie Eleison of the Hesychasts, and to the early Chassidic practices that eschewed form for meaning.  I have no doubt that there is some form of it in all contemplative practice.  Really, I suppose, it just depends on one’s intention and one’s  travel plans when one embarks on this journey.  If done well, however, it is not child’s play.  It is an advanced practice, and should be undertaken only with the help of a trusted guide.  Of course, having said that,  we must then give thanks for “all those, whether known or unknown” who have bravely, and with sincerity and commitment,  taken the journey when it was there to be taken.  However, I suspect there is always a guide where the intent is true.  I have found this to be true in my own practice, again and again.  The Sufis say there is really only one Teacher, the Spirit of Guidance, and that This permeates all seeking.  Perhaps key to a safe and successful journey—or rather, this particular leg of the journey—is sincerity. 

         I experience dhikr in approximately four stages, each of which is its own world of understanding.  First is what some would call the abasement, or the dark night of the soul, in the alchemical terms my teacher loved and taught:

 

“La illa ha…”  There is no God, there are no beings…

 

            In that dark night of unknowing, as St. John of the Cross called it, one turns away from and relinquishes all one’s concepts about reality.  Classically, this is done sweeping the head in a sort of clockwise circle, a gesture of negation:  “all that I thought to be true about the world and God and reality…was a lie.”  One is annihilating one’s concepts (not oneself).  That comes next.

Bringing the head down to the chest,

“Ill’a”

 

One stabs one’s own heart with a lance of light from the third eye.  It is a symbolic crucifixion, wherein one annihilates—again, not oneself—but one’s concept of oneself.  “All that I thought I was and am, none of it exists, and none of it matters.”  There is a sense of having destroyed all one’s concepts about oneself and the world and God, and what is left?  The alchemists call it “dissolution,” in the classic formula, where what is gold is separated from what is lead.  Out of this, a sun rises, a flower blooms, the resurrection takes place:

 

“Allah”

 

Having realized what one is not, there is a new birth, because in the annihilation, a new seed is planted, the seed of a new soul.  The crucifixion of Christ beautifully represents this, and there are numerous similar stories about Sufis and other mystics who undergo this process.  Al Hallaj, for instance, who was dismembered because, while in the state of God consciousness, he said, “I am the truth.”  Finally,

 

“Hu.”

 

And that is the fragrance that persists after the flower has long gone to other seed.  It is what our lives are about:  the dhikr sings itself through our days and nights, and it is the meaning within it all.  I find that it is both the symbol and the reality of this journey I’ve undertaken, and it sings itself through each new adventure that comes.  It evokes the words and pictures for a new kind of story, and helps me to forget the stories I have fabricated to make my life bearable, so that there is now the possibility for a new song, a new story, a clear playing field. 

I have friends who are Sufis and also Buddhists or Jews or Christians (Father Frank, are you still out there?); sometimes we laugh and say that we are “Bufis,” or “Jewfies,” and that is all quite as it should be.  The outer forms of religion are just that:  outer forms.  Words like dhikr or mantra or prayer all express our chosen methods of travel.  In the culture I grew up in, it was all about dying and being reborn, and I find that meaningful, if properly understood, but I might also think that it is about sleeping and awakening.  Recently, when working with dhikr, I have, in the second stage, when my third eye meets my heart, perceived an enchanting desert scene:  it is twilight, and the colors of the landscape are all pinks and mauves and fawns.  Stars twinkle overhead.  I stand on a soft, dusty road, walking into that twilight, and somehow I know that I am waiting at the other end of it…and yet:  is there an end at all?

 

The Message is a call to awakening for those who are meant to awaken, and a lullabye for those who are still meant to sleep.  –Hazrat Inayat Khan 

How Do We Forgive Our Fathers? by Dick Lourie*

How do we forgive our Fathers?
Maybe in a dream
Do we forgive our Fathers for leaving us too often or forever
when we were little?

Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.

Do we forgive our Fathers for marrying or not marrying our Mothers?
For Divorcing or not divorcing our Mothers?

And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness?
Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning
for shutting doors
for speaking through walls
or never speaking
or never being silent?

Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?

If we forgive our Fathers what is left?

* This poem is read during the last scene in Smoke Signals. It was 
originally published in a longer version titled “Forgiving Our 
Fathers” in a book of poems titled Ghost Radio published by Hanging 
Loose Press in 1998

From one of my all-time favorite films.  The film is about the experience of being Native American in this country, but I believe the theme is universal, particularly for those of us from the “wonder years.”  Please do see it.  You can Netflix it!

Mindfulness

 

During a long retreat, I had what seemed to me the earthshaking revelation that we cannot be in the the present and run our story lines at the same time!  –Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

 

I have mentioned, here, that I am recovering from a chronic autoimmune disease.  I say “recovering,” because why on earth would I want to say I won’t recover, even with the use of words such as chronic?  If you are reading this and you happen to have such a disease yourself, you no doubt know that these things progress in weird fits and starts, with flares and periods when one feels almost completely well, with long phases in between these extremes when one simply…manages.  Over the recent holiday period, I had a major flare-up of pain and inflammation, which I blamed on the several small indiscretions I committed with food:  I follow a strict vegan eating plan with vast quantities of green vegetables and legumes, and it helps–quite a bit.  But during holidays, of course, we are all inclined to stray from our various paths, and food, of course, is an intrinsic part of celebration among the human family.  I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but I am sure that this is so.  Food and drink are the ways we connect with our other parts, whether or not we think it is okay to do so.  

In any event, the point is that I was blaming myself pretty heavily for the chocolate and the wine and the ice cream and the meat and the various other “bad” things I indulged in, and it suddenly occurred to me that this is just another one of my many stories, most of which state “this happened because I am a bad person,” in some form or another.  

Now, I have been working with this idea about “stories” for a year or more; I find it incredibly helpful, and it is particularly liberating for me, a committed Jungian, because I have long looked at the world through the various lenses of the myths I’ve created to get me through life.  It was an amazing revelation to me to see that these myths–stories– really, really limit me and keep me from seeing things clearly, in addition to curtailing any attempts I might make at true mindfulness.  If I look at phenomena in terms of the story I’ve attached to it–”I can’t get the window unstuck because I am a weakling, just as my mother and father said I was,” for instance–I lose the moment and the opportunity to really inquire into the events that come my way.  

So there I was, beating myself up for eating chocolate, and I thought, “what if I just ate chocolate, not ate chocolate because I am a glutton” (word used by my father when I was small and wanted to feel satisfied)?  Ahhhhh.  Fresh influx of energy and inspiration, weight lifts from shoulders, I am free.  I am here.  The pain lifts–or, rather, I look at it differently, and it isn’t quite so miserable.  What a blessing.  The air is clearer.  I notice the beauty around me.  I feel blessed and grateful.

I am a person who struggles with depression.  The years have taught me that much of my depression is connected with the interpretations I give my feelings; in other words, the stories I tell myself to explain why this or that is happening, or why I feel the way I do.  Looking at what is taking place without attaching a story to it–or at least releasing the one I am compelled to attach–has the effect of making the feelings of sadness or desperation or resentment…nonexistent.  I have learned, through years of struggle, that usually, just waiting it out is the best way to deal with any of these painful feelings, and the wait is far shorter when I get my mind off the stories attached to the feelings and onto the present moment, which is quite often very beautiful.  Even if it weren’t–and obviously, much of life is not for many people–being fully present means I live life in increments and each one, in and of itself, is really pretty much okay, until the next, and often it is, as well.  

This is not an easy pattern to break, but after all:  nothing worth having is easy, and this is very much worth it to me, this relinquishing of my stories to be present to what is, this very moment.  Last week, in much pain and exhaustion and the overall malaise that tends to accompany autoimmune disease, I woke up after one of those miserable nights of sleeplessness and despair, and as I noticed the sun coming through the window, I suddenly realized I felt…taken care of.  In that moment, I felt loved and at peace and accepting of myself.  I felt grateful.  

It occurred to me that the reason I was feeling these good things was that I was there, not running some story from the past or connected with fear of the future.  Here was a sunny morning and a down comforter and the thought of a cup of Darjeeling tea and the opportunity to stay here, right here, not go somewhere else in my mind or my car, and in this moment was pure gratitude.  I blessed the cup of tea and I’ve continued to bless everything I can think of since, to give thanks, to be present and most of all, not to worry.  If I worry, I am running my stories again, and it’s not worth it, doesn’t change a thing, in fact:  it only makes things worse.  

It occurs to me, as I think about all this, that many of us–perhaps most of us–are not quite ready to give up our stories yet.  If we do, we get ourselves free, and there is the feeling of a death-wish in that prospect.  I think I’m ready.  I remember my beloved teacher, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan once saying that if we think, in reaching the higher realms of the psyche, that we are going to somehow float off like a balloon into the blue, become nonexistent, die, etc., etc.  (all the fears that cause us to continue to use our egos as ballast for our fears), we are mistaken.  He laughed when he mentioned this, and said, “don’t worry, it absolutely will NOT happen.  You will come back.”  What we are all talking about, here, is awakening, and our fear of it, because we tend to be stuck–purposefully stuck–in the ultimate story:  if I die, awaken, become free, relinquish my concepts of reality, whatever form the story takes for each of us as individuals, I will become nonexistent.

It’s not going to happen.  He was right.  Instead of death, the opportunity is offered to us with every breath, to take up an enhanced, enriched, meaningful, awakened existence.  Going beyond my stories doesn’t mean death, it means I’m adding immeasurably to all of life.  Instead of looking at the trees I see sitting in the rocking chair on my front porch while trying to think how to write that next chapter or pay this month’s bills or get my hair to go in the direction I want it to go in–yes, I really am that shallow sometimes!–I am…looking at trees.  Noticing how the bare branches of winter look against the pale blue cold-weather sky.  Listening to them murmur about way more important things than I can hear in people’s voices.  Really, really hearing the sound of trucks going by on this farm road we live on.  Hearing the Sound within the sound they make.  Noticing the squirrels attempting to get into the bird feeder, and wondering why we feed the birds but not them.  Being here.  In that moment, if I am truly in that moment, the chattering in my mind ceases, and when the moment comes that whatever those voices were chattering about must be dealt with, it is never quite what my stories warned me of.  

Between birth and death,
Three in ten are followers of life,
Three in ten are followers of death,
And men just passing from birth to death also number three in ten.
Why is this so?
Because they live their lives on the gross level.

He who knows how to live can walk abroad
Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger.
He will not be wounded in battle.
For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn,
Tigers no place to use their claws,
And weapons no place to pierce.
Why is this so?
Because he has no place for death to enter.  –Tao te Ching, 50, Gia Fu Feng and Jane English, trans.

Pardon my levity, but is this what they really mean by “the Teflon [hu]man?”  Well, it works for me.

A New Day

Since the joy of the election and yesterday’s inauguration, I’ve been having a song go around in my head.  It’s a song from my own youth, from one of our premier spokespersons:

Hey Hey, Woody Guthrie, I done wrote you a song

‘Bout a funny old world that’s a comin’ along

Seems sick and it’s hungry, it’s tired and it’s torn…

It looks like it’s a’dying and it’s hardly been born.  –Bob Dylan (paraphrased in my head)

The emotion of these past weeks has been, for me, like waking up to springtime after a long, dark, cold winter, and I am well aware that I am not alone in this.  I am one of those people who, deciding that there is no point in trying to fix what seems unfixable, tends to pull the covers over my head and wait for the dawn.  I do not recommend this, but it is the way I am.  Currently.  

I find myself wanting to do what we’re all doing, which is get all teary-eyed and sing praises to Obama, but I thought I’d try to resist that and reach down to a deeper need, which is to consider all this on a–hopefully–more cosmic level.  The voices in my head are like beads that have fallen from a string, confused and clamoring against each other as they fall and land and I pick them over…  comments from my children, my husband, friends, colleagues, news commentators…  various beads, various themes, evoked by the real strand of meaning strung by time, and several stand out:  the first one is the length of time and the amount of damage it has taken for us to get to this day.  It was so heart-breaking for me to hear that Ted Kennedy had had a seizure and been taken to the hospital.  It brought up the night, long ago, when his brother Bobby was shot and I, a lonely and alienated teenager, sat up all night listening to the radio and praying.  In a sense, I feel fortunate to have lived in times when such astonishing events have happened, facilitated by those who stepped up to the plate:  the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, the many brave figures of the civil rights movement in general, the Sixties… I feel as if I ought to mention so many names here, all golden beads on that strand.  And then there are the Presidents who stand out:  Jimmy Carter, a true humanitarian and bona fide Holy Man (yes, upper case intentional), Bill Clinton, a man flawed but capable and caring (and let’s not forget Hillary, who ought to come first, and we’ll see if she can get out from behind the shadows of those who would push her back into them)… and slipped onto that strand that ripples and breaks and reforms endlessly, the dark ones, too, most notably He Who Must Not Be Named,  as he has long been known in our household.  My own lifetime, as all lifetimes on this planet are, has been filled with blood, guts and glory, as they say, and perhaps most of us ask ourselves time and time again if it’s all worth it.  Moreover, what does it all mean?

This is where we get cosmic, because it seems to me that rather than think, at this moment, in terms of people, personalities or events, it is the overall meaning of them that is important to consider as we charge forward, hopefully being pulled by the future rather than pushed by the past, to borrow a phrase from my beloved teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan.  Moreover, it seems important to consider them in the context of an entire ontology of Being, to whatever extent we are able to conceive of that.   And yet, I find myself wanting to consider the idea of time in general, and the endless battle we fight  throughout time, fighting darkness, our own and that of the Other, fighting for progress, for healing, for renewal;  and within all that, to know that there is meaning in it all.  

Paraphrasing wildly here, I remember Ram Dass saying something to the effect that if we look at our struggles within the context of eternity, or at least from the time when something resembling humankind, as we know it, crawled out of the primordial ooze (who said that?), well… we tend to relax.  There’s plenty of time.  Ah, but then what about the aforementioned blood, guts and glory, and the people out there living and dying for the sake of our continuance as a species, the idealist in me wants to ask.  And I am reminded of quantum theories of time and reality.  

If you think I am going to offer any version of intelligent explanation of these, you are barking up the wrong tree, but let me direct you to a very nice web site called “A Lazy Layman’s Guide to Quantum Physics,” (http://www.higgo.com/quantum/laymans.htm).  And if you want a little more entertainment with your popcorn, I highly recommend the film “What the <Bleep> Do We Know?” (http://www.whatthebleep.com).  Neither of these will satisfy you (nor will this little epistle) if you are one of the people out there who actually understands this stuff, but I believe it can be understood intuitively, and it provides a vastness of perspective that really blows the present moment out of the water.  There is a growing body of understanding out there about all this, but what seems important to me, here, is that in briefest terms, what appears to be happening is pretty much just the tip of the iceberg, and quantum theory shows that while we tend to be awake only to what we perceive as the present moment, in reality our consciousness lives in parallel universes, all of which are progressing simultaneously with their (and our) own histories, even as we muddle on here.  Quantum theory shows that consciousness reduced to its smallest subatomic particle is inseparable–and therefore affects–everything, i.e., other subatomic particles.  Very heady stuff, but as I make each successive attempt to understand it, I am reminded of all the New Age stuff we read in the scriptures of the ancients and parroted to each other and the world when I was first starting on this particular path:  we are all One.  We are inseparable from God, and God is who we are.   My (your) heart is the key to all hearts.  Yadda yadda, blah blah (and by the way, I happen to believe all this, even as I poke fun at it).   The notable part about that last statement is those “scriptures of the ancients” I mention:  you can find the seeds of this understanding in the holy scriptures of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity (yes, it’s true)…and, as my own spiritual mentor would say, in the teachings of  ”all those who, whether known or unknown, have held aloft the light of truth amidst the darkness of human ignorance.” (Inayat Khan)  

There is nothing new under the sun, and the sun continues to rise every morning, shining on ever-renewing universes that may not even have suns, or rather, have suns of their own.  

And none of it matters.

And all of it matters.

I suppose what I am trying to say, here, is that this event is pretty much just one of many simultaneous events eternally happening, but sometimes, God (whatever THAT is) breaks through it all.

I spent most of yesterday glued to my computer, watching the inauguration festivities, and I smiled,  when the parade started, and we all got to spy on the Obama family as they smilingly watched it, at those two little girls who could barely prop themselves up and were, no doubt, not fooled for a minute by any of it.  And there was a sense that, viewed on some of the levels that I’ve mentioned here, it was just one more event among events.  And yet, I have to say it:  it was Important.  It seems to me that it was one of those moments when, for however brief a time, the universe puts on its brakes and grinds to a halt and we all KNOW, and we KNOW that it is all meaningful and that a grace has been bestowed and that, messy and imperfect and adolescent as we all are, we must be loved somehow, and it all Matters.  I could say something like “I hope we don’t blow it,”  but quantum theory reminds me that we very probably will–and will not.  We are always being called to awakening and lulled to sleep, and some of us stay awake a little longer sometimes and some of us don’t.  But some of us, eventually, stay awake, and that is what it is all about, because we are creating, finally, a work of art of the dimensions and beauty we have not the smallest idea of consciously, but at the subatomic level,  the picture is already painted.

I’m out here a thousand miles from my home,
Walkin’ a road other men have gone down.
I’m seein’ your world of people and things,
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.  –Bob Dylan

The best part of all this is that I have a sense that Barack Obama knows all this, and this is why he is able to maintain his cool in the midst of it all.  What a comfort that is.

Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.  –Bob Dylan

As I was writing this, I was sent the following news item from the India Times:

NEW DELHI: In a rare act of political alchemy, Barack Hussein Obama united a South Asian Sufi tradition dating to the 16th century with the 21st, as the strains of a special ‘qawwali for Obama’ soared into the night-time skies over one of India’s most important dargahs.

 The qawwali, the first ever to be held anywhere for the inauguration of an American president, is seen as a sign of the intense anticipation heralding the accession to office of a man whom India and much of the globe believes will bring relief, if not redemption to a world weary of war and strife.

 Dewan Syed Ali Moosa Nizami, chairman and pir of the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, where the qawwali was organised to herald “a new dawn of peace and hope in the world”, said when Obama is sworn in as America’s 44th president, “we hope it reinforces the Sufi tradition of peace and tolerance joining hearts, not cutting them asunder”.

 The pir added, in a nod to the congregation that usually assembles for the weekly qawwali on a Thursday, that “everyone, and Muslims too, has great hopes of Obama”.

 Some of those “hopes” were voiced by the pir’s nephew, Ajmal, who appeared to speak for many disaffected young Muslims, both aspirational and traditionally bred to a intense antipathy towards America. In a reference to the famous dismissiveness towards his political masters by Auliya, one of the sub-continent’s most influential teachers of Sufism, Ajmal said, “He disdained to meet kings and emperors, seven of them, but politics has always been linked to religion and we now hope Barack Obama will bring about a really new world order”.

 But Ajmal’s youthful agenda for Obama’s brave new world came just as the 20-strong troupe of qawwals sang the customary sufi lovesong to the world’s one constant, God. In a possible reference to the fact the Obama era too will pass, lead singer Sultan Hussain Niyazi Qawwal chanted, “You (God) were here when there was nothing, not the sun, the moon, the stars, You were here, You’re still here, You will be here when all will pass”.   —  Indian Times, 21 Jan 2009, 0000 hrs IST, Rashmee Roshan Lall, TNN

In the Old Testament, God asked Job and Jonah, “where were you when I made the whirlwind?”  Right here, evidently.

Winter Solstice – Starhawk, 2007

 

 

Winter Solstice

 

At the darkest moment of the year, light is reborn.  From the womb of night is born the child of light who is the returning year.  Solstice reminds us that the Goddess is, beyond all, associated with regeneration.  Death gives way to birth, endings to new beginnings.

 

The solstice reminds us that every quality contains and gives way to its opposite.  There can be no light without darkness, no darkness without light.  Justice is not a question of one side defeating the other, but of finding the dynamic balance between them that generates the energies that sustain the world.

 

Throughout the longest night, we keep vigil.  We bake bread:  its swelling dough reminds us of the swelling belly of pregnancy.  At dawn, when the Great Mother gives birth to the New Year, we climb the hills to sing and dance and drum for the rising sun.  Hope and inspiration arise within us and we look on the world with the fresh eyes of a child.

 

Starhawk 2007

I Need To Feel You Every Moment In My Heart by Charlie Hopkins

Forgive me if I tell you I am lost.

Even though you hollowed out the rock

and made a temple in my chest

my heart is still sometime a slaughter barn

where dogs fight over ribbons of blood.

Though I have heard angels singing clear syllables

that can change a stone into a man

and bring him crying to his knees

I am lost.

 

So many times I have been saved by Grace

heard the ringing bells

that covered the laughter of demons and drove them away.

I have killed demons by the thousands with a sword

and baptized this world in their blood

but I don’t know for sure what my own name is.

 

Mother Mary smiles at me using the faces of grocery clerks.

The Mother and Father of the Universe tell me

I am their child.

But I am lost because I can’t remember every moment

in whose arms I am held.

 

Two times I felt a presence behind me

and turned to see a god seven feet tall

whose open face was a shotgun blast to my heart.

But twenty-three years later I come to your door

Like a boy with a fishhook caught in his hand.

I need your help to go deeper.

 

I have seen Jesus Christ in an oval of light

the color of lavender.

I have seen Lord Krishna dancing inside a conch shell

that was clear as ice

floating over the Gulf of Mexico

while seagulls mimicked his name

and mullet leapt out of waves trying to reach him

but I could not reach him.

 

Shree Maa told me

I am you.  I am nothing.

 

Shivabalayogi said to me

I am who you are.

You can never forget your Self.

 

But every moment I don’t remember

I am in love with you

is living in a bombed city.

There is an emptiness in rooms where you have lived and danced

then left behind

that hurts like a pulled tooth.

I need your help to go deeper.

 

I used to be afraid to give myself to you

knowing I would be eaten alive.

Now the sound of my bones snapping between your teeth

is salvation.

 

I want to walk in the perennial garden

and gather into my wide face the light of the sky

coming down at sunset to kiss me on the mouth

and leave my lips as red as a girl’s.

I want to give back light to you like the moon.

 

My beard is white

Mmy belly like a woman’s three months pregnant

but in my heart I am a lover

I am a bridegroom with a handful of flowers.

 

But if the one I love is Shiva

then you be the groom and I will be three months pregnant

with your child.

Take these flowers from my hand and put them in my hair.

 

I am talking to the God who lives in the body

of  Carol.

I am singing these words to my wife.

 

This prayer is one of a series written jointly to Shree Maa and my wife, Carol. Shree Maa is my Divine Mother. Twelve years ago Maa gave Carol and me the sadhana of worshipping God in each other. Thank you Maa for being in this world and thank you Swami Satyananda Saraswati for your example of devotion. I recomend anyone who reads this to visit their website. I love you Maa and Swamiji. —Charlie Hopkins

Moving

Russian Orthodox Spirit Houses

Chickaloon, Alaska

 

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, nor believe to be beautiful.   — William Morris

 

 

I have always prided myself on my application of this idea:  people seem to think my houses beautiful, and I really think that, if they are, it is because I create my atmosphere entirely to please myself and no one else, really.  But I have found, in life, that when I please myself first, others tend to be more pleased that if I had tried to please them.  This is certainly true where my writing is concerned:  I noticed, in college, that when I wrote a paper that I thought was what my professor wanted, it never was, and when I wrote to please myself, I invariably got a ‘A’.  

Ah, but back to houses:  houses, plural, you will notice.  That’s the problem here, or rather, that is the opportunity.  The blood of the gypsies runs in my veins.  I have never been good at holding still, and as soon as I get used to a place or a room or a thing, I tend to grow bored with it, and long for change.  My husband will tell you that we rearrange the living room, on average, every six weeks.  We have lived all over the United States, including Alaska, which to me was like another country and still is, Sarah Palin notwithstanding; or, possibly, she herself is a good example of the peculiarity of living up there, where the nights can be long, the waters are clean and mavericks abound.  (By the way, I am a hard-line liberal, and delighted with the latest election results!)

I have not done nearly as much traveling as I would have liked to, but I’ve done my share.  Oddly, though, instead of just visiting a place I love, I tend to want to “own” it, i.e., to live there.  There is such amazing beauty and variety even in this world that the absorption and appreciation of it is as much my meditation practice as is a mantra.  As well, there is always a psychological side to one’s tendencies, and I am well aware that a great deal of my movement has been my need for a geographical cure, and when we went to Alaska to serve the mental health needs of a small village, I was entirely aware that the number of miles between it and my family-of-origin was a clear attempt to run far and fast in order to heal my various wounds.  

But it gets old, this moving thing, and so do I.  In my earlier years, I was very good and pulling everything together with a considerable amount of efficiency, getting a male friend with a truck to help me out, and GOING.  After I married, I had a permanent male friend, although he does not have a truck, and he is getting old along with me.  Through a series of events, we are still on the move, though, and while it is getting harder, we rather like it.  We always have, and we always will, I suspect.  My daughter, when she mentions the various places she has lived, often hears “are you an army brat?”  No, she explains, it just happened that way.  She likes travel and movement, too.  We all like new houses, and my love of nest-building leads me to believe I should have become an interior decorator, so I wouldn’t have to keep changing and redecorating my own houses, for heaven’s sake!  

I really think that, ultimately, the problem is that souls are meant, in this life, to journey, some of us more than others.  I may well tend to take that a bit too literally, but I have come to believe that the reality is that there is no real home for me here on Planet Earth.  Alaska, with its pristine beauty, came close, and various retreats I have made in astounding settings have also, and places where I’ve met people who would become important to me have often felt something like “home,” but I’m pretty sure HOME is not on this plane of existence, and so…I keep moving.

However, the thing is, as I move, I also collect, and this is where the growing conflict comes in.  I have too much stuff!  My friend Hayat commented that I have a great many things, but my house never looks cluttered.  Well, she should look in my closets and drawers!  And yet, I mostly like the things I’ve accumulated, and while I tend to despise them when I am packing them up yet again, I love them when I open the boxes and unpack them again:  there are the aboriginal masks my daughter brought back from New Zealand.  There are my Carl Larsson prints.  Ah, my beautiful Buddhas, I want them near at all times, right next to the Blessed Virgin and Quan Yin.  I love my quilts, and I love my Alaskan and Appalachian shamans…  I am nothing, if not eclectic.

And, as Morris says, I try to have nothing in my house that I do not know to be useful, nor believe to be beautiful.  In recent years, I have inherited–against my wishes, for the most part–my parents’ furnishings.  So has my husband.  This presents us with the opportunity for a challenging application of these ideas, because on the one hand, the lovely old secretary in which nooks and crannies I played as a child has much meaning for me, as does the lovely mahogany washstand.  But other things bring back memories of pain, of rage, of narcissism and alcoholism (I still become nauseous at the smell of linens with my mother’s perfume, or of Jim Beam), and to have them around is to continue to hear the stories I assigned to them.  

I am trying to let go of stories these days, because it is not the event, or the object, or the smell that I find upsetting, it’s the story attached to it; and often, the stories have stories, because I am the one who assigned whatever story there is that comes back to me when I see that a certain piece of silver or “Aunt Lizzie’s Cocoa set,” and I find that when I relinquish the story, I can appreciate whatever phenomena that presents itself with a greater appreciation and tolerance.  But at the moment, using space constraints as an excuse, I am giving myself permission to only unpack and display what I truly love, what is of me or my loved ones, the ones who live here with me.  In this way, our home is a reflection of the harmony and joy in which we live, what I finally found in my life with these dear people.  Our home is a creation of that, and wherever it is, we love that, and we love it.  If life is a continual journey, home is as much an eternal reality as is its movement.

Newman Owned

 

Heal his spirit, Lord, from all the wounds that his heart has suffered from this life of limitation on the earth.

Purify his heart with Thy Divine Light 

and send upon his spirit Thy Mercy, They Compassion, and Thy Peace.  

–Hazrat Inayat Khan

Thinking About Depression

Dear N.,

I am sorry you are so miserable. “Depression’” means literally “being forced downwards.” This can happen even when you don’t consciously have any feeling at all of being “on top”! So I wouldn’t dismiss this hypothesis out of hand. If I had to live in a foreign country, I would seek out one or two people who seemed amiable and would make myself useful to them, so that libido came to me from outside, even though in a somewhat primitive form, say of a dog wagging its tail. I would raise animals and plants and find joy in their thriving. I would surround myself with beauty – no matter how primitive and artless – objects, colours, sounds. I would eat and drink well. When the darkness grows denser, I would penetrate to its very core and ground, and would not rest until amid the pain a light appeared to me, for in excessu affectus [in an excess of affect or passion] Nature reverses herself. I wold turn in rage against myself and with the heat of my rage I would melt my lead. I would renounce everything and engage in the lowest activities should my depression drive me to violence. I would wrestle with the dark angel until he dislocated my hip. For he is also the light and the blue sky which he withholds from me.

Anyway that is what I would do. What others would do is another question, which I cannot answer. But for you too there is an instinct either to back out of it or to go down to the depths. But no half-measures or half-heartedness.

A letter by C.G.Jung on 9 March 1959, C.G. Jung, Letters, p. 492-493

I’ve been doing this blog for awhile, and I do not fool myself that it has a huge number of readers.  On the other hand, I do get some very wonderful responses, and that means a lot, because I have this compulsion to tell the truth and be exactly who I am, here. and that seems to make some people relax and feel that they can be themselves, too.  I also get a number of letters from people who are in pain or confusion, who want advice.  I am a psychologist who is not currently psychologizing, i.e., in practice.  I am writing a book, and I happen to be ill and disabled, which is another interesting experience… but I digress.

As I said, I hear from people who want advice, and given the time and freedom I have, I usually try to help, even if it is to try to point them in the right direction of getting the help they need from a more appropriate source.  So I am, today, thinking about depression, in response to several conversations I’m having.  I also tend toward depression, but I suppose most introverts do.  I’m one of those introverts who is good at appearing an extrovert, though, and it’s the same when I’m depressed:  no one will believe me!

Well, then.  Depression.  So many theories!  I really like Dr. Jung’s words above; he always goes right to the depths, and depression, perhaps more than any other disorder, is a profoundly existential and spiritual problem.  Or is it a problem?  Perhaps crisis is the better word, in that crisis connotes opportunity, and although it can seem like the ultimate dead end, depression can lead one to a tremendous alchemical change if, as the good doctor says, one does not try to run from it.

The question is, though, how do we know when our depression is of this kind–a spiritual emergency, as it were–as compared to what might be called situational?  For instance, many of the depressed people I have worked with over the years have been very angry people.  Depression, “they” say, is anger turned inward.  Get in touch with what you’re really royally pissed off about, and–bingo!  Obviously, it isn’t always that easy, but finding out what is not being acknowledged, or what is being pushed inside to fester, and then figuring out what to do about it can be incredibly freeing, assuming one does not create more problems for oneself.

Then, there is depression which is endogenous, i.e., nutritional or biochemical.  This one is more and more interesting to me, as I have in the past year radically changed my diet and lifestyle in order to be as well as I can be while I’m sick….or, maybe, to get well entirely, although that remains to be seen.  But I have seen that eliminating certain substances–and I’m not going to go into this too deeply, there’s another post on that, and I don’t want to be too much of a cheerleader for my current “food guru”–can bring about wonderful changes.  I more and more doubt the current medications for mood disorders that the pharmaceutical guys would like us to spend our money on, but they sometimes have their place.  I would, however, exhaust all other avenues before using them myself, unless things were truly at crisis point, i.e., I–or a client–were suicidal.  In any event, there are numerous factors to be considered in depression, such as possible systemic imbalances or depletions, the resolving of which may prove that the depression was easily resolved.

Let’s see, what else can feed depression?  Well, I will say that I believe that depression is a normal part of life and absolutely necessary to change and growth.  It’s that alchemical thing again:  in order to find the light, we have to go through the darkness, and in the heart of pain is found joy.  All change is preceded by some depression:

If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
give everything up.

The Master, by residing in the Tao,
sets an example for all beings.
Because he doesn’t display himself,
people can see his light.
Because he has nothing to prove,
people can trust his words.
Because he doesn’t know who he is,
people recognize themselves in him.
Because he has no goal in mind,
everything he does succeeds.

When the ancient Masters said,
“If you want to be given everything,
give everything up,”
they weren’t using empty phrases.
Only in being lived by the Tao can you be truly yourself.  –Tao te Ching

With its usual facility for bridging the mundane and the sublime, the Tao brings us to the most worthwhile kind of depression, the true spiritual emergency.  I really believe that sometimes depression is of a more collective nature than we might think, i.e., sometimes our feelings of sadness are related to our perception of the grief of the world, as if we are given the opportunity of sharing in the suffering of the planet and its denizens.  I suspect this is true more often than we might think, and it’s good to keep in mind.  But sometimes, depression is the springboard to enlightenment, as the crucible of the soul ignites and then immolates the raw material of change, so that its pure substance can become evident.

Whatever explanation we can find for our occasional or, for some of us, chronic feelings of depression, it still hurts, and it can cause us to forget that life is worth living.  I find that leaning into it, as one leans into a wave of the ocean, standing up to it rather than allowing oneself to be washed up on the shore of life, helps one to get the best from it.  If we don’t penetrate the heart of darkness, how can we find the corresponding light?

EVERY SOUND I HEAR

Please check out this exquisite music from my friend Stephen (Firoz) Smith, formerly of “Promise of the Dawn,” a CD which many Sufis may be familiar with.  This music is consciousness-altering in the highest sense of the word.

 

http://www.everysoundihear.com/

Fana

The friendship with the Sheikh is friendship with a form, and the form may disappear. A person may say, ‘I had a father, but now he is no more.’ In fact, the impression of the father whom he has idealized remains in his mind. The devotion to Rasul is like this; his name and qualities remain though the earthly form is no more on earth. Rasul is the personification of the light of guidance, which a mureed, according to his evolution, idealizes. Whenever the devotee remembers him, on the earth, in the air, at the bottom of the sea, he is with him. Devotion to Rasul is a stage that cannot be omitted in the attainment of divine love. This stage is called Fana-fi-Rasul. –Inayat Khan, Love:  Human and Divine:  Divine Love.  Sufi Message Volumes, Sufi Order International.  This excerpt is from a private document PDF document owned by the writer of this blog.

            In the Sufi order in which I am a disciple, we take our teachings from a long line of illuminated teachers, called a Silsila.  It means, simply, chain, the chain of beings down which the teachings are passed down from on high.  This concept, obviously, appears in many spiritual traditions.  I have this teacher, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, and he gave me the teachings on behalf of his father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, quoted above.  I have a spiritual guide, too; in fact, I’ve had several, but one of them has been my guide for, maybe, 12 or so years.  I love him dearly; he has been a wonderful friend and teacher. 

            Oddly, he kind of deserted me recently, or at least, that’s how it feels.  Felt.  Well, maybe not so recently.  I haven’t heard from him in well over a year, and I have kind of stopped wondering about it.  I have been through the classic stages attendant upon loss:  grief, anger, acceptance, and back again.  I suppose, at this point, I am simply waiting.  Meantime, I have been trying to figure out what to do with myself now that I no longer have a teacher, at least an earthly one.  There has been a good deal of loss in my life of recent years, and I suppose this is a stage most people come to at my age. But this is more than that.

            Sufis of most of the various orders take the theme of fana for concentration.  Literally, the word means annihilation, but it is easy to misunderstand the concept if we think in terms of destruction or annihilation.  Actually, fana, an Arabic word, means losing one’s concept of oneself and the world in the reality of the being of the teacher, not in terms of the personality, but the realization, and the divine qualities one experiences in that being.  The classical stages of fana are fana-fi-Sheikh, fana-fi-Rasul, and  fana-fi-Allah.  One moves through losing one’s self-centered identity in the being of the teacher, in the Rasul, and finally, in God alone.  The term Rasul can be translated somewhat as Messiah, the messenger that appears at the time and place where that person is needed by a people who have lost their way.  It is a sort of lessening by degrees of one’s attachment to one’s more limited concept about being in the One Being, God before being.  Murshid (by whom I mean Hazrat (Saint) Inayat Khan, the founder of our order, a development of the Chishtia Order in India) points out that ultimately, one arrives at the state of Baqi-bi-Allah, annihilation in the Eternal Consciousness, God beyond becoming.

            So when I began asking myself what this ‘desertion’ of me by my teacher meant, and how I was now to guide myself, it occurred to me that I could turn to the concentration I have worked on more or less my entire spiritual life, an attunement to my Murshid, who died in 1927, at least insofar as we conceive of death on this planet.  My entire schooling as a Sufi initiate has been founded in this concept of fana, and it has many practical as well as spiritual purposes.  Murshid, the one I call Murshid (teacher), has been a reality to me for almost as long as I have been on this path, and over the years I have added to that attunement his successor. In case it seems obvious to some of you adepts who may be reading this, it has occurred to me that my own immediate guide and teacher is inviting me to realize that our relationship, as well, is far more real and meaningful in the silence than in all the phone calls, visits and emails we have exchanged over the years, even better than the wonderful friendship we have had.  And moreover, the process of fana leads one progressively up the ladder to God. 

            But I wasn’t ready.

            Until I was.  Am.  Sort of.  I have been through an increasingly difficult time in recent years.  My health has been deteriorating, there has been other loss, and I have, for many years, struggled to love a child who has many problems which seem to culminate in the one central one, which is her inability to receive love, let alone to return it.  There are clinical names for her problems, but I have tried to stay afloat and, at the same time, never lose my vision of her soul, which I know to be a pure and evolved one.  That hasn’t made it any easier, and our relationship has been a very, very draining one.  I will admit I have wanted to whine about the requirements being put on me:

The surrender to God is so hard that the disciple cries tears of blood.  –from the Hadith of Mohammad

But, other than my wonderful husband and second child, there doesn’t seem to have been many people around to listen to me whine, so that didn’t do any good.

            A very close spiritual friend of mine and I often talk about how there really aren’t any teachers any more.  There is a truth in this:  an earthly teacher will always prove fallible, and perhaps what we are meant to realize eventually is that we are to be our own teachers.  This idea has great heuristic value to me.  As well, I have learned that if I want realization, I have to give up all attachment to the pretty, comforting patriarchal images of God that most of us in this culture are raised on.  But what of this idea of fana?  It certainly seem to denote a relationship with an uneven power balance!  And if one does achieve something like it, what does this mean in terms of one’s own unique personhood, one’s divine purpose in this world, the one thing that makes all this worthwhile? 

            I think I got it today, or something like it.  In my present dilemma, I have gone through those stages I mentioned, and that has led me to a sincere attempt to rekindle my attunement to my Murshid, my Pir and my guide.  At the highest levels, of course, there is no difference between them, and between them and me; but one begins with images and qualities, and hopefully moves on to the reality.  What I have found is that, as I attune to the teacher(s), they begin to step in for me, to kind of take over the rudder so that I can rest a bit, and I experience their strength; their divine qualities, as I experience them, become available to me personally, and I feel supported.  It lets me feel as if I will be prevented from making any more stupid mistakes, if I continue to pay attention, and that I have, in fact, traded a pebble for a pearl, as the saying goes, by giving up my attachment to my own marvelous being and qualities and taking on the more experienced nature of the teacher(s).  There is experience beyond the practical, but I would have difficulty speaking of that, and that is why this blog has been called “Footprints.”

            It isn’t easy to do this.  It’s going to be even less easy to continue to do this, because it is a reality that has been available to me for at least 30 years, one that I have utilized more or less according to my own willingness, and there is a sense that I no longer have the right to treat these gifts cavalierly.  But life is the real teacher:  it has a way of bringing about fana, surrender in the reality of What Is.  I see that the fears of my ego-centered self, the one that says “but what about me?  Where will I go?”  if  I surrender, trades in an old model of thinking for a reality of power and creativity that is uniquely mine because of my surrender.  Not a bad trade, really. 

            A recurring theme in my dreams, all my life, has been that of climbing a ladder into the dark, starry sky.  In this culture, of course, there is always that dichotomy of up and down, good and bad, higher and lower, so it is logical that this should be a helpful archetype for me, if not the reality of my advancement toward the divine ideal.  Perhaps life is about climbing that ladder into the heavens, uniting both in the One Reality of whatever it is that one calls God.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, because the first heaven and the first earth had disappeared, and there is no longer any sea.  Revelations 21:1, New Standard American Bible.

 

 

 

 

Instant Karma

Don’t let any person bring you so low as to hate them.  –Booker T. Washington

 

I’m a little bit crabby about money just now:  we’re living pretty close to the bone during my healing process, and at our age, that can be a bit hard to take.  Money tends to be a big issue for me, anyway:  I tend to ascribe far more meaning to it than it ought to have, but we do indeed live in a society that encourages us to do that…and sometimes, LIFE just has to swoop down and teach me a good lesson.  

 

Last week, I ordered some Fair Trade, Organic coffee, the kind we’ve always purchased, at a good price, from an online business I’ve patronized for several years.  Now, somehow–and I continue to believe it’s not my fault–the business sent the coffee to an old address of ours, and when we called to find out what was going on, they basically refused to discuss the matter, and said it was our fault and they weren’t going to do one damned thing about it.  We went back and forth with them for several days, and disputed the charge on our Visa, etc., etc., and there was much rancor on both sides.  Clearly, the basis of all this was FEAR.  We feel rather guilty about most any treat we give ourselves (and I shouldn’t be drinking coffee anyway, darn it), and are budgeted so closely that we couldn’t afford to lose the cost of ten pounds of coffee.  We felt resentful that, having given so much of our money to this company, they were not interested in finding a reasonable solution to all this.  As for the company, I would imagine it was about fear for them, also, as they said several times that no matter what way this was resolved, they were going to have a loss.  Clearly, to them, not losing the money for ten pounds of coffee was desirable to losing the business of people who had ordered from them monthly since they started their business.

 

Anyway, we were fuming about this, having contacted the former residence and receiving no cooperation, and the whole thing was at a standstill.  On our way to have dinner with our children and our new and lovely grandchild, we were, as I say, fuming, when something most interesting happened:  there was a thumping on the roof of the car, and I looked back and out the side window, to see the case of our digital camera hanging from the closed window.  We quickly pulled over, and it was evident that the camera had been put on the top of the car while we packed a cooler at Costco, and left there.  To us, it was amazing that the camera was unharmed, and that we didn’t lose it altogether.

 

Then it struck us that there was a lesson in this:  we lost ten pounds of coffee, but we didn’t lose a very expensive, digital camera.  It’s all relative.  It’s all LIFE.  One would think I would have gotten this one down prior to this, but evidently not.  On the other hand, I can remember when I would have been absolutely hysterical over some such situation, when now I was, mostly, just quietly grumbling and grinding my teeth.  

 

But Mr. Washington, above, is right:  the thing that strikes most deeply here, is that if we let someone else make us hate them, we’re the loser.  Gandhi said that the only way we can win over our enemy is to love him more than we love ourselves.  I have a long way to go on this path of love.

Buddha in Glory

Center of all centers, core of cores,

almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet–

all this universe, to the furthest stars

all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

 

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;

your vast shell reaches into endless space,

and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.

Illuminated in your infinite peace,

 

a billion stars go spinning through the night,

blazing high above your head.

But in you is the presence that

will be, when all the stars are dead.   – Rainer Maria Rilke

Cabin Fever

I remember when we lived in Alaska, there were these certain points, mostly in the winter, when we would realize we hadn’t been anywhere for several months and were starting to feel a bit trapped. Now, in a state the size of Alaska, this might be hard to believe, but unless you were one of those people prepared for any temperature and any weather, owned a snow machine, liked to ski, snowshoe or otherwise navigate the wilderness (we were none of these, I regret to say), when the temperature reached a certain daily level and there was about four hours of actual daylight to play with, you kind of….went inside. At the beginning, it is a time of energy and creativity, as you realize no one can expect anything of you, nor can you expect anything of yourself other than the daily chores required to stay warm and fed. But it gets old. People in Alaska who have money flee to Hawaii and other tropical climes as soon as they can, and don’t come home until Alaska’s tender green Spring hits. We didn’t have much money, and in Alaska, a weekend “away” is pretty much going to the same place you’re in anyway. But we liked taking off for, say, Seward, to the Sea Life Museum, or to Talkeetna to enjoy the village the way it really is, sans tourists, i.e., “Northern Exposure.” These places were on the road system. People in Alaska like to talk, especially at this time of year, and so in a strange way, loneliness was not at all the same as it is here where we’re all on top of each other. People need each other up there. We’ve tried to convince ourselves otherwise, down here.

Cabin fever. It’s an almost physical sensation: you feel like you’d do anything to get the hell out of town and go somewhere else for awhile. You feel like you’re strangling. We did, anyway, all of us, parents, kid and dogs. Well, the dogs could always wander into the woods and start something with a moose or caribou, so they stayed pretty perky, but we got a little crazy.

I allowed it to convince me that I would not be able to stay with Alaska for the long haul, after a few years. I was wrong, because it was there that the truth of our essential loneliness is unavoidable and can’t be hidden.

I am in a similar state of cabin fever at the moment, this one caused by my health, and while I keep myself pretty well entertained and get some reasonable amount of work done, I still get a little crazy at times. But you know, it occurs to me that cabin fever is a state of the soul. Everything goes dormant. There’s a sense of something bubbling down below, right at the pit of the solar plexus, an occasional hiss as something pops out momentarily and hits the side of this vessel used for cooking soul soup… Sometimes it feels as if there’s going to be an explosion. Where the hell did I put that recipe?! I know I had it…

Well. Nothing to do but keep simmering.

On Angelic Corporeality

 

Live in rooms full of light

Avoid heavy food

Be moderate in the drinking of wine

Take massage, baths, exercise, and gymnastics

Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water

Change surroundings and take long journeys

Strictly avoid frightening ideas

Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements

Listen to music. ~ Celsus

 

         I write here, from time to time, about my own healing journey.  I am resistant to this becoming one of those “I ate 300 carrots a week and lost 500 pounds and gained six points to my I.Q.” kind of things.  In fact, I hesitate to write at all, because I find it generally a fairly boring topic, and we’re all different in any event:  we have differing constitutions, we’re different sizes and shapes, we have differing perspectives, different strengths and different weaknesses.  Having said that, I cannot escape the perception that we are becoming an increasingly sick people.  Or so it seems:  I have no idea of the statistics on health and illness among, say, the ancient Celts, but I suppose it is because there are so many more of us and our health seems to be increasingly a function of Heidegger’s “they” and what “they” think we should eat and what we should take and how we should live.  Mainly, it seems, all this is to be accomplished in relation to “their” needs for money, for control, for power, and increasingly virulent narcissism embedded in a murky fear always lurking at the bottom of it. 

 

         And after all, what if we all got well?  How would the pharmaceutical companies continue to become rich and richer?  What if we started eating foods that nourish us, as compared to what most of us eat now?  Well, on that one, I can say with some certainty that at least our farmers would then survive!

 

         Which brings me to my latest homily (could someone help me onto this soapbox, please?)  I use that word ‘homily’ advisedly:  there will be a religious tone to this, although only in the sense that I am compelled to plumb the depths of just about any subject that catches my attention.  And boy, has health been catching mine these recent years!  In previous posts, I have mentioned that I am suffering from something that has elements of rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme Disease, erm….oh, yeah, and I’m fat, too.  Well, aren’t we all, these days.  Most of us, anyway, which brings us back to the diet the “they” push at us endlessly, all the while advising us to starve and providing drugs to keep us sick enough to continue to need them.  So we do, right?  Starve, that is.  How could we possibly get all the nutrients we need from the deadness we consume daily?

 

         So if this is of interest to you, you can scroll down to a post I wrote a few weeks ago, one about the fast I undertook, after reading some of the work of Dr. Joel Fuhrman, author of Eat to Live and much research on healing the body of everything from diabetes to heart disease to obesity to….well, the idea here, is an age-old one:  the body wants to and will heal itself if given the chance.  This, as might be seen, is why the pharmaceuticals and food industry put forth such monumental effort to make sure we stay sick and fat.  A perfect system, yes?

 

         Anyway, after a lifetime of fighting my tendency to obesity, sometimes winning, more often losing, but never entirely giving up…..  Well, then I really got sick.  So gradually, I have been trying to figure out how to drop out and give up.  I think I’m getting it.  First, I gave up by doing the fast which, although I’d done them before, somehow turned out to be just what was needed for me to go through not just a physical reorganization, but a cognitive and spiritual one, too.  Don’t as me why, I don’t know.  I think I was just ready.  Sick and tired of being sick and tired, as they say in AA.  After the fast, I moved immediately into Dr. Fuhrman’s recommended diet, which is an essentially vegan one, with heavy emphasis on the beans and greens and fruit.  This is where I began to take a giant leap in the “dropping out” part of my resolve, one I’ve been working on for several years now.   

 

         Now, the interesting thing about this is, well, you know all those ads you see everywhere:  “eat all you want and lose weight rapidly”?  Although I haven’t tried many of them, I have no doubt that they’re perpetrated by the fringes of above-discussed industries and useless.  But what Dr. Furhman says is “eat LOTS!!!  The more you eat, the more you’ll lose.”  Goddess bless you, Dr. Fuhrman.  Now I get to use food to heal me, not starve me.

 

         And guess what?  Damned if it doesn’t work.  Mind you, one has to eat what he says, but that’s a small problem, because his recommended foods are so “nutrient dense” that they are eminently satisfying anyway.  Here’s an example of what I eat every day:

 

For breakfast, a vast “smoothie,” made with 2-4 servings/pieces of fruit, flaxseed, soy milk, raw spinach (about half a pound), half an avocado, if I have one;

 

For lunch, a gargantuan salad made with greens, broccoli, carrots, whatever else is raw and needing to be made into something, about a cup of beans, tahini salad dressing;

 

For dinner, a large salad as above, cooked green vegetables, on some days a cup of brown rice or a sweet potato, mushrooms, tofu, beans…. you get the picture

 

And that’s it.  Truly.  I can’t lie to you, I still have my delicious cup of fair trade coffee every day, but that’s it.

 

         Does this sound like a lot of food?  To me, it does.  But that’s because I’ve been doing this for awhile, and I take Dr. F. at his word.  The thing is, it adds up to about 1,000 calories a day.  I smile to think of my mother trying to feed her chubby child on this number of calories and serve what “other” people eat.  It was not much food, I can tell you.  And thus began the ruination of my health and the lining of the pockets of said industries.

 

         I’ve lost about fifteen pounds and I lose about 1.5 pounds daily.  I feel content and inspired and energetic.  I might even be able to get well.  Dr. F. says if I don’t mess around with it, I will.  I’ll keep you posted. 

 

         Now, what is this all about, I ask myself?  And I am reminded of one of Inayat Khan’s little homilies, “Let the heavens be reflected in the earth, Lord, that the earth may turn into heaven.”  I don’t have any more idea what the meaning of life is than anyone, but when I look at my new granddaughter, I am reminded of what I knew with both my own children, and what I know whenever I see someone or something that is radiant with the light of the planes cosmic splendor through which the soul emerges on its way here, yet unsullied by the filth and lies of this very limited plane of sorrows:  I see where we come from, and I see that it’s possible to get back there while living here.  And because there does seem to be some needful emphasis on the corporeal as it expresses itself on this plane of…existence?…then perhaps it is in what is apparent, rather than what is innately known, that we must start this particular leg of that journey Home. 

 

         The soul has not come on earth to die the death of helplessness, nor continually to suffer pain and misery.  The purpose of the soul is that for which the whole of creation has been striving, and it is the fulfillment of that purpose which is called God-consciousness.  –Inayat Khan

 

         Perhaps when we realize, with more and surer consistency, that we are always beginning, we’ll begin to get it right.