Tag Archives: peace of mind

Allow Me to Introduce My Mask

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Greetings friends

At the moment I’m reading a book (Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal) by Joseph Campbell, the brilliant, more than brilliant scholar, writer, teacher, and philosopher of all things having to do with myth.

Actually, to be honest, it’s truly riveting reading, but still, it’s a hard book to get my head around, but I’m taking it in little chunks, and the effort is, you can believe me, well worth it.

Campbell makes so many fascinating observations and his insights are genius. One section that gave me much to think about was where he talked about Carl Jung‘s idea of masks:

… he [Jung] points out that each one of us is invited by his [sic] society to play a certain role, a certain social function …
… We all have to put on a mask of some sort in order to function in the society. And even those who choose not to function in the society, to revolt from the society, put on masks too. They wear certain insignia that indicate, “I am in revolt.”

Yes, I know, it’s an idea we’re all pretty much familiar with: we all put on masks: work masks, school masks, relationship masks, masks to impress, masks to hide behind, all kinds of masks. But here’s what got me thinking: If you saw my last post, you’ll remember just near the end I said something like, ‘I am a hermit and a pilgrim’.

Now, normally, I tend to think I don’t wear masks. But, surely such a statement declares that I have simply put on one more mask? And, given the usual perceptions of hermits and even pilgrims, am I telling anyone who will listen (especially myself) that ‘I am in revolt’?

And that got me thinking more, about that ‘especially myself’ thing. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wearing masks; after all as our quote says we wear them in order to function, to have a role or roles in our society.

But we also wear masks for ourselves, so we can give ourselves an identity, a role, a function. So a mask, you might say, is just how we get on in the world, and in our own minds; we take them off, and put them on according to the situation and needs of the moment.

Which says of course that we all are, I am, many things at different times and stages of our lives, our days, our careers, and so on. At this stage of my life I have put on the hermit/pilgrim mask I’ve carried around on the inside all my life. I am asking myself again, does this make me a rebel?

Well, before I donned the hermit/pilgrim mask properly, yes I wore the mask of the rebel, of the angry and outraged advocate of complete and total social change. And perhaps from some people’s point of view, I might still be a rebel: rebelling against the expectations, demands, and easy temptations of my society.

Anyway, I seem to have taken the very long route to the main point of my thoughts on all this rebel insignia stuff. The reality is, I’m not rebelling against anything. Except for those times (all too frequent) when I let anger and outrage slip through. After all, I am still human and have my weaknesses. ‘Tipping points’ as a wise person has called those moments when ‘it all gets too much’.

I see my role, the role of the mask I wear, as a creative one, one of building up, not tearing down.  This particular mask is still in the development stages, but isn’t that how everything works

There’s an aphorism I like very much:

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

(back in March I wrote a post describing a real-life event that illustrates this wonderful expression, both literally and metaphorically. If you missed it, do check it out).

Now, as of this moment in my life and in my progress on whatever path I’m on, I can truly say that I spend time – a lot of time – cursing the darkness. I mean, how could I not? That probably makes me still a bit of a rebel.

Yet, at the same time, I think I’m learning to understand the pointlessness of only cursing the darkness. Maybe it’s not a case of all one way or the other. Okay, I’m human, so I curse the darkness? There is a great deal of darkness to curse isn’t there?

Perhaps I can allow that cursing to lead me to action? And, well it has. At least that’s what I’m working on, aspiring to. Living as simply, quietly, and in as much solitude, as I am able; buying fewer things; letting compassion inform my eating, clothing, and travel choices (actually all my choices); having as little to do with what I call ‘the mainstream’ as possible; acting as far as I’m able in accordance with my true nature.  All these measures are aspects of the hermit/pilgrim role.

But I’ve missed the greatest, most important and vital aspect that goes with the responsibility of wearing the hermit/pilgrim mask: Prayer. Quiet prayer and contemplation. Sometimes just sitting (I know, it’s a favourite thing to do for me), letting the quiet come. Letting the light come.

You know, in some post, somewhere on this blog I’ve mentioned that often repeated statement:

It’s too late for thoughts and prayers

Well, more and more I am getting to grips with the notion that, far from being too late, this is precisely the exact moment when thoughts and prayers are needed most.

I hope that my little efforts can at least contribute in some small measure to the efforts of all the other people out there in the world who, while they may not be hermits or pilgrims, and while their natures might lead them to any number of differing activities in the world, nonetheless share with me the aspiration to light a few candles.

I Live On a Big Round Ball

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Namaste friends

Recently I came across some notes I’d made about a book I read ages ago, at least a year I think. Anyway, the name of the book: The Art of Mindful Walking. Sorry, but no prizes for guessing what it’s about.

Reading my notes I see that I had been particularly taken with what the author had to say about ‘our place in the Universe’. He reflects on our – humanity’s that is – perception of our size in the big scheme of things.

The author recounts how we once went for a walk with American astronaut Dave Scott, who’d been to the moon on one of the Apollo missions. Scott described to him what it felt like looking back at Earth from the surface of the moon:

It hangs in the black sky like a glass bauble, a blue and white Christmas decoration. It’s a small, fragile world.

Ford then goes on to reflect that this image, of a small, fragile ball floating in space, has ‘become a part of the modern psyche’. Then he says:

We begin to see how vulnerable we actually are. We are the first generation truly to see this. We are also the generation that is coming closest to polluting and destroying it.

I don’t think I’d quite looked at it in this way before. And I admit, it stunned me a bit.

Just think: Of all the humans who have ever lived, those alive in the last 50 or 60 years have been the first to see our home planet in its entirety. At least we’ve had the good fortune of seeing images of Earth just as those astronauts saw it. Thanks to those images made from space, we now have had a glimpse of where we actually live and the nature of our world.

Yet, at precisely this point in our history as a species, when we have that particular knowledge, this is the time we seem to be almost wilfully destroying the very ground we walk upon, the air that keeps us living, and the water without which there is no life.

I’m not a warrior. I am a hermit and a pilgrim and I try hard to not make judgements. As such, I can only look on in wonder.

And I can pray.

Thanks to Jimmy Buffett for the title. It’s a line from one of his greatest songs, called Defying Gravity. Thanks Jimmy for all the music man.

Is Life Too Short for Perfect Writing?

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Greetings and welcome friends

Let me share a little secret with you: I have and always have had, atrocious handwriting. And it’s always been a major frustration (but a huge incentive to learn to type, which is one of the best things I’ve ever done).

Perhaps it’s because I had some sort of learning difficulty, maybe it happened because every state in Australia has a different way of teaching kids handwriting, or maybe its just that I was and am lazy. Actually, scratch this last one: I am not nor have I ever been lazy.

Anyway, it appears to be a fact of life, yet I do still get frustrated from time to time. But then there are times when I decide not to care, that it isn’t important, doesn’t matter. Being in one of those indifferent phases right now, has reminded me of an incident that should have taught me this lesson once and for all.

A while back I was gifted a small painting. The artist wasn’t satisfied with it as a background of a planned piece, and gave it to me thinking I might like to ‘do something with it’. I happened to think it quite a lovely painting in its own right actually, and as I was looking at it, I thought of a leaf I had collected a couple of weeks previously. A beautiful very soft and pliable purple leaf from a lovely shrub.

So, right away I just got to sticking that leaf onto the painting. As I pressed it down, a little tear appeared in the leaf. Immediately a lyric from Leonard Cohen‘s Anthem came into mind:

There is a crack, a crack in everything. Thats how the light gets in.

So, I began writing bits of the lyric onto the painting. Untidy, irregular and typically atrocious the hand writing, or printing, is. But then it struck me: that’s the point! I mean the point of Mr C’s sublime words:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything
Thats how the light gets in.

Here’s how I thought about what I’d written on the painting and how I’d written it: I rang a bell that I can still ring: I thought of and wrote down those beautiful lyrics to compliment the accident (is there any such thing as accident?) of tearing a leaf on a painting that ‘didn’t work’ for the artist, but that was working for me.

Therefore, the painting, the torn leaf and my handwriting was not a perfect offering in any kind of conventional sense as the world would view it. In other words there is a crack, both literal as in the tear in the leaf, and metaphorical as in the imperfections of the whole piece.

But—and here is the vital thing—this little painting, despite its initial rejection by the artist, and with its imperfections, its sloppiness, and its flaws, has provided a channel for light to get in. Into my life, into the piece itself, and now, through this sharing, into your life.

So, who cares if my handwriting is not conventionally perfect or is untidy, uneven, and even a bit tricky to read? I love the message in those lyrics; I felt that this lovely painting with its torn leaf to be the way to put that message in a concrete form. I mean, really, isn’t life too short for perfect (hand)writing?

PS I no longer collect leaves and trap them in this way. I may collect them, but after a time, I return them to their natural environment. Fallen leaves have their function in the cycles of nature too.

You Can’t Chase Happiness: You Can Only Be Happy

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Sitting down just now at the keyboard (actually to be honest it was 30 minutes ago) I thought I had an idea for a blog post. But, sure enough, the moment I opened a new document, fingers poised on the keys, it went. As in vanished from my mind, disappeared. And what remnant that was left seemed to be taunting me with ‘Why on Earth did you ever think this was a good idea?’

So, what do you think this hermit pilgrim, living the serene monkish life who goes on and on about presence did? Relaxed my poised fingers, closed my eyes, and whispered my mantra as I waited for inspiration to revisit?

Hardly. What I actually did was begin having unhappy thoughts, frustration boiling up: I had really been looking forward to writing that post, and now it’s gone. And all that’s left is this annoying frustration and growing desperation to do something.

Nevertheless, I did in the end manage to calm myself at least a little. I just stopped. Took my hands off the keyboard and just sat. Just sitting is a go to strategy for me as you know.

Thoughts emerged, wandered around my mind, crashed together, one pushing another out of the way.

‘Just typical,’ one of those thoughts ran. ‘I try to do something to make me happy and nothing happens except I make myself miserable’. Next thought: don’t I have a quote somewhere about this? Sure enough, there it was, at the other end of a search of my quote files (I’ve got lots!).

You do not become happy by pursuing happiness.  You become happy by living a life that means something.

Then a quick online search revealed literally dozens of articles, books, similar quotes, podcasts, on and on, telling me the exact same thing. I didn’t know where to start, so I just closed the searches after scanning a few headlines, then sat thinking for a bit on my own, at the keyboard yes, but not poised. More like, well just thinking.

I read somewhere a long time ago that some say the word happiness comes from the verb to happen. Or put another way, happiness is living life so that we are in touch with what’s happening, when it’s happening.

Have you ever noticed that the happiest, most content people are often those who simply get on with whatever life puts before them? Whether it looks to be good or bad?

It seems to me that the pursuit of happiness has become so much more than a lofty turn of phrase; its become an almost obligatory activity to fill ones life with. All this despite those many dozens of articles etc advising against it. (Just as an aside: This says to me that we are swamped by so much information that we hardly have time, energy, or mental space to turn most of that information into knowledge we can use)

So. How do we get past this obligation? How do we get back in touch with what’s happening right now? How do we just get happy from what happens? And, then, how do we get to live a life that means something?

Let me say that I can’t give you the answers: what is meaningful to me might not be for you and vice versa.  But the process is the same for us all.  And it is this:  ask the questions (the ones above).

It’s that simple.  It is enough to ask the questions.  We don’t have to worry about the answers.  The answers will come when the time’s right; its just that sometimes we don’t always notice their arrival.  They sort of sneak up on us!

Whatever answers we come up with, we need to remember that living life fully means living each moment, each thing that happens, as it happens.  It means not being too concerned about what will happen next week or in five minutes time.

This doesn’t mean we don’t make plans or think about the consequences of our actions.  In fact just the opposite is true:  it is by living fully in the moment that we best prepare for the future precisely because the moment is not something that comes and is gone: it’s a flowing thing. The moment is continuous always. No past present future (well except when you have to write stuff, then there’s grammar) Only now.

So, thinking about all this I decided: don’t worry. If no idea for a blog post works, then that’s just what’s happening. Be happy, be content with that, and just move with the ever-flowing moment.

And I’m going to try to remember that everything I do, no matter how mundane it seems, has its own meaning.  There’s no rush to get onto some mythical ‘next thing’. Meanwhile, blog post ideas come when they’re ready, not because I’m chasing them.

peace

Just For Today

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There is a song by George Harrison that I like very much. Actually there are many songs of his that mean a great deal to me. He’s been a kind of mentor or teacher for me since the early 70s. But, having said that, there is something about Just for Today that really does resonate deeply within me. It’s not even one of his ‘biggies’, and was released in 1987 on the album Cloud Nine

In fact, if you read the lyrics of the song. Or even better, listen to George actually doing the song himself, you’ll most likely agree that this is more than a song. This is a refrain, a plea, even a prayer. No ordinary pop song anyway.

If just (for) today
I could try to live through this day only
Not deal with all life’s problems
Just for today

Then, the other verse (there are only two):

If just for tonight
I could feel not sad and lonely
Not be my own life’s problems
Just for one night

How many times have I made these same pleas? I don’t think I’d be able to count them. Of course I’d guess we all have at some time or other (or even quite often, all the time, every day, ahhhhh!!!!!!) wished or prayed for the problems (whatever they may be) to just go away, even for just a day. No, not even a whole day. How about just for a few minutes?

So, I’m not alone then. Still, it’s no consolation is it, to know that we all go through the same wishful thinking to be rid of the same or similar problems? I think, though, in this song George has given us a clue to what we can do to bring ourselves a little more into the present when it comes to the angst we weigh ourselves down with over ‘all life’s problems’.

And actually, he’s suggesting not that we focus fully on the present moment, the micro if you like, which can be tricky at the best of times. He’s given us a bit of a an easier task: Just look at this day only. Perhaps we can better look at a whole day than this ‘moment’ or ‘second’. A day is sort of a macro moment, a bit easier to get hold of.

But, that last little question, about always me being my own life’s problem, that’s what I really try to get to grips with. I am my own life’s problem. The problem is not the family I was born into. It’s not the less than idyllic childhood I endured. It’s not even the bullies I seem to have attracted to myself over many years in far-off school days.

The problem is not even the anxiety that I seem to have been born with, or that’s evolved over time. Nature vs nurture?

And I can’t even say that the problem is the kinds of choices I’ve made about life, work, thinking, and all the rest, over the years.

No. None of this. The problem is me. And, let’s get really trippy here: the problem isn’t even me. It’s the physical manifestation that thinks it’s me and which exists in relationship to the physical world.

So, who is the real me? Who am I? Ah, well, these are the really big questions. Asking these questions is called Self Enquiry. And I think it’s helping me.

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi

Whenever one of those life’s problems, or anxieties pops up I try to remember to ask: ‘To whom is this feeling/thought/memory occuring?’ That answer is (obviously) to me. And then I ask, ‘Who is this me? Who am I?’ Then, for the minutest of tiny moments, it all stops. Sometimes.

You see, I’m not really able to answer that Who am I question. The best I can come up with is a never-ending list of who I’m not, or what I’m not. It’s called Neti Neti: not this, not that. So, if I keep returning to who am I every time one of those ‘I’m not …’ comes up, what happens?

Well, in theory, nothing.  The idea is that asking Who am I stops the mind. It can’t answer. If a mind can’t answer, there can be no thought. And if there is no thought, then mind ceases to exist. (I’m not talking of brain here, but mind. It seems to me that the mind has no existence as a distinct entity of its own. It is more what we could say a ‘place’ that comes into being when thought happens. No thought, no mind.)

This cessation of thought is only a momentary thing. Thoughts soon come barging back (it also seems to me that while mind might not actually exist, it has a way of making its presence known in no uncertain terms). One thing I try to remember that causes me no end of extra thinking, is the fact that if we are not having a thought, then we can’t ever know it. You can’t have a conscious thought that says ‘hey, I’m not thinking now’

I see this Self Enquiry as a way (in a long term, lifetime kind of way) to rid myself of my incessant thinking and the confused (confusing too) and useless thoughts that arise all the time. For me it is, in a sense, a way to become mindless.

In that moment, when thought ceases, there is no pain. There are no questions, and there is no anxiety. There is no dread; no hope even. Basically you can say there is nothing for that tiny moment.

And that’s me, the real me. In that little moment (who can measure the length of a moment?), there is presence, as in I (the real I) am present, right here, right now.

Actually there is no time, as we measure it in the world, in that little moment (or whatever we choose to call it). Perhaps it’s more accurate to call it a state of being.

And it’s a state I’d like to be in more often. Not, as I say, that I’d know I was in it. Only by what you might call the spin-off effects of more calm, more clarity, less anxiety, all that sort of thing. In a way I would call that a state of grace.

All I can say is that it is exactly where and when and how I want to be.

Just for today.

The Ananda Mart is Closed Today

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Hello and welcome dear reader

Almost four years ago now, we spent a couple of months in Bali. For a big portion of that time we based ourselves in a town called Ubud, on a street called Gautama. Yes, indeed, most auspicious.

Anyway, one day I was walking down the street, going somewhere, and for a change without my camera. I passed a small shop that somehow looked unusual. and I stopped to make a photo with my phone.

That’s it: The Ananda Mart is closed today, I remember thinking. In the few weeks we’d been there, I don’t think I’d ever seen it closed before. On most days the man who runs the shop could be found sitting on the front steps. And mostly he’d have his dog for company.

In the early days of our time on Gautama Street, we’d buy bottles of water at the Ananda Mart. Each time I would smile, say hello, and enquire after the shopkeeper’s health. And while he always responded, it was never with what you’d call a friendly smile or a cheery wave. Probably grumpy grunt would be a more accurate way to describe his replies.

You know you’re on Gautama Street when you see the man himself at the corner

And each time I passed the shop, I would say hello. Again on a lucky day I’d get a grunt, but mostly he would say nothing and ignore me. Just as he ignored everyone who passed him and his dog. Eventually after a particularly rude response to me trying to purchase water, I, as they say, took my custom elsewhere.

Often in such situations I have been known to become irritable, angry even, and end up being just as rude (or ruder) than the other person. For some reason, this time I didn’t react that way. Instead I was interested in figuring out why the shopkeeper acted in this way and seemed to be in a world of his own which, from what I could see, he shared only with his dog.

Of course, being the overthinking speculator champion of the galaxy, I made many guesses: he is the owner of the Ananda Mart and is totally over people; being I thought in his 60s, maybe he’s just hanging out till he can retire. Given that the Ananda Mart is only one component of what looks to be a multi-armed business this could be a good guess. He’s one of the family elders, doing his part.

Above the door beneath the name it reads ‘cheap and friendly’. And it’s interesting to check the meaning of Ananda. In Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism it refers to extreme happiness, one of the highest states of being. In Sanatana Dharma philosophy for example, God is sat-chit-ananda or existence, consciousness, bliss.

Now, before I ramble on too long, I will just say that really and truly ‘the real story’ is absolutely none of my business. I suppose what I’m getting at is, rather than dismiss him as a grumpy man in a shop, My reaction to our, shall we call it, our relationship was one of compassion and curiosity. Let’s just say my sense was that the Ananda Mart shopkeeper is perhaps not a happy man.

You see what I mean? I tell you that it’s none of my business, then I tell you how I kept sticking my mind in where it doesn’t belong. Makes me human I guess!

Paramhansa Yogananda, one of the first teachers to bring Yogic philosophy to the so-called West, and the author of Autobiography of a Yogi, says in that book that Ananda is different from the temporary happiness that comes from sense pleasures such as eating and other ‘material pursuits’. He said , too, that Ananda is not the kind of joy that we’d call monotonous and that always stays the same.

Yogananda wrote in Finding the Joy in Life, that Ananda refers to a joy that ‘changes and dances itself in many ways to enthral your mind and keep your attention occupied forever’.

It’s anybody’s guess really isn’t it? Whether our seemingly unhappy and not so friendly shopkeeper, has that kind of joy in his life. And perhaps his aloofness and ‘grumpiness’ is merely an expression of his weariness of the temporary joys of the material word with its emphasis on pleasures of the senses.

Anyway, as I say, it’s none of my business.

Peace to you from the Hermit

Methinks There’s a Whole Lot of Overthinking Going On

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So much anxiety taking me over. Overwhelming all possibility of rational thought. I guess that doesn’t have to be such a bad thing in itself, but along with that often redundant supposedly rational thought, has gone equilibrium, peace of mind, calmness, and silence.

No silence. But a little breakthrough: I’ve told myself (my Self?) I won’t wallow. In this way I am opposing, resisting, the anxiety with discipline, with bravery, and, well, more discipline. So I turned in another direction: I worked on a couple of photographs.

Fantasies both for sure. But that’s Art responding as Art ought isn’t it? Fantasy. Anyway, it works better than anxiety, which of course is also fantasy isn’t it?

So, anyway, I’m resisting. I refuse to give in and allow the anxiety to take over and dictate my behaviour, tell me how to and what to speak, and exhaust me.

Yes, it is exhausting. I always say that resistance is never ever futile, but it sure is tiring. And there are other ways: Just chant. That’s the thing I tell myself a lot, just keep focus on the mantra, and all will be well.

Mind you at the moment I am having an atrocious period of trouble with my devotional practice. Forgetting the Divine seems to be the norm these last days – even as I sit preparing for daily practice.

It’s kind of a catch 22 thing I think sometimes: If I can chant more then I can help myself achieve a little more equilibrium, relieve the anxieties a little. But because I overthink those anxieties and all the intricacies of every thought, I forget to chant.

So, it does indeed look like discipline and self-control are the keys here. There’s a phrase, a kind of motto I like: One thing, God alone. Call it right living, or peace, or calm, or mindfulness, the Divine; it’s all the same thing. That’s where my focus has to be above all else.

Actually, not wanting to risk overthinking here, but when you do think about it, focusing my life on what is good and right; what is calm and peaceful; what it true, well, that’s the whole of it isn’t it? I mean that takes care of all the mundane stuff almost in an automatic way.

It seems that in just about every one of my posts I end up talking about presence. In this case, I think presence might have to at least sometimes be worked on. I mean to say that the discipline and self-control I was talking about, needs to centre around being present.

In other words, as my anxious mind wanders off on its fiendish ways, I am to just pay attention, turn away a little, put the focus back on the good, on God, and remember.

I really do feel (actually let’s be honest, let’s say it how it is), I think that I am always simply overthinking. Or thinking way too much, too often, anyway.

And along with my mind, my typing fingers can run away with themselves if I let them. So, I’ll just say see you next time!

Put Me in My Place. Please

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Reverence the place and learn from what you see


Coming across this note last night, I was stumped. I coudln’t think where it had come from, where I’d seen it; nothing at all came to mind. And an online search just now failed to turn up anything either. I mean I must have read it somewhere. Or is it possible it came from me?

Of course it’s all the same: there is only one source. At any rate, it’s an injunction one can relate to anywhere, any place. It’s surely about presence?

And about learning from all that is to be seen (heard, felt, intuited, known) in whatever place one is in now. I mean, the place I’m in now. I am here and it is now.

I’m reminded of the faith affirmation (is it a prayer?) that seems to have been written for this particular hermit pilgrim:

As a a hermit, I am a pilgrim dependent on a pure faith that I am exactly where God wold have me be now.

Sometimes I think that too much thinking about and angst over places other than the one I’m actually in right now, is a sure and certain way to resist and reject any reverencing of the place I’m in, not to mention what’s to be learned or gifted from the experience of being here.

And of course that angst, worry, wishful thinking, or whatever, comes with its own issues of distraction, and of a taking away of one’s Self from the present, the notion that here and now is the only time and place that exists.

A poem of mine I came across the other day while looking for something else says it all quite nicely. This poem is called Transcendental Injunctions, and it’s a rap on presence, about being here, and being now.

The central action describes how my senses can take me away from that here and now: I describe my habit of smelling my Bhagavad Gita (yes, as in putting my nose into the pages of the little book and inhaling the aroma of those pages) and how that takes me back to the shores of the River Ganges; another place, another time.

Anyway, allow me to share the final verse, which speaks of one such occasion:

Then, there is a voice:
I hear it with the ear of my heart:
There is no place to go.
What you seek is within.
There’s nothing to find:
God’s kingdom is within.

I suppose there is nothing left to say. I am here, and it is now

Peace to you from me

Walk In The Waters of Life

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Since I launched this blog (a whole month and a bit ago already), I’ve had an idea for a post. A short, spontaneous, chatty but informative little piece on my favourite name and form of the Divine Feminine (often referred to as the Goddess): Saraswati.

Well, as the keenly observant among you will have noticed, no such post has appeared. Procrastination in overdrive you might say. Or perhaps it was that the Goddess just wasn’t keen on me doing the post about her?

You see, I did some research, made a ton of notes, and discovered all kinds of fascinating things and I just felt I wanted to share what I’d learned. Somehow, though, the idea didn’t go any further. I’ve thought about it from time to time, but still, nothing has come. Then, a couple of days ago, I came across my notes and reread what I’d discovered.

Now, here’s a key moment: as I reread those notes, I thought (paraphrasing here), ‘I really must post this. It’s all so fascinating and would interest a lot of people and even be helpful.’ Something like that anyway. Yet, still, it is not written.

So, despite my notes seemingly begging for my attention, I guess that maybe it’s not the time. Now my notes are safely tucked into a few nice little folders within a larger folder somewhere in the depths of my harddrive.

All that struggle; all that thinking and fretting over what was supposed to be a short, spontaneous couple of hundred words on a subject I love. Still, the episode has got me thinking about intuition and how it can disguise itself – with our help – as procrastination. And vice versa.

Yes, I know, obvious question: how can we ever know the difference? When are we inventing all kinds of reasons for putting something off, and when is it really intuition trying to guide us?

Well, it’s complicated. As creatures able to reason, we are always ready to come up with arguments for and against, to think endlessly and agonize over the smallest and most trivial details while ignoring the big stuff. Really, in my case that’s all there is to it: I just think too much.

Sticking to the Saraswati blog post episode (a catchy title don’t you think? Watch out for a post headed up ‘The Saraswati Blog Post Episode‘), I don’t recall why I didn’t just get right to writing it. It might have been any number of things: a perceived lack of time; a promise to self to ‘give it some more thought’; a resistance to the actual ‘labour’ required. Who knows?

Or, was it more that, while the idea was a good one, I just wasn’t feeling it? Maybe the timing just wasn’t right? The problem is that sometimes an intuition comes in a flash of knowing – with a capital K – that you can’t possibly miss.

Then, other times, it creeps up so slowly and quietly that it gets drowned out and ignored as our monkey mind takes over with its endless arguments for and against, pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages,

The lesson I was given here was this: What is going to get done, will get done; what is not going to get done, won’t. Sounds simple really, but so often we make it more complicated with our overthinking, our coming up with excuses. We procrastinate.

Then, at other times, we just dive in the deep end, flowing with the intuition. It may be right or it may be wrong, but it’s done. Actually, I am trying to realise that there is no right or wrong about a decision made: it just is as it is. Easy to type, hard to do.

Flowing. That’s a good word actually. Saraswati, along with many other characteristics, embodies flow. As in the flow of the river of life. She’s the Goddess of all things creative as well as any activity that helps one to discover the essence of self.

So, flash or gradual realisation; right or wrong; left or right, be the river: flow with what happens or doesn’t happen. Don’t fret about the twists and turns, the ebb and flow of tides, the rocks in the stream that force us to flow around or over, or to change direction completely. In 1946 the poet Jorge Luis Borges wrote an essay about time. In that essay, among other things he says:

Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river (emphasis is mine)

Jean Luis Borges A New Refutation of Time 1946

Reading that quote reminded me of a song that I’ve been humming on and off for a very very long time (hint: I saw the movie when it first came out).

The river flows, it flows to the sea.
Wherever that river goes, that’s where I want to be.
Flow river flow.

Peace from me to you.

PS: Thanks to my memory for giving me these lyrics from The Ballad of Easy Rider. Or was it actually Saraswati whispering in my ear?

Karma Yoga & Contemplative Living: Creating Good Vibrations

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Greetings friends

Not so long ago I read The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. And I have to say it’s what I like to call a ‘real book’: written beautifully with an interesting and deeply engrossing story, full of detail, symbolism, thought-provoking ideas, and at the end of the day just plain and simply a delight to spend time with.

I won’t go into what the book is about here, but for the sake of this post, I will just tell you that it is about a mythical European province populated by an elite group of scholars of all sorts who have as their main cultural, social, and even political focus, the game of the book’s title.

Anyway, what I want to talk about here today is something said by the book’s main character, who in the course of the story becomes the master of the game and therefore a hugely influential figure.

This character is having a conversation with a friend. And he’s talking about the way this elite group conducts itself in the world. How it helps shape the country and history. He says to his friend:

We do not intend to flee from the vita activa (the active life) to the vita contemplativa (the contemplative life), nor vice versa, but to keep moving forward while alternating between the two, being at home in both, partaking of both.

Now, what struck me about this quote is that only a couple of days before I’d read a verse in the Bhagavad Gita that I felt said almost exactly the same thing. Krishna says to the warrior Arjuna:

Contemplative life and Karma Yoga are one and the same and takes one to the same destination. One who perceives this sees things as they are.

Bhagavad Gita Ch 5 Verse 5

Karma Yoga is usually defined as taking action without desiring reward for oneself or being attached to the fruits of the action. It is very much the taking of selfless action that is for the benefit or others. However, because as living beings in the world, we are always taking action and actually can’t not be acting, Karma Yoga is also described as being simply the yoga of action.

The Contemplative Life is most often ascribed to monks and nuns, and others living a life of deep thought, study, meditation and prayer. But any of us can lead a contemplative life because such a life is about being mindful, it’s about considering the consequences of our actions.

Such a life is lived slowly and thoughtfully and would be called ‘spiritual’ by some people. We could also call it an examined life. It is about cultivating an inner life, a life of mindfulness in all aspects of our lives.

And living in a contemplative manner helps create more peaceful communities; people living in this way project a calm that can have profound impacts on others. Such people help to set up what some us like to think of as good vibrations

Of course it’s one thing to talk about the Contemplative Life versus the active life in a novel and in an ancient book of scripture. It’s a whole other thing to be trying to figure out what sort of life we should be living in the world here and now, with the urgency of climate change, wars, despotic leaders, increasing poverty and the rest. Or is it?

Is it better for us to take action by protesting, joining activist groups, writing letters? Or is better that we live apart in some way, spending time contemplating, meditating, ‘praying’?

To me it seems there’s a real struggle going on right now between these two points of view. There are those who will tell us that it is too late for ‘thoughts and prayers’, and then there are those who say, we can’t achieve world peace (in its many facets), until we have attained inner peace on an individual level, and that the only way to reach that state is to meditate, live a contemplative life, and slow down.

Obviously, and you already knew I was going to say this, the two are not mutually exclusive; both approaches are required and serve their own purposes. There is no dilemma; there is no conflict. And above all, neither approach is superior to the other.

Many of us are suited to an active life; some of us less so. Some of us are suited to silence and to quiet reflection and study, some of us aren’t. And oftentimes if we try to act contrary to our true natures, then we have great difficulty in achieving anything. And we don’t help anyone when that happens.

Karma Yoga or the Contemplative life. An active life or a life of silence and contemplation. Only you are able to know which is for you. Of course there’s always a crossover to some degree or other. Being fully active and engaged in the world, doesn’t stop one from spending time in a contemplation, and perusing one’s life mindfully.

Equally, leading a totally or partially contemplative life doesn’t mean you aren’t taking action in the world. Obviously you are. For me, the contemplative life is a way to find some personal peace, to create those good vibrations I mentioned, and it allows me to connect with others of like mind, who are working for the highest good. Those living in the invisible community I think I’ve mentioned some other time.

Balance. The key is to find the balance that expresses you and your nature best. So, take some action right now and begin contemplating!