October 2008

image credit:The Jamoker

Happy Thanksgiving! Today we celebrate Thanksgiving here in Canada, giving thanks for a good harvest. It feels so satisfying as I walk through the garden, harvesting the last zucchinis, beans and tomatoes. As I survey the wind blown, sodden bean trellises and withering plants, I am reminded that Fall is here. It has been a bountiful summer, and there’s still lots of food outside that will be available through the winter: kale, swiss chard, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbages, beets, and turnips. The pantry is full with winter squash, carrots, potatoes, canned apple sauce, and canned peaches. Yes we do have a lot to be grateful for, food for the body and happy gardening memories for the soul.

It is so easy to take for granted the food that we eat, that nourishes us and sustains life. To witness  the life cycle of the food I eat is a blessing in itself; the digging of the soil, sowing the tiny seeds, coddling the seedlings, weeding, watering and feeding the young plants, killing slugs, spraying aphids and finally harvesting luscious fruit and vegetables. The life cycle of the vegetable and flower garden is a miracle that happens every year, and yet every time, I am amazed; from a tiny seed, the most delicious vegetables and fragrant, beautiful flowers.

The garden is a wonderful metaphor for our own life’s journey:

• choose what you want to nurture yourself with
• plan and create a space for what you want to grow
• prepare the ground, build up the soil; the foundations for healthy growth
• sow seeds with the hope that they come to fruition, provide the best growing conditions and trust in nature
• lovingly nurture the seedlings; giving enough food, water, warmth and light
• provide a safe space for healthy growth, guard against pests and disease
• after you do all you can, sit back, admire the plants and let nature do its thing
• harvest the fruits of your labor and give thanks for all your blessings

This Thanksgiving I am grateful for the bountiful gifts of Mother Earth; food, air and water for my nourishment, shelter for my body, and beauty for the nurturing of my soul. I am grateful for my health and well-being and for the privilege of engaging in the spiritual healing journey. I give thanks for all the simple joys in my life; my home, my garden, my family, my friends, all my teachers, my great books, my great music and most especially myself! I thank you readers and fellow bloggers for your continued encouragement and support.

I cherish all these simple blessings, they can be taken away at any moment. The outer trappings I can easily let go of as they come and they go, but the basic needs of human life, the love and nurturing of family and friends, the teachings of the spiritual masters that have taught me how to live well; these are my authentic wealth. I honor all these gifts that I have been blessed with and pray that I may always remember to be grateful.

image credit: Eddi 07

In Part 4 of this series on Living With Paradox we discussed the dynamics of change and its importance in the integrity of the harmonious co-existence of all universal phenomena. The previous series on Letting Go is a preamble to this final post in this series on Living With Paradox. I highly recommend that you read this series also. In the previous post I talked about the perfection of imperfection. As I recap these two series to see where this post wants to go, I notice that there is some order to it! These posts have a life of their own, I am often amazed at what gets written, it is often not planned and intentional. It is sometimes daunting, when my mind goes into scarcity mode and I wonder what can I write about next! When I practice letting go, there are no end of themes to write about.

Transformation and the alchemy of change

In the series on Letting Go we looked at control and how to let go; encountering fear which is at the root of our control issues; we looked at what fear is and how to deal with fear. In this series on Living With Paradox, we looked at letting go of denial of our brokenness; the nature of duality of the collective unconscious and our own duality; the effects of denial of our duality; and the dynamics of change and imperfection. In this final post of the series we will look at the place of groundlessness which is a pivotal place, the space between the known and the unknown.

I remember a time when I was making a life changing decision and I was in that place of groundlessness. I had decided to go for it and I was negotiating a contract. It was the critical moment of commitment. If I entered into the contract, it meant no turning back. I was scared! I had come to a place in my life when I could not bear to be where I was, and yet the vast unknown that stretched before me, loomed ominous and shrouded. I had one foot in the grave so to speak. It was death of the ego for sure! I had no choice but to act. It is not comfortable to be standing with one foot in the grave, you just have to let go and surrender to the outcome. Surprisingly, when I signed the contract, the feeling of elation was tremendous. How is it possible to feel elation when you are committing yourself to total annihilation? Dying to all that is familiar and comfortable?

I distinctly remember the moment of fully letting go as I signed the contract. It was like part of me stepped back and was witnessing the whole scene. All my fear vanished in that moment, followed by the feeling of clarity, stillness, deep peace and elation. This apparently is the experience of transformation, when you totally let go, die to the old, and surrender to the unknown. It is a moment of ecstasy when you allow yourself to be supported by the universe, when you let go of your ego fixation. This experience was a glimpse of the greater purpose of our lives; to engage in constant surrender to the unknown; to let go of our ego defenses and embrace change, the impermanent nature of all reality.

Fear of the unknown is what keeps us from entering this place of groundlessness which is what we must essentially do, in order to enter into the process of transformation. We have to be willing to surrender the ego and let go into the alchemy of change which leads to the greater potential that we seek. The paradoxical nature of transformation is summed up in this quote by Herman Hesse:

“The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.”

image credit: Inalaf

The perfection of imperfection

One of my hobbies is to work with watercolors in a technique called Wet on Wet. For me it is entertaining as well as an inspiring spiritual experience. It is an exercise in letting go to whatever wants to happen and acceptance of the outcome. There is no control, you have an idea of what you want but the paint and wet paper will just do its thing, and however it turns out in its imperfection is perfect, and it is always beautiful. This is a lot like life.

In Part 3 of this series on Living With Paradox, the importance of accepting imperfection to maintain the rhythm of change and creativity towards wholeness was discussed. I once read somewhere, “Life is a work in progress.” I like this attitude! To me, this means that whatever we do is open-ended, it’s never going to end until life ends for us. To create something perfectly means that no more creativity can take place. If what is created is already perfect, then perfection implies an end. No more room for change.

One of my teachers always punctuated what she completed with, “Good enough for now!” This simple statement is an affirmation that you have done your best for who you are and what you know, at the present time. It gives permission to accept that whatever you have done is perfect as it is for right now. Maybe later on, when you are a little wiser and more capable, you may be able to do things differently. This permission statement takes a whole lot of stress out of trying to be perfect.

Perfection is an illusion.  I can hear you saying, “But what about athletes for instance, who are always striving to break their records, isn’t that OK?” Since we can only do what we are capable of, striving for perfection is to reach the unattainable in the present. An athlete can visualize a probable future in which she is breaking her present record and together with training she can actualize that capability in the future. She would be doing what she is capable of from her growth and learning in the NOW of her future. She can then say, “Good enough for now!”

The Taoist Taiji symbol represents an ancient Chinese understanding of unity in duality, a symbol of how things work. It is the co-existence of polarities. The outer circle represents the entirety of perceivable phenomena, while the black and white shapes within the circle represent the interaction of two principles or aspects, called “yin” (black) and “yang” (white). Yin is passive in nature and Yang is active. Each of them contains an element or seed of the other, and they cannot exist without each other. The Yin and yang aspects are in dynamic equilibrium. As one aspect declines, the other increases to an equal degree. This symbol represents constant change which is the nature of all phenomena in life.

All life is impermanent, it is always changing. There is no stasis, no perfection! Trying to be perfect is to reach for the impossible. We are doomed to be imperfect! Only the gods are perfect; at least that’s what indigenous crafts people think, by intentionally adding a flaw to their finished work. Living with imperfection is to embrace life in all its changing aspects, to live with paradox in the ever changing dance of creation!

To be continued.

image credit: Oxfam International

I watched the debate of the US vice-presidential candidates and was inspired with the topic for this post. The answers to two questions the moderator asked, were revealing of the candidates’ characters. The questions were to the effect of: “What is your Achilles heel?” and, “Have you had to change a long held view to accommodate a change in circumstances?” One candidate admitted to his character flaws, the other evaded the question. One candidate narrated an incident where he had a change of mind and the other said that they were always able to work with others and come to a compromise.

I think that being able to admit one’s imperfections is a noble quality, it speaks of a humble attitude and a flexible nature. Accepting our imperfections is an important step in maintaining the rhythm of change and creativity towards our greater potential, as was mentioned in Part 2 of this series on Living with Paradox.

What drives us to be perfection addicts?

Television and glossy magazine ads endorse the perfect mother, body,  home, career, car, etc. Media ads prey on our vulnerability to being seen as ‘bad.’ We all want to be good people. At least to look good. Our society’s values demonstrate to us that good people are rewarded, happy, loved and safe; safe from rejection; safe from failure; safe from despair. So here again, like our control issues, our perfection issues boils down to fear. You can also say that perfection is the ultimate control.

What is the effect of addiction to perfection?

Many people lead stressful lives, trying to keep up the image of perfection. Having to uphold a perfect persona is burdensome, an energy drain and crazy making. We are always on our guard to do the ‘right’ thing, dependent on what other people think of us and forever having to wear the mask of our perfection. Once we get on the perfection ladder, it skyrockets out of proportion and before we know it, even we cannot maintain the dizzying heights that we have set for ourselves. For some people it takes a major wake-up call such as a terminal disease before they allow themselves a breather.

We aspire to show the world only the good side of our duality, while the dark side we deny, repress or purge. We all carry within our DNA the archetypes of polarity of the collective unconscious: the sinner and the saint, the fool and the sage, the beggar and the king, the coward and the hero etc. When we choose to portray only the positive face of our dual nature and deny the dark side, we are in danger of having the negative aspect of our duality erupt in another area of our lives. This is sometimes the case in serious illnesses and working on the emotional aspect of the disease can be a cure in itself. In Brugh Joy’s book, Avalanche: Heretical Reflections on the Dark and the Light he suggested that this is the case even on a global level where violence and chaos erupts in some corners of the world, counter-balancing the energy of mass consciousness. He said, “We must not forget that we are all in this together and that duality and its consequences are aspects of life’s Wholeness.”

Living with paradox is essential to the integrity of the individual and the masses. In the spiritual healing journey we are learning how to balance the polarities of our human nature and through acceptance of our duality, come to know the wholeness of our greater potential.

To be continued.

Related post:

The Addiction To Idealism

image credit: jonrawlinson

While I was living in India, a friend  had just returned from a trip, visiting sacred sites around the country. She offered me some water that she had collected from the Ganges River. She offered it to me as a very precious gift and indicated that I should drink it! I thought it was okay for her to drink it, since she was Indian and immune to the hosts of parasites and germs that can make a foreigner like me very sick. I did not want to be impolite and refuse her gift, so rationalizing that it was a small quantity, I decided to go for it, telling my immune system that this was holy water and it was really OK!

A great example of living with paradox is the phenomenon of the Ganges River, or Mother Ganga, as the river is referred to by Hindus. The river is worshiped as the living form of the goddess and it is considered very auspicious to bathe in it and great good fortune to be cremated on the banks of the river. On any day, while remains of burnt bodies and ashes float down the river, people can be seen bathing and drinking handfuls of the sacred water in their morning ablutions, as well as brushing their teeth and washing their clothes. The water of the river is considered to be purifying, and its purifying quality has been confirmed by science. For some unexplained reason, the water has an extraordinary ability to retain oxygen and kills cholera and dysentery.

In our own lives, paradox is essential to the functioning of both the individual and the group. In his book Avalanche: Heretical Reflections on the Dark and the Light, Brugh Joy MD suggested that there is a collective force field in all groupings whether it is a family, city, religious or political group. Some individuals live out the good and ‘acceptable’ side for the collective, while some individuals live out the dark and disowned side for the collective. Most of us live somewhere in between. He pointed out that desiring permanent peace is a need for control and that life is not controllable, that we essentially need the forces of both peace and chaos to maintain the rhythm of change and creativity to reach the greater potential of the collective. This may be true for both the individual and the group. As individuals we may have the same forces at work in our psyche.

Paradox then is the essential element that enables us to aspire to our highest potential. In order to experience wholeness, as I mentioned in  Part 1 of this series, we must accept and embrace all facets of the truth of who we are. The truth is never black or white, it comes in many shapes and forms. We are a bundle of contradictions, the dark and the light, in a dance of creation that is continuously seeking to exist in harmony amidst chaos and therefore as a unified whole.

To be continued.

image credit: bohman

The Oxford Dictionary defines paradox as a ” self-contradictory, essentially absurd statement; a person or thing conflicting with preconceived notions of what is reasonable or possible.”

I was at a dinner party when the conversation turned into a juicy discussion on the nature of paradox. The subject was Christ nailed to the cross, the greatest of paradoxes. Some people did not get that the person who brought up the subject was trying to express that this is an archetypal symbol. There is no way to understand it. One person said that the Crucifixion is an example of the human response, to condemn what we do not understand. Another person offered that if someone can be blamed, then the paradox can be solved.

It is essential to accept paradox and not try to fix everything, because it is impossible. Trying to fix everything is to be in denial of our shadow aspect. It allows us to continue to think that we have rational control of our lives.The great Christian mystic, St John of the Cross, called it “The dark night of the soul.” It is the place of groundlessness I referred to in a previous post. If we want to make progress in our healing journey, it is necessary to stay in this place when it is presented to us. We have to embrace the dark shadow of our psyche in order to experience our light. This is the theme of all mythology. In Paradox & Healing by Michael Greenwood MD and Peter Nunn MD it states, “As we are all sitting outside Eden, wanting to return to the state of wholeness it represents but unable to do so, what are we to do? One way out is to acknowledge our denial—we cannot expect to be whole if we persist in disowning parts of ourselves…”

Pema Chodron, a Buddhist teacher tells us that we need to practice Loving Kindness to honor ourselves and embrace the shadow side.The paradox is that in order to experience our light we cannot deny the dark aspect and we cannot indulge it either. It is in letting it be present and witnessing it, that we can let it go. Then there is a spaciousness that allows us to experience our light which is always present, even in the face of our darkest moments. Trying to run from our dark shadow side, only keeps us in a state of suffering. We condemn ourselves to living limited lives, with no awareness of our greater potential. It is only when we go through the “dark night of the soul,” that we become established in the truth of who we really are, the light of consciousness.

Facing fear, being present with what is, not trying to fix our problems or wishing they would go away, is to live with paradox. It is in acceptance of our brokenness that we can come to the wholeness of who we truly are. By being present, we open to our compassionate aspect, which loves anyway, and bring healing to our broken parts. If we struggle with our discomfort, we are in denial of those very parts that are asking for love and attention. When we realize that we have no alternative but to be present to our experience and are willing to enter into our pain, transformation takes place. In surrendering, we touch the space of pure consciousness, where all our thoughts and expectations dissolve. This transformation is a threat to the ego. We need to let go in order to experience our greatest potential, the truth of who we really are. This is the crux of the paradox of healing and we must live with it.

To be continued.

image credit: alicepopkorn

We are certainly being challenged these days to keep our equanimity with all the news of the US financial downturn, and growing uncertainty in the world political situation in general. How easy it can be to  catastrophize and succumb to worry and despair in this climate of unrest. But it is in these very times that we need to walk the talk of our spirituality. When life is peaceful and everything is coming up roses around us, it is easy to expound high philosophical truths. Can we still see the goodness and beauty in life when it all threatens to come crashing down?

Listening to our hearts, focusing on what is truly important, on what never loses value, is the gift we can give to ourselves and to those around us. We create our reality by what it is that we focus on. We can choose to focus on scarcity, scandal and greed and keep ourselves in anger and blame, or we can choose to focus on what we can do to help ourselves and each other.These times call for us to practice letting go, to do what we need to and to surrender the rest. We have no control of the economic crisis, but we can choose to trim the fat off our spending and live within our budgets. We do what we have control of, and then let go to the winds of fate.

At The Soaring Impulse Blog, there is a beautiful poem, The Mask and the Music. Maithri, the author portrays so beautifully how to love anyway, never mind the gloom and doom sayers. In every age and time, there have been voices in the wilderness, extolling the beauty and the love that resides in the human spirit. Nurturing words from these messengers of love, soothe us in our darkest hours, so that no matter how hopeless the outer circumstances, we are reminded to turn inside, to the inner sanctuary of our tender caring. It is in these very times that we get to really savor and appreciate the peace, the love, the equanimity and the beauty of spending time with ourselves. When we have no choice, when the outer is all chaos, turning within is the very balm to soothe our restless souls. My friends, let us come home to Being, let us come home to our own hearts, let us come home to loving anyway!

Special thanks to Alice of alicepopkorn for this exquisite photo, “Trust.” Visit her blog here: Creativity

image credit:misserion

After the long winded series on Letting Go, you might be ready for a good laugh. Here is a link to it, courtesy of Alexys at Soul Meets World. Enjoy! )

image credit:pasotraspaso

In the last post, part 4 in this series on letting go, we looked at fear as the underlying cause of our control issues and defined what fear really is. In this post we will explore how to deal with fear, so we can keep letting go and live more fully and with ease.

Letting go implies more than relaxation, it means that we have to become comfortable with the challenges in our own lives and in the environment around us. One of my teachers points out, that as long as we are in this human body with an ego, we will experience loss, because of the nature of impermanence of this physical reality. We will experience fear and suffering as a result of this continuous loss we encounter.

Pema Chodron a Buddhist teacher, calls this place of fear and suffering, a place of groundlessness. It is where you feel shaky, uncertain, with nothing to hold on to. It is the place of the unknown when you encounter change or any form of loss. This is fear and you cannot get rid of it, you meet it and get to know it. It is supportive to have a spiritual practice such as meditation to help you keep your equanimity at these times. The tools of meditation, such as focusing on your breath, and witnessing your thoughts, are allies during this phase of the journey. When you make friends with this place, that is when you begin to learn the art of letting go. This place is so scary, why would you want to make friends with it, when society offers us a myriad of enticing masks to wear and identities to get lost in, so we don’t have to face our fear? If we don’t make friends with these scary places, we will be forever hiding and trying to out run the boogeyman. This is exhausting and cyclical. Aren’t you tired of running? I am. Wouldn’t you rather live your truth, uplift yourself and uplift others?

So what does letting go look like in practice? For me it is when you do whatever you can to help yourself with the challenges you have, to the best of your ability. It does not mean, letting go of your responsibilities and saying, “the universe will take care of it!” It does not mean that you will be living in crisis all the time. It means, knowing that you have done all you can do, you can relax and allow grace to unfold your life as it should. You let go of worrying and indulging in depression about your situation, and trust that your highest good and the good for all, will manifest. When you are not worrying and indulging in negative thoughts, you open to the spaciousness of Being. You experience your inner joy in the midst of all your challenges. You are not wishing for it all to go away, so you can be happy. You are already experiencing your joy from within. You live with what is. Some things can’t be solved. We learn to live with paradox and enjoy the nature of being.