Early November, I was sitting on a West Village barstool a block from my apartment where I’ve parked a dozen times. Next to me was my newly befriended sweetheart of a neighbor as we sipped into #2 of 501 promised and future mutually contracted cocktails. My conversation suddenly halted as my head jutted toward the speakers, quickly and involuntarily, like a puppy’s face distracted by a dangling slice of salami. Over the sound system in the crowded joint came “Starlight,” a stray 2002 electronica song.
He looked at me quizzically and I explained,
“I’m sorry, that’s so bizarre… I LOVE this song—used to play it all the time and then hadn’t heard it in years. I rediscovered it this week, played it at my workshop and have been jogging to it all week. I can’t believe they’re playing it right now.”
“That’s weird.” He replied.
I think the “weird” might have been a reference to my sudden onset over-enthusiasm for the song, rather than the coincidence.
However, it was not weird or a coincidence, it was synchronicity. That seemingly random song was not random, it was a wink from the world.
I am super into signs. We can dismiss that as yet another quirky trait of the already off-center Margaret, but I posit that when we are open to more, we get more.
Synchronicity. Jung coined the term and defined it as “meaningful coincidences.” He called signs underlying psychic structures, meaning that’s the way our mind organizes them to make sense.
I used to look at synchronicity as a thumbs-up from the world saying: you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. But along that vein of larger theories, if we’re always exactly where we’re supposed to be, then now I prefer to view them as a wink from the universe, telling me, “right on honey, this direction, keep moving this way…”
The more tapped in we are, the more the synchronicities happen. When you’re in a groove, and they come at you like a rush of tennis balls from one of those automatic machines, it’s delightful. The synchronicities start as small little signs, but when they get to be big things—meeting the precise right person at the right time for a next step in your business, getting information you need exactly when you want it, the “meet-cute” that shows up in real life, those are the juicy bits, when you’re in the flow and it’s effortless.
If we pay attention, life will give us these little moments of revelation. A synchronicity is on one level a cellular connection with that thing and therefore it’s a like a peek into a oneness with it.
Think of a conversation with a good friend, an advertising pitch or even a round of great flirting. Aren’t we hooked, enamored when a tidbit is referenced from a previous conversation or experience? We feel a connection when someone pays attention—it shows they care to notice the small stuff. We have the same ability to connect to ourselves this way, and in turn, connect with the larger scope of our lives.
I wrote this all two months ago and never finished my thoughts on this subject. This morning I awoke to an email from my bestie recounting a story to me, and this was the synchronicity it seems I was waiting for in order to complete this post.
This is a word-for-word paste from his email, although the names have been changed, and a friendly warning… this is about as capital “W,” Woo, that we can get with this concept:
The email:
“My cousin told me this story today. (We’ll call him Fred here.)
So, about 21 years ago Fred checked into Betty Ford for severe alcohol and cocaine addiction. By about day two he was in a total spiral. He was withdrawal-ing big time and was in the midst of throes of depression and hopelessness you and I could hardly imagine. (Fred’s coke and booze abuse made me look like a nun.) So, without any idea what to do he walks into the meditation room at Betty Ford.
He's not sure why he led himself there, but that's where he ends up and so he decides to try and meditate. It does not go well. Mind is going a mile a minute. But in a brief and exceedingly desperate moment he prays to God and what he said was a total surprise to him as it came out of his mouth.
He asked God to please show him a sign that everything would be okay. He had never felt that vulnerable and frankly never put enough stock in the idea of God to believe signs were even possible or valid. But sure enough he said it, and about ten minutes later he was struck by an incredible sight.
A little white dove flew down and landed right at the window of the meditation room, sat there for a second, then took off.
Fred had seen his sign.
It was the beacon of light and strength he used the next 28 days to get through rehab, and his talisman for faith the next ten or so years. But as his life went and other factors started to contribute to his new path, he very gently let go of the memory of the dove that day and collected new synchronistic moments that kept his faith strong.
Fast-forward 20 years.
Fred is in Palm Springs at Anthony Robbins newest weeklong seminar. He's sitting in a room with about 200 other people being led by Anthony Robbins in a meditation created by Ananda Giri and given to A.R. The meditation was deep and intense and it took the meditators on a kind of journey.
Fred said after about ten minutes he was in another place all together. He was letting go and just going on the ride. A little ways into the guided med, AR told the participants to feel as if they were flying, and to turn themselves into birds and to fly high and soar.
Fred says the images and sensations he's feeling at this point are completely out of his control. He's doing nothing but Being and he pretty much is the bird. At which point he turns into a dove, a white dove, who then finds himself flying over the desert, then towards a huge white building, where he then flies towards a window, lands on a sill, looks into the window and sees himself 21 years ago in the meditation room at Betty Ford looking haggard and scared, where he tells his 26 year old self that everything is going to be okay.
He was the dove that showed up at the window that day at Betty Ford.
He said he felt like he completely transcended time at that moment. The meditation dove was happening at the exact same time as the real dove, 21 years prior. And he experienced both perspectives. They were both him. He says he feels like he saw the innerworking of a synchronicity.”
I mean, dudes, c’mon… that story is ridic!! When something like that happens it is a giant puzzle piece that can offer us a completeness and connectedness to life that is inexplicably gracious.
Noticing the small synchronicities is the training ground for the big stuff. It’s the countless drills before you step up to the free throw line in the game.
I’m purposely flippant in these posts to underline the fact that there is no separation between anything holy or unholy, big or small, mundane or epic. It’s all the same thing; in these examples, size does not matter. Ok, a house music song on a neighborhood barstool is not as monumental as the two-decade long dove saga, but the attention is the same thing.
The point is, to be open.
To question.
To consider.
Because if a person is not open to having some kind of synchronicity within their lives, then you know what? It won’t happen.
You think that’s dumb and looney or hokey or impossible? Well, then you’re right. That’s not gonna happen for ya. Life reflects to you the way you want it to; the way you look at it is how things show up.
So maybe we won’t have some all-encompassing, blockbuster twenty year dove parallel synchronicity, but do we really want to cut off the possibility that something like that might be able to happen, somehow, someday, if not to us, at least for someone?
Today, keep your ears and eyes open… It doesn’t need to be huge, it can be something seemingly innocuous and simple, but pay attention and follow the thread; you never know what small thing can give you a glimpse into yourself… give it a try; after all, tis the season.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
surfing the semantics of surrender
I’m not sure how much this is solely an American thing or if it is universally, innately part of our nature, but man oh man, we love flash. We want it to be a limited time offer, and we want to be in on the deal.
And I am not excluding myself from this, by any means. As you can see, I like my woo to be all funny, sexed up, downtown, sharp and sassy. The Bhagavad Gita is an enormous, gorgeous wealth of information, but I think I’ve fallen asleep reading it more times than not.
People get very excited about when something is marketed as "special." This little deeksha/blessing thing I have been doing has been every week, Wednesday nights, for four years. Sometimes two people have shown up, sometimes there’ve been 30. Once I had an impromptu, accidental, paint-the-town-red-bender the night before and I woulda paid my checking account balance to not show, and on any mid-summer’s eve I’d be perky and pretty in hot pink lipstick and a strapless floral sundress, but whatever my mood, I'd get there. The consistency of showing up is training from my Ashtanga practice where dedication is venerated more than progress or ability; as my yoga Guruji always said, “Practice and all is coming.”
Although weekly gatherings have been available for years to our NY community, this summer we had a “special” guest in town, and on a moment’s notice, on the July 4th holiday, 30 people found and made the time to cram into a midtown apartment and meet this man… that day some complained they wished there were more opportunities to get together in the city. (Um, there were.) Our tendency is to show up when we think it’s special, rather than with a more boring, unwavering practice.
So this week there was a little conference call with two recently awakened people who are now being shuttled around the country sharing their profound wisdom, ‘cause people want a taste of that. No, that’s inaccurate. They don’t want a taste; they want it all. They want freedom. Sugar, I want it all... Who doesn’t?
In this recent wave of enthusiasm, and a scrambling community hastening to share the sages, there was a last minute online talk available to be watched live one evening of the awakened guests. On the right hand side of the web browser was a simultaneous live chat.
First the talk was delayed, as the speakers had yet to come to screen.
The side bar chat hubbub read something like this:
“I don’t have video? Do you have video?”
“There’s no sound on mine.”
“Who is that person… have they started yet?”
“It says max number of users reached… help!”
“I’m so disappointed, I really wanted to see this.”
Eventually they started streaming and the content was marvelous, but then once again, the poor organizers, not having had ample time to present a seamless transition and despite valiantly trying to do their best, the fritz nevertheless took over.
There were a couple of schools of thought in the sidebar chat that emerged.
My favorite was between a beautiful poet and mother I know in NY and an unidentified other, who began to joke together, “Well, this is apparently the teaching we were supposed to get!” They took it lightly; they were cracking jokes that totes made me LOL. And I’m not by habit, an LOLer.
As they quipped their witticisms, and others identified the problems they were having in varying degrees of frenzy, one person added to the mix:
“Surrender… patience.” And then: “Surrender to the divine.”
Here’s the irony of that virtual exchange. The women joking about the technical difficulties and saying, “Well, this is the way it’s supposed to be…” were the ones surrendering, not the person who was beseeching us to have patience and surrender.
Surrendering is not a bargaining chip. That’s not how it works.
My best friend loves this word: surrender. I have never liked it. I don’t resonate; it’s bitter on my tastebuds. I think of: “you failed” or “we win.” It reminds me of war, or other masculine things that boys should be taking care of with grunting and big sticks. My bestie hearts “surrender” so much, he wanted to get it tattooed backwards on his chest so that when he looked in the mirror, he could see it properly. That’s a lotta love for that word.
I prefer the phrase: “letting go.” Or as the centuries old Buddhist chant ‘Nam-myoho-renghe-kyo’ postulates: I am in rhythm with the rhythm of life.
This is an ongoing discussion in my and bestie’s weekly hours of philosophical debate. As a whole, we cannot dismiss the discrepancy between the words so quickly as semantics, because in this delicate world of tiptoeing toward understanding, interpreting and experiencing the woo, semantics can make all the difference.
The person on the chat wrote: Surrender to the divine. For my money, I just don’t find that helpful. Five years ago I could have easily been infuriated with a “what the f**k does that really mean??” response. My sister is now doing this little thing that I do, and if I said that to her, she’d roll her eyes, get frustrated and go eat nuts in her room. If I said that out loud to a guy, I’d never date again.
In my interpretation, the person on the call was insinuating that if we “surrendered to the divine” that the technology would magically begin to work. (Disclaimer: I will fully cop to the fact that I may be wrong here, perhaps he or she did not intend that, and if he/she did not, apologies, but since this example can be easily used for anyone using this word/practice in this way, as many people do, I’ll dub this debate as valid nonetheless, even if I am wrong in this particular instance…)
The moment we use surrender as a bargaining chip, it is beside the point. Surrendering to the divine is just surrender to reality, surrendering to the present moment. Not changing the situation, accepting the situation and changing our perception of it. We let go of things, opinions, our stance on things, not so that we can acquire them, but so that we can do just that: LET GO and let them be what they are. Find the peace in the moment with what is actually there, not a fantasy of what we want it to look like.
Now, the catch 22 about surrendering or letting go is that once we really, really do this, is when something comes toward us.
There’s a guy that I used to be hung up on, and I swear to all things holy that he had some kind of internal GPS tracking system linked to me that would activate whenever I fully turned my back. He'd vanish from the chitta vritti of my mind, perhaps facilitated by my having met someone else, or being fully enthralled with another flourishing aspect of my life, and just when I had absolutely let go of any connection to him, he’d resurface out of the woodwork looking for me. Every time. It was laughable it happened so often and with such precise honing. On some plane, that I would never be able to pinpoint, someplace it was not even cognizant to him, he could feel my energy was gone, and he, in turn, being a guy, would want it back and would return, all sweet and wanting.
Doesn’t this apply to so many aspects of our lives? The thing is, with the guy, whenever I would do “work” to let go, it wouldn’t hold water. Until I really, truly let go of expecting any outcome is only when he’d show up.
On the call, surrendering was identifying the reality of the situation. Technical difficulties are here, and so, ok cool—love you all, happy holidays, a sign off, and we’ll all get a recorded YouTube clip emailed to us within the coming days.
Letting go is a major practice in these overarching ambitions towards awakening. Surrendering is allowing ourselves to surf the tide that is life and changing our perception is the sex wax that greases it to happen. The non-dualists would say it is already done. The Buddhists approach it from a different way and teach to welcome everything—to find the stillness within, no matter how rough the tide.
Tattoo it on your chest or take it as it comes; no one said it was easy, but it is simple, so we can at the very least try, and if we can try laughing, and with wetsuits?... well, gee, I think that's more fun.
And I am not excluding myself from this, by any means. As you can see, I like my woo to be all funny, sexed up, downtown, sharp and sassy. The Bhagavad Gita is an enormous, gorgeous wealth of information, but I think I’ve fallen asleep reading it more times than not.
People get very excited about when something is marketed as "special." This little deeksha/blessing thing I have been doing has been every week, Wednesday nights, for four years. Sometimes two people have shown up, sometimes there’ve been 30. Once I had an impromptu, accidental, paint-the-town-red-bender the night before and I woulda paid my checking account balance to not show, and on any mid-summer’s eve I’d be perky and pretty in hot pink lipstick and a strapless floral sundress, but whatever my mood, I'd get there. The consistency of showing up is training from my Ashtanga practice where dedication is venerated more than progress or ability; as my yoga Guruji always said, “Practice and all is coming.”
Although weekly gatherings have been available for years to our NY community, this summer we had a “special” guest in town, and on a moment’s notice, on the July 4th holiday, 30 people found and made the time to cram into a midtown apartment and meet this man… that day some complained they wished there were more opportunities to get together in the city. (Um, there were.) Our tendency is to show up when we think it’s special, rather than with a more boring, unwavering practice.
So this week there was a little conference call with two recently awakened people who are now being shuttled around the country sharing their profound wisdom, ‘cause people want a taste of that. No, that’s inaccurate. They don’t want a taste; they want it all. They want freedom. Sugar, I want it all... Who doesn’t?
In this recent wave of enthusiasm, and a scrambling community hastening to share the sages, there was a last minute online talk available to be watched live one evening of the awakened guests. On the right hand side of the web browser was a simultaneous live chat.
First the talk was delayed, as the speakers had yet to come to screen.
The side bar chat hubbub read something like this:
“I don’t have video? Do you have video?”
“There’s no sound on mine.”
“Who is that person… have they started yet?”
“It says max number of users reached… help!”
“I’m so disappointed, I really wanted to see this.”
Eventually they started streaming and the content was marvelous, but then once again, the poor organizers, not having had ample time to present a seamless transition and despite valiantly trying to do their best, the fritz nevertheless took over.
There were a couple of schools of thought in the sidebar chat that emerged.
My favorite was between a beautiful poet and mother I know in NY and an unidentified other, who began to joke together, “Well, this is apparently the teaching we were supposed to get!” They took it lightly; they were cracking jokes that totes made me LOL. And I’m not by habit, an LOLer.
As they quipped their witticisms, and others identified the problems they were having in varying degrees of frenzy, one person added to the mix:
“Surrender… patience.” And then: “Surrender to the divine.”
Here’s the irony of that virtual exchange. The women joking about the technical difficulties and saying, “Well, this is the way it’s supposed to be…” were the ones surrendering, not the person who was beseeching us to have patience and surrender.
Surrendering is not a bargaining chip. That’s not how it works.
My best friend loves this word: surrender. I have never liked it. I don’t resonate; it’s bitter on my tastebuds. I think of: “you failed” or “we win.” It reminds me of war, or other masculine things that boys should be taking care of with grunting and big sticks. My bestie hearts “surrender” so much, he wanted to get it tattooed backwards on his chest so that when he looked in the mirror, he could see it properly. That’s a lotta love for that word.
I prefer the phrase: “letting go.” Or as the centuries old Buddhist chant ‘Nam-myoho-renghe-kyo’ postulates: I am in rhythm with the rhythm of life.
This is an ongoing discussion in my and bestie’s weekly hours of philosophical debate. As a whole, we cannot dismiss the discrepancy between the words so quickly as semantics, because in this delicate world of tiptoeing toward understanding, interpreting and experiencing the woo, semantics can make all the difference.
The person on the chat wrote: Surrender to the divine. For my money, I just don’t find that helpful. Five years ago I could have easily been infuriated with a “what the f**k does that really mean??” response. My sister is now doing this little thing that I do, and if I said that to her, she’d roll her eyes, get frustrated and go eat nuts in her room. If I said that out loud to a guy, I’d never date again.
In my interpretation, the person on the call was insinuating that if we “surrendered to the divine” that the technology would magically begin to work. (Disclaimer: I will fully cop to the fact that I may be wrong here, perhaps he or she did not intend that, and if he/she did not, apologies, but since this example can be easily used for anyone using this word/practice in this way, as many people do, I’ll dub this debate as valid nonetheless, even if I am wrong in this particular instance…)
The moment we use surrender as a bargaining chip, it is beside the point. Surrendering to the divine is just surrender to reality, surrendering to the present moment. Not changing the situation, accepting the situation and changing our perception of it. We let go of things, opinions, our stance on things, not so that we can acquire them, but so that we can do just that: LET GO and let them be what they are. Find the peace in the moment with what is actually there, not a fantasy of what we want it to look like.
Now, the catch 22 about surrendering or letting go is that once we really, really do this, is when something comes toward us.
There’s a guy that I used to be hung up on, and I swear to all things holy that he had some kind of internal GPS tracking system linked to me that would activate whenever I fully turned my back. He'd vanish from the chitta vritti of my mind, perhaps facilitated by my having met someone else, or being fully enthralled with another flourishing aspect of my life, and just when I had absolutely let go of any connection to him, he’d resurface out of the woodwork looking for me. Every time. It was laughable it happened so often and with such precise honing. On some plane, that I would never be able to pinpoint, someplace it was not even cognizant to him, he could feel my energy was gone, and he, in turn, being a guy, would want it back and would return, all sweet and wanting.
Doesn’t this apply to so many aspects of our lives? The thing is, with the guy, whenever I would do “work” to let go, it wouldn’t hold water. Until I really, truly let go of expecting any outcome is only when he’d show up.
On the call, surrendering was identifying the reality of the situation. Technical difficulties are here, and so, ok cool—love you all, happy holidays, a sign off, and we’ll all get a recorded YouTube clip emailed to us within the coming days.
Letting go is a major practice in these overarching ambitions towards awakening. Surrendering is allowing ourselves to surf the tide that is life and changing our perception is the sex wax that greases it to happen. The non-dualists would say it is already done. The Buddhists approach it from a different way and teach to welcome everything—to find the stillness within, no matter how rough the tide.
Tattoo it on your chest or take it as it comes; no one said it was easy, but it is simple, so we can at the very least try, and if we can try laughing, and with wetsuits?... well, gee, I think that's more fun.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
the ick and the bitch: just like me
I ask my sister: “What’s your favorite food?” She tells me hamburgers.
Chocolate owns me.
Mom veers to beef stroganoff.
Our preferences are within us. We may shape our diets and lifestyles to scootch in a direction, but ultimately, there’s been a time when we’ve uttered “ew” and the person next to us is exclaiming, “yum.”
“True collective action can take place only when you, the individual, who are also the mass, are awake and take the full responsibility for your action without compulsion.” -Krishnamurti.
In the same way, we lean in to people, circumstances, and locations, events, which resonate. We’d never get anything done if our body didn’t tell us at six-years-old, “I want to play soccer” and at 25, “I want to make out with the blonde.”
Ramesh Baleksar, a recently passed enlightened teacher from Mumbai gave the example of a party. Even if you have 20 “conscious” people show up, they’re not naturally going to sit in a circle and kumbaya; this is not the way we are wired. We'll split up into four or five groups of people, as we’re drawn by an inexplicable vibration to that which is comfy... or hot.
Community, like-minded people, all of this is a vital, joyful part of living, but for growth, we need to confront that which doesn’t share in the matching t-shirts. The icky bits are the stretchy bits.
“Before you can act fully and truly, you must know the prison in which you are living, how it has been created; and in examining it without any self- defense you will find out for yourself its true significance, which no other can convey to you.”
Any judgments come up just as automatically as our preferences for blondes or stroganoff; we think we might have control over 'em, but we don’t. This is the stuff to notice, this is the “getting to know you” courtship with your mind.
The last time I was in India, the Big Daddy brought 200 people together from dozens of different countries so that you could watch yourself being internationally irked. Cultural differences are pretty obvious when you have Chinese women shoving you out of the way to get to the bathroom at a “spiritual retreat.” In the wings and downstage center, my opinions, judgments, preferences automatically came up for everyone around me.
One Japanese woman thought she was a animé messiah, consistently lead to call out to everyone in the room that they should be “laughing with the divine:” “It’s ok!! Laugh!!! Let go—laugh!!” This went on for ten minutes in one meditation. People called out to her to shut up (and let me remind you this was at an: Advanced. Spiritual. Retreat.)
Even if we don't act on these judgments, to say that we do not have them is bullshit. I’m sorry, pardon my French, but it is, it’s total bullshit. And that’s why someone reeks of inauthenticity when they walk around all spurious and holy.
The judgments are automatic. Judgment does not have to have a negative emotion or feeling attached to it; it just is. In relating how we could frame both a sense of “oneness” while housing a preference or judgment, my friend Adriana gave me a metaphor in India—“It’s like this crooked finger.” She shows me her finger, which is ever so slightly bent, one of the only imperfections on her Brazillian hottie bod. “I can see that it’s crooked, I don’t like that it’s crooked, but it’s part of me. So I still love it and accept it.”
Love and compassion, and their natural by-products collective action and “oneness with all,” can’t be forced. These sorts of warm, fuzzy things rise with practices and in time temper our judgments to be passing unattached clouds, just the silliness of the ego; judgment ceases to define who we are or who anyone else is. It happens and it goes.
On a deeper level, many teachings point to the truth that that which we dislike about someone else, or that brings up a reaction for us, is what we don’t like most about ourselves: we’re not accepting the icky bits. You know—the stuff that’s never going to go on the front page of your match.com profile—that stuff.
There’s a transcript being passed around in the woo circles from an interview with a recently awakened woman, and she said that P.A. (pre-awakening) whenever a judgment came up for someone else, she’d notice it, and add: (I would suggest doing this in your head so as not to frighten others) “Just like me.” I really like this, because it’s simple.
“Wow, she's got some balls-- check out that outfit, trash-shay.”… Just like me.
“Asshole!” (after they cut you off in traffic, stand you up, don’t return a call)… Just like me.
(my personal favorite) “Wow, that person takes themselves way too seriously”… Just like me.
“Margaret is so long winded, cheeky and full of herself”... Just like me.
I bring this up because I am helping to plan a wide-scale event on the East Coast for all this stuff. I am overprotective of my peeps, of these teachings, of this experience, because it is so simple, and we, in our enthusiasm for things can get caught up in a fanaticism very easily and get all crazypants or over-devotional with it, scaring other people off. I tend toward the real, the practical, the laid back dedication of the long haul daily practice and there will be many others present at this event that will not look at the world in the same way I do. There will be people who have closets of Christmas sweaters and count “Jesus Christ as my personal savior,” always using that complete phrase to describe JC.
I don’t find New Yorkers to be cynical or hard, but grounded, discerning and sophisticated. What plays in Ohio doesn’t play in New York. Honestly, what plays in Jersey doesn’t play in New York; it can get as subdivided as uptown and downtown or East and West side. Our inherent New Yorker’s egoic pride is yes, just that, an egoic mindset to be seen and dissolved if one is to “discover the manner of true fulfillment” as Krishnamurti puts it, but to ignore that it exists will not get us past it.
As we were on a conference call for this event, the person leading mentioned that one of the purposes of putting together an event like this was so that we could see the conflict and charges that come up between us in the planning and execution. To bring up our inner bitch.
And in case we think we may think we’re so non-judgmental, lovin’ Japanese animé prophets, Christmas sweaters and all those we come into contact with, with equal blissful abandon, I’ll insert the gentle reminder that it doesn’t need to be only people that can irk us. What about when something doesn’t turn out the way we want it to? The creative project that should have been done by now, that husband or life partner that hasn’t arrived yet or that business deal that fell through? Do we judge what life puts in front of us, or do we embrace every experience, ugly and uncomfortable as that which is necessary in the moment? The degree to which we accept the ick, is the compass as to how awake we are in our lives. It’s the other side of the “Just like me” coin… it’s “this is me.” That’s basically it in a nutshell: accept the ick, accept the bitch.
We cannot even think about collective action until we own up to ourselves, because once we do, a collective compassion arises naturally, there’s no need to work on it. “All of life is a movement toward our wholeness.” a translation from the Tao Te Ching, is pretty much my bumper sticker. In the moments of infinite love and bliss I have had (and they are and have been, thank you thank you, oh so grateful, countless) when the gritty ick or the inner bitch comes up, it’s not a la-di-dah feeling of overall oneness that helps a shift, it is a practical faith in this process. It is the responsibility of owning that there is something in it for me, and from me (“Just like me” no matter what it looks like. Whether it’s an “ew” or a “yum.”) These experiences are for me, for us, and the cozier we get with our inner bitch, the closer we get to a collective compassion. So when someone selfishly snags the last pair of Spanx at your pharmacy, preventing you from looking sleek at your office holiday party tonight, or a recipient isn’t as grateful as they should be for the iPad you gifted them, be pissed, be disappointed, and then remember: Just like me.
Chocolate owns me.
Mom veers to beef stroganoff.
Our preferences are within us. We may shape our diets and lifestyles to scootch in a direction, but ultimately, there’s been a time when we’ve uttered “ew” and the person next to us is exclaiming, “yum.”
“True collective action can take place only when you, the individual, who are also the mass, are awake and take the full responsibility for your action without compulsion.” -Krishnamurti.
In the same way, we lean in to people, circumstances, and locations, events, which resonate. We’d never get anything done if our body didn’t tell us at six-years-old, “I want to play soccer” and at 25, “I want to make out with the blonde.”
Ramesh Baleksar, a recently passed enlightened teacher from Mumbai gave the example of a party. Even if you have 20 “conscious” people show up, they’re not naturally going to sit in a circle and kumbaya; this is not the way we are wired. We'll split up into four or five groups of people, as we’re drawn by an inexplicable vibration to that which is comfy... or hot.
Community, like-minded people, all of this is a vital, joyful part of living, but for growth, we need to confront that which doesn’t share in the matching t-shirts. The icky bits are the stretchy bits.
“Before you can act fully and truly, you must know the prison in which you are living, how it has been created; and in examining it without any self- defense you will find out for yourself its true significance, which no other can convey to you.”
Any judgments come up just as automatically as our preferences for blondes or stroganoff; we think we might have control over 'em, but we don’t. This is the stuff to notice, this is the “getting to know you” courtship with your mind.
The last time I was in India, the Big Daddy brought 200 people together from dozens of different countries so that you could watch yourself being internationally irked. Cultural differences are pretty obvious when you have Chinese women shoving you out of the way to get to the bathroom at a “spiritual retreat.” In the wings and downstage center, my opinions, judgments, preferences automatically came up for everyone around me.
One Japanese woman thought she was a animé messiah, consistently lead to call out to everyone in the room that they should be “laughing with the divine:” “It’s ok!! Laugh!!! Let go—laugh!!” This went on for ten minutes in one meditation. People called out to her to shut up (and let me remind you this was at an: Advanced. Spiritual. Retreat.)
Even if we don't act on these judgments, to say that we do not have them is bullshit. I’m sorry, pardon my French, but it is, it’s total bullshit. And that’s why someone reeks of inauthenticity when they walk around all spurious and holy.
The judgments are automatic. Judgment does not have to have a negative emotion or feeling attached to it; it just is. In relating how we could frame both a sense of “oneness” while housing a preference or judgment, my friend Adriana gave me a metaphor in India—“It’s like this crooked finger.” She shows me her finger, which is ever so slightly bent, one of the only imperfections on her Brazillian hottie bod. “I can see that it’s crooked, I don’t like that it’s crooked, but it’s part of me. So I still love it and accept it.”
Love and compassion, and their natural by-products collective action and “oneness with all,” can’t be forced. These sorts of warm, fuzzy things rise with practices and in time temper our judgments to be passing unattached clouds, just the silliness of the ego; judgment ceases to define who we are or who anyone else is. It happens and it goes.
On a deeper level, many teachings point to the truth that that which we dislike about someone else, or that brings up a reaction for us, is what we don’t like most about ourselves: we’re not accepting the icky bits. You know—the stuff that’s never going to go on the front page of your match.com profile—that stuff.
There’s a transcript being passed around in the woo circles from an interview with a recently awakened woman, and she said that P.A. (pre-awakening) whenever a judgment came up for someone else, she’d notice it, and add: (I would suggest doing this in your head so as not to frighten others) “Just like me.” I really like this, because it’s simple.
“Wow, she's got some balls-- check out that outfit, trash-shay.”… Just like me.
“Asshole!” (after they cut you off in traffic, stand you up, don’t return a call)… Just like me.
(my personal favorite) “Wow, that person takes themselves way too seriously”… Just like me.
“Margaret is so long winded, cheeky and full of herself”... Just like me.
I bring this up because I am helping to plan a wide-scale event on the East Coast for all this stuff. I am overprotective of my peeps, of these teachings, of this experience, because it is so simple, and we, in our enthusiasm for things can get caught up in a fanaticism very easily and get all crazypants or over-devotional with it, scaring other people off. I tend toward the real, the practical, the laid back dedication of the long haul daily practice and there will be many others present at this event that will not look at the world in the same way I do. There will be people who have closets of Christmas sweaters and count “Jesus Christ as my personal savior,” always using that complete phrase to describe JC.
I don’t find New Yorkers to be cynical or hard, but grounded, discerning and sophisticated. What plays in Ohio doesn’t play in New York. Honestly, what plays in Jersey doesn’t play in New York; it can get as subdivided as uptown and downtown or East and West side. Our inherent New Yorker’s egoic pride is yes, just that, an egoic mindset to be seen and dissolved if one is to “discover the manner of true fulfillment” as Krishnamurti puts it, but to ignore that it exists will not get us past it.
As we were on a conference call for this event, the person leading mentioned that one of the purposes of putting together an event like this was so that we could see the conflict and charges that come up between us in the planning and execution. To bring up our inner bitch.
And in case we think we may think we’re so non-judgmental, lovin’ Japanese animé prophets, Christmas sweaters and all those we come into contact with, with equal blissful abandon, I’ll insert the gentle reminder that it doesn’t need to be only people that can irk us. What about when something doesn’t turn out the way we want it to? The creative project that should have been done by now, that husband or life partner that hasn’t arrived yet or that business deal that fell through? Do we judge what life puts in front of us, or do we embrace every experience, ugly and uncomfortable as that which is necessary in the moment? The degree to which we accept the ick, is the compass as to how awake we are in our lives. It’s the other side of the “Just like me” coin… it’s “this is me.” That’s basically it in a nutshell: accept the ick, accept the bitch.
We cannot even think about collective action until we own up to ourselves, because once we do, a collective compassion arises naturally, there’s no need to work on it. “All of life is a movement toward our wholeness.” a translation from the Tao Te Ching, is pretty much my bumper sticker. In the moments of infinite love and bliss I have had (and they are and have been, thank you thank you, oh so grateful, countless) when the gritty ick or the inner bitch comes up, it’s not a la-di-dah feeling of overall oneness that helps a shift, it is a practical faith in this process. It is the responsibility of owning that there is something in it for me, and from me (“Just like me” no matter what it looks like. Whether it’s an “ew” or a “yum.”) These experiences are for me, for us, and the cozier we get with our inner bitch, the closer we get to a collective compassion. So when someone selfishly snags the last pair of Spanx at your pharmacy, preventing you from looking sleek at your office holiday party tonight, or a recipient isn’t as grateful as they should be for the iPad you gifted them, be pissed, be disappointed, and then remember: Just like me.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
I don’t like God
It’s a frigid, but sunny Sunday Chicagoland afternoon. I am in a stranger’s home and we have had a couple of hours of loveliness and mediations and hippie things of this nature. I’m blissed up and blessed out and on cloud 14 when our super sweet hostess leads us into a Sufi meditation where we hold each other’s hearts, sing the chant and walk in circles, gazing into each other’s eyes, connecting. Oh no, oh gosh... it's been so amazing up until now. This is where she loses me.
It’s not that I have anything against the Sufis (love ‘em) or singing (terrif) or even strangers (yay, oneness and all that.) But singing, going around in a circle and gazing into someone’s eyes is not something I would want to do with the love of my life, much less someone I just met. There is no elegant way to escape, I am stuck in participating, and although it is nicer than I expected, I am still relieved when she calls out we are on the last go around.
Recounting the story to my bestie afterwards, he is bowled over in laughter in New York. “Hilarious that you made that happen for yourself… that’s like your worst nightmare!”
I don’t like God. Or rather, more specifically, I don’t like the word God. The only time I intend to use it is, legs wrapped around someone, in that moment of Ultimate Bliss that comes when our body and mind are absolutely, without a doubt, right where we are. There, let God twinkle in every cell of my being, let Him lift me to miraculous heights, let sweat pour down each of my chakras to the tips of my painted purple toes, drenching me in ecstasy and then, just before that other someone pulls me into a sweet kiss of closure, there I will loudly, gratefully, almost exasperatedly proclaim: OH MY GOD.
That’s about the only time I use the word.
I like the word divine, but even that is being thrown around so much as a substitute for “God” that I am growing weary of it. (So fickle.) Especially when it’s tossed around with a holy reverence. Sacred, I can handle. Holy? I look for the nearest emergency exit.
In all my travel I seek out and find little pockets of community to strengthen my practices. People so generously and graciously open their homes and hearts to me, and I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or closed off in any respect, but I kinda feel like my mission, should I choose to accept it, is not to preach to the choir. Anyone that can breathe in a room full of strangers to willingly “connect with their own personal divine and feel that love coursing through them” is not someone who needs my help. If you can feel that love coursing through you—awesome, go be one with Brahmin.
As you all know, I’m interested in the sophisticates, the skeptics, the rational. And/or those who are already on this rabbithole of a journey but want more reality, more practical, and less “hosanna.” I want to be at the end of a barstool in heated debate about philosophy with someone who is pushing back. It’s not that I want to convert them, I just enjoy the friction. It’s not necessary to win an argument, but if someone can at least open their eyes to maybe looking at something a different way, or if they can enlighten or sell me on their own theories, that is a successful debate. Even just the ping ping match of popping the ideas around stirs up further questioning. Perhaps it’s because I love a challenge, but juicy bits are there for everyone.
My teachers tell me that the most important thing you can do to deepen your practice is to cultivate a personal relationship with your divine. This is step #1 in my workshops. Since “divine” is already growing tired in my vocab, let me offer: stillness, excitement, sparkliness, love, insert your guru here if you have one, pick from any of the major religions for a guy or gal to focus on, pray to the superhero version of yourself, be zen and be nothing; whatevs.
The top tier of (for lack of a better word) enlightenment is (for lack of a better word) God realization. Until then, I choose to roll with a whole holy posse. My numinious crew. My entourage of bliss.
I’ve met sadhus in caves in India, but these peeps are not part of my posse.
You know those obnoxious Richard Meier buildings in the far West Village that line the Hudson like two disco mirror rectangles? Yeah, that’s where my main man resides. In the penthouse. He’s got a roof deck. And bling. I’m very fond of Indian tradition in that respect, I like to bling my divine, flower them up, incense the s**t out of ‘em.
There’s a little pink tinkerbell cartoonish aspect of myself that has shown up when I am taking myself too seriously in yoga. She reminds me this is playtime, not work, and I relax.
Endlessly long stretches of beach, dramatic canyons, my bike zooming uptown in traffic with Jason Mraz on my iPod, these work too.
Mostly it’s a twinkling that I find within myself—a place in my body, in my third eye or my heart, the place I calmly take a breath into to rise above the incessant fluctuations of the mind. I go to these places, and the vast landscapes remind me there is so very much more that little ol’ me, and also that I am a part of that greater thing. I give over worries, problems, constantly, consistently and will do until that moment it is no longer necessary, whenever that may be.
This may sound like I am living in lala land, but I assure you I am not. You can think I’m insane; I’ve been dubbed much worse. Both scientists and philosophers say that there is no difference in our mind in what reality is and what we dream reality is. Our brains perceive the informational input as fact, even if it is the fiction of mindstuff; we literally have a physiological reaction to thoughts the same way we do as events. So ok, maybe I call upon fantasyland; if my mind perceives it as real, what’s the harm? When I find I am holding on to tightly to the reigns of what I want any moment to look like, I call in a member of the crew and hand it over. It can be as simple as going with the flow, releasing it from your hands. Saying “you know what? I’m doing a pretty shitty job of this right now, why don’t you take over?” That can be in a yoga pose where I am stretching with aggressive ambition or too many thoughts over a cute boy. It can be frustration in stalled traffic or writer’s block. It’s fun. It’s a game. And it works.
Alcoholic’s Anonymous has long used the phrase “Let go and let God.” That seems so amorphous. Talk to the big daddy. Put him in a flashy penthouse apartment. Take a breath in your chest cavity at a time when you’re not holding a cigarette. Have a chat that is casual yet revered, whether it’s with a lover or friend, connect to that place, that person that knows best—that thing that can see the bigger picture when you’ve lost the faculty to do so. It doesn’t have to be so holy, it doesn’t have to be silent, and it doesn’t have to be “God.” By making that which is bigger than us something that is up close, real and personal, by being able to have a conversation with our higher self that isn’t all holy holy night, we access the resources of the infinite wisdom that threads throughout ourselves and all of existence. Even that sounds too grand. If nothing else, I’ve had many accounts that calling on the divine works great for finding parking.
It’s not that I have anything against the Sufis (love ‘em) or singing (terrif) or even strangers (yay, oneness and all that.) But singing, going around in a circle and gazing into someone’s eyes is not something I would want to do with the love of my life, much less someone I just met. There is no elegant way to escape, I am stuck in participating, and although it is nicer than I expected, I am still relieved when she calls out we are on the last go around.
Recounting the story to my bestie afterwards, he is bowled over in laughter in New York. “Hilarious that you made that happen for yourself… that’s like your worst nightmare!”
I don’t like God. Or rather, more specifically, I don’t like the word God. The only time I intend to use it is, legs wrapped around someone, in that moment of Ultimate Bliss that comes when our body and mind are absolutely, without a doubt, right where we are. There, let God twinkle in every cell of my being, let Him lift me to miraculous heights, let sweat pour down each of my chakras to the tips of my painted purple toes, drenching me in ecstasy and then, just before that other someone pulls me into a sweet kiss of closure, there I will loudly, gratefully, almost exasperatedly proclaim: OH MY GOD.
That’s about the only time I use the word.
I like the word divine, but even that is being thrown around so much as a substitute for “God” that I am growing weary of it. (So fickle.) Especially when it’s tossed around with a holy reverence. Sacred, I can handle. Holy? I look for the nearest emergency exit.
In all my travel I seek out and find little pockets of community to strengthen my practices. People so generously and graciously open their homes and hearts to me, and I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or closed off in any respect, but I kinda feel like my mission, should I choose to accept it, is not to preach to the choir. Anyone that can breathe in a room full of strangers to willingly “connect with their own personal divine and feel that love coursing through them” is not someone who needs my help. If you can feel that love coursing through you—awesome, go be one with Brahmin.
As you all know, I’m interested in the sophisticates, the skeptics, the rational. And/or those who are already on this rabbithole of a journey but want more reality, more practical, and less “hosanna.” I want to be at the end of a barstool in heated debate about philosophy with someone who is pushing back. It’s not that I want to convert them, I just enjoy the friction. It’s not necessary to win an argument, but if someone can at least open their eyes to maybe looking at something a different way, or if they can enlighten or sell me on their own theories, that is a successful debate. Even just the ping ping match of popping the ideas around stirs up further questioning. Perhaps it’s because I love a challenge, but juicy bits are there for everyone.
My teachers tell me that the most important thing you can do to deepen your practice is to cultivate a personal relationship with your divine. This is step #1 in my workshops. Since “divine” is already growing tired in my vocab, let me offer: stillness, excitement, sparkliness, love, insert your guru here if you have one, pick from any of the major religions for a guy or gal to focus on, pray to the superhero version of yourself, be zen and be nothing; whatevs.
The top tier of (for lack of a better word) enlightenment is (for lack of a better word) God realization. Until then, I choose to roll with a whole holy posse. My numinious crew. My entourage of bliss.
I’ve met sadhus in caves in India, but these peeps are not part of my posse.
You know those obnoxious Richard Meier buildings in the far West Village that line the Hudson like two disco mirror rectangles? Yeah, that’s where my main man resides. In the penthouse. He’s got a roof deck. And bling. I’m very fond of Indian tradition in that respect, I like to bling my divine, flower them up, incense the s**t out of ‘em.
There’s a little pink tinkerbell cartoonish aspect of myself that has shown up when I am taking myself too seriously in yoga. She reminds me this is playtime, not work, and I relax.
Endlessly long stretches of beach, dramatic canyons, my bike zooming uptown in traffic with Jason Mraz on my iPod, these work too.
Mostly it’s a twinkling that I find within myself—a place in my body, in my third eye or my heart, the place I calmly take a breath into to rise above the incessant fluctuations of the mind. I go to these places, and the vast landscapes remind me there is so very much more that little ol’ me, and also that I am a part of that greater thing. I give over worries, problems, constantly, consistently and will do until that moment it is no longer necessary, whenever that may be.
This may sound like I am living in lala land, but I assure you I am not. You can think I’m insane; I’ve been dubbed much worse. Both scientists and philosophers say that there is no difference in our mind in what reality is and what we dream reality is. Our brains perceive the informational input as fact, even if it is the fiction of mindstuff; we literally have a physiological reaction to thoughts the same way we do as events. So ok, maybe I call upon fantasyland; if my mind perceives it as real, what’s the harm? When I find I am holding on to tightly to the reigns of what I want any moment to look like, I call in a member of the crew and hand it over. It can be as simple as going with the flow, releasing it from your hands. Saying “you know what? I’m doing a pretty shitty job of this right now, why don’t you take over?” That can be in a yoga pose where I am stretching with aggressive ambition or too many thoughts over a cute boy. It can be frustration in stalled traffic or writer’s block. It’s fun. It’s a game. And it works.
Alcoholic’s Anonymous has long used the phrase “Let go and let God.” That seems so amorphous. Talk to the big daddy. Put him in a flashy penthouse apartment. Take a breath in your chest cavity at a time when you’re not holding a cigarette. Have a chat that is casual yet revered, whether it’s with a lover or friend, connect to that place, that person that knows best—that thing that can see the bigger picture when you’ve lost the faculty to do so. It doesn’t have to be so holy, it doesn’t have to be silent, and it doesn’t have to be “God.” By making that which is bigger than us something that is up close, real and personal, by being able to have a conversation with our higher self that isn’t all holy holy night, we access the resources of the infinite wisdom that threads throughout ourselves and all of existence. Even that sounds too grand. If nothing else, I’ve had many accounts that calling on the divine works great for finding parking.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
your ego and those icky, scary deathly hallows
The ArcLight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood was fancy pants. After all it is (“Welcome to Hollywood! What's your dream? Everybody comes here; this is Hollywood, land of dreams…” -Pretty Woman, obvi) Hollywood, so it stands to reason that their theatres should have assigned seating, epic screens and validated parking.
Following my friends to our seats, I cooed at the ceiling, “It looks like we’re inside the Epcot Center ball!” (I’ve always had a bizarre affection for that giant Epcot golf ball… but I digress) It wasn’t my idea to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I was willing to come along for the ride.
I am not a Harry Potter fan. That is not to say that what I think J.K. Rowling has created with her empire is anything short of, well, a capital “S” Superstah fairytale international kingdom, well gilded with riches and notoriety. I am in curious awe, of course, of any realm so far reaching in scope and power, and kudos to her for the genius marketing of her corporate team’s vision to propel the mega world into mega bucks. Always a voracious reader, I remember being quite surprisingly captivated by the 1st book, that momentum propelling me to slurp up #2 and #3 quite quickly thereafter. By the time #4 came along, I had to wait for its arrival. The wait dampened my enthusiasm; I was jaded to quidditch as just another sport, and when eyeing its thick hardcover I remember surmising, “It was fun, but not fun enough to haul around with me as dead weight.” (I’ll refrain from any gauche relationship metaphor here.) I wonder had Kindle been around then, if it could have persuaded me into a perusal of #4.
I kinda assumed that the #6 film would give a once over, “last… on Harry Potter” sequence, bringing illiterates up to date with its characters, but it seems they deduced rather than waste time on needless exposition, to dive right in. So basically I had no idea what was happening throughout the first act of the film. It seemed very slow. And very dramatic. Soap operas seemed like sitcoms by contrast to the lethargic anticipation that was this 1st act.
Anyhow, I was oh-so-patiently waiting for the movie to progress for two and a half hours. About 2/3rds of the way through (I’m assuming if you care at all about HP you will have seen the film by this point and there is no need for a spoiler alert here, although, in any event, here: spoiler alert) there is the big scene between Harry Potter and his bestie Ron Weasley, where Ron has to face his biggest fears before they can progress.
Now in all the slow moving drama that precedes, some pretty big things are on the line. People are dying right left and center, there are battles and incredible healing powers sealing what would be fatal wounds, faces are rivers of tears and foreheads webs of wrinkled anxiety. People are being chased and go into hiding from monstrously hideous bad guys, all in a vast, disparately landscaped set of varying shades of darkness. It seems existence as their race knows it is ultimately being threatened and it’s up to HP and crew to do that “the one” hero thing and, in seven books/films or less, ya know, save the world.
So in this moment, where Ron has arrived in the nick of time to save Harry, up comes a swirling black mass of ghoulish black clouds, illustrated and sounded elaborately as Ron’s fears. Ron has to be able to face his fears in order to conquer them and save Harry. In the theatrical panorama that is the ensuing armageddon of the HP saga, are Ron’s fears centered around the expulsion of their race, or the fall of life as they know it? Are they masses of worries about those dying or of his own possible extinction? No… it’s all… “mommy didn’t love me, the girl I want loves Harry more, and ‘Harry can do better without you.’”
I loved this part of the movie, because this is where it got real.
It reminds me of the portion of Elizabeth Gilbert’s star memoir, Eat Pray Love.
(wow, aren’t I being a little media piglet with the topical blockbuster pop-culture references in this post) where she speaks about meeting refugee girls in a camp. Instead of being worried about their displaced homeland or future as a community, their counseling with her consisted of, “OMG—there’s this cute boy in the refugee camp, I don’t know if he likes me.”
This is the human condition. As much compassion as we can and do muster for the atrocities befalling many parts of the world, generally our greatest fears and our most prevalent thoughts are not of inhumanities elsewhere. The kryptonite that is our ego mind saddles us with the running dialogue of things close to our hands and heart.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Hallow is not in my daily lexicon, so I google’d it for the purposes of this blog. "To make holy or sacred, to sanctify or consecrate, to venerate.” The ‘deathly’ hallows could easily be defined as examining those darkest parts of ourselves by taking the ugliest fears and making friends with them, thereby transforming them to “holy.” Or as I would put it, as more one with ourselves. This is after all, what my teachers, Buddhist and Indian (and any wealth of other traditions) urge us to do. By facing the ego, we not only befriend it, but the ultimate spiritual enlightenment they say, is the ultimate death of the ego, creating an intrinsic sense of oneness with all. HP is another modern mass media outlet underlining that the courage to face these fears is where our greatest strengths lie. Hallowed be the death.
What I liked most about this Harry flick was not just the stadium seating and the company of my loveliest of friends, but that within the melodrama that is an uber-blockbuster and all of its surrounding brouhaha, the underlying message is simple. When the world is falling apart, start where you are. That’s why the Harry and Ron scene rang real—if your true fears are girl problems or jealousy of your best friend, be there. Be here. All you have is what’s right in front of your nose, and the healing can only begin when you get real about what’s really in your mind. To throw in a last pop reference, by the perhaps not so esteemed and yet still admired En Vogue: “free your mind, and the rest will follow.”
Following my friends to our seats, I cooed at the ceiling, “It looks like we’re inside the Epcot Center ball!” (I’ve always had a bizarre affection for that giant Epcot golf ball… but I digress) It wasn’t my idea to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I was willing to come along for the ride.
I am not a Harry Potter fan. That is not to say that what I think J.K. Rowling has created with her empire is anything short of, well, a capital “S” Superstah fairytale international kingdom, well gilded with riches and notoriety. I am in curious awe, of course, of any realm so far reaching in scope and power, and kudos to her for the genius marketing of her corporate team’s vision to propel the mega world into mega bucks. Always a voracious reader, I remember being quite surprisingly captivated by the 1st book, that momentum propelling me to slurp up #2 and #3 quite quickly thereafter. By the time #4 came along, I had to wait for its arrival. The wait dampened my enthusiasm; I was jaded to quidditch as just another sport, and when eyeing its thick hardcover I remember surmising, “It was fun, but not fun enough to haul around with me as dead weight.” (I’ll refrain from any gauche relationship metaphor here.) I wonder had Kindle been around then, if it could have persuaded me into a perusal of #4.
I kinda assumed that the #6 film would give a once over, “last… on Harry Potter” sequence, bringing illiterates up to date with its characters, but it seems they deduced rather than waste time on needless exposition, to dive right in. So basically I had no idea what was happening throughout the first act of the film. It seemed very slow. And very dramatic. Soap operas seemed like sitcoms by contrast to the lethargic anticipation that was this 1st act.
Anyhow, I was oh-so-patiently waiting for the movie to progress for two and a half hours. About 2/3rds of the way through (I’m assuming if you care at all about HP you will have seen the film by this point and there is no need for a spoiler alert here, although, in any event, here: spoiler alert) there is the big scene between Harry Potter and his bestie Ron Weasley, where Ron has to face his biggest fears before they can progress.
Now in all the slow moving drama that precedes, some pretty big things are on the line. People are dying right left and center, there are battles and incredible healing powers sealing what would be fatal wounds, faces are rivers of tears and foreheads webs of wrinkled anxiety. People are being chased and go into hiding from monstrously hideous bad guys, all in a vast, disparately landscaped set of varying shades of darkness. It seems existence as their race knows it is ultimately being threatened and it’s up to HP and crew to do that “the one” hero thing and, in seven books/films or less, ya know, save the world.
So in this moment, where Ron has arrived in the nick of time to save Harry, up comes a swirling black mass of ghoulish black clouds, illustrated and sounded elaborately as Ron’s fears. Ron has to be able to face his fears in order to conquer them and save Harry. In the theatrical panorama that is the ensuing armageddon of the HP saga, are Ron’s fears centered around the expulsion of their race, or the fall of life as they know it? Are they masses of worries about those dying or of his own possible extinction? No… it’s all… “mommy didn’t love me, the girl I want loves Harry more, and ‘Harry can do better without you.’”
I loved this part of the movie, because this is where it got real.
It reminds me of the portion of Elizabeth Gilbert’s star memoir, Eat Pray Love.
(wow, aren’t I being a little media piglet with the topical blockbuster pop-culture references in this post) where she speaks about meeting refugee girls in a camp. Instead of being worried about their displaced homeland or future as a community, their counseling with her consisted of, “OMG—there’s this cute boy in the refugee camp, I don’t know if he likes me.”
This is the human condition. As much compassion as we can and do muster for the atrocities befalling many parts of the world, generally our greatest fears and our most prevalent thoughts are not of inhumanities elsewhere. The kryptonite that is our ego mind saddles us with the running dialogue of things close to our hands and heart.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Hallow is not in my daily lexicon, so I google’d it for the purposes of this blog. "To make holy or sacred, to sanctify or consecrate, to venerate.” The ‘deathly’ hallows could easily be defined as examining those darkest parts of ourselves by taking the ugliest fears and making friends with them, thereby transforming them to “holy.” Or as I would put it, as more one with ourselves. This is after all, what my teachers, Buddhist and Indian (and any wealth of other traditions) urge us to do. By facing the ego, we not only befriend it, but the ultimate spiritual enlightenment they say, is the ultimate death of the ego, creating an intrinsic sense of oneness with all. HP is another modern mass media outlet underlining that the courage to face these fears is where our greatest strengths lie. Hallowed be the death.
What I liked most about this Harry flick was not just the stadium seating and the company of my loveliest of friends, but that within the melodrama that is an uber-blockbuster and all of its surrounding brouhaha, the underlying message is simple. When the world is falling apart, start where you are. That’s why the Harry and Ron scene rang real—if your true fears are girl problems or jealousy of your best friend, be there. Be here. All you have is what’s right in front of your nose, and the healing can only begin when you get real about what’s really in your mind. To throw in a last pop reference, by the perhaps not so esteemed and yet still admired En Vogue: “free your mind, and the rest will follow.”
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
family matters
“Where are you headed today?”
A cute TSA employee strikes up a conversation with me as I wait for the conveyor to push my laptop through the scanner.
“Chicago.”
“Is Chicago home?”
No, he’s not cute, he’s out-of-place-for-airport-security dashing; this guy… this guy can frisk me, no problem.
“No, New York is home, but my family is in Chicago.”
“How long will you be there for?”
I raise my eyebrows, “A month.”
“A month! Now that’s some visit!”
“Well, my mom is sick and I want to go help her out.”
He’s flirty. Maybe slightly unprofessional, but I’m not filing a complaint anytime soon.
“Did she talk you into that?”
“No,” I raise my eyes to deliver the line straight on, “I’m just a really good daughter.”
We laugh. His smile is dazzling. How nice. On four hours of sleep, hungover, with no caffeine or food in my system, I am surprisingly chipper. Perhaps I am still drunk. The rest of the journey to the airplane is like this. Everyone seems more polite than usual. People are extraordinarily courteous. I see strangers talking, making connections, expressing gratitude. Holiday music piping through the terminal, perhaps they are all drunk on the season, now unabashedly in full swing post Thanksgiving weekend.
I am leaving one family to go to another. My soul is juiced up after an unexpectedly super fantastic six days in LA. I yoga’d it up, I sashayed for hours beachside, drank far too much alcohol and even more green juice trying to counterbalance it. I had a birthday, a reading, Thanksgiving with friends and family Hollywood Hills dinners. I bowled a strikingly (pardon the pun) awesome 167 at the Lucky Strike lanes. For my birthday I received the new Jonathan Franzen book and a deliciously sweet truffle of a weekend romance.
Several of my closest friends have moved here—it started five years ago with my bestie Broadway veteran Adam…simply the most charming, charismatic person I have ever known. Period. The West Coast has propelled him to the brink of interior design reality show stardom and he leads me around like a trophy fag hag, which I am more than proud to be.
The wave continues with David and Logan who for a solid seven years (along with our relocated Vermonter Tesha) were so close, they were not my crew. They were, they are, my tribe. At one point we coined ourselves ‘lodamate.’ T-shirts were made. I’m not kidding.
So with the mass exodus West, what’s a girl to do but head for a visit?
My amazon goddess oneness sistah Katie was trying LA on for size, there were yogis peppered everywhere and friends I adore from high school are here I didn’t even get a chance to see, the schedule was so packed.
Being with friends like this is being with family. These are the people who with ridiculous generosity offer, “Here take the keys to this apartment, we’ll stay together and you can stay there for free.” They respond to pick up requests without a moment’s hesitation: “of course.” They will brew you a pot of coffee when they have a house full of guests arriving to entertain and your lazy, tired ass should have made it to Starbucks on the way there. They have your back. This kind of love, the connection, the support, is what life is all about. I think of the yogis I met in India, who would fall in love and abandon their own continents to be with each other—I mean, that is an incredibly deep knowing. When you find this, you hold fast to it. You vacation together, you move to be near each other, it IS family.
As the jet-stream glides me eastward away from them, so grateful for the week I have had, my thoughts transition to this month with my “real” family. There is the old Ram Dass adage thrown around: “if you think you are so enlightened, go spend a week with your parents.” A month in my mother’s home will be the longest I have spent there in seventeen years. I’m not planning to lubricate the situation by running out for a case of holiday season Belvedere (our family is essentially sponsored by the vodka) but am instead placing my mother, sister and I on a one week cleanse and juice fast to start, which is going to stir up every irritability that ever existed in any of us. This will quite literally be, my most in-depth spiritual retreat.
Because the thing about family is, the comfort and the warmth and the ease that all the familiarity brings can also rear its ugly head as the place we feel most comfortable to be our nastiest selves. Often times our parents or siblings can bring things up in us, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that are the biggest thorns in our lattisumus dorsi. Something comes from one of their mouths that could be processed quite palatably from a stranger, but because our mother says it, there is all of this “stuff” attached to it.: expectation, charges of emotional hurt from the past. Discomfort when we don’t see eye to eye or they nag us for something we want to do or a way we want to be.
I joke with the TSA guy, and I joke here, but I’m pretty dead on serious when I label this a spiritual retreat. I fully expect to learn more about myself in a suburban Chicago household than I would spending a month in India with my teachers.
It’s leaning into the fire. Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön has a whole book titled “The Wisdom of No Escape” that speaks to this theory and practice. I will purposely be reaching for the irritations so that I can see how I react to them, notice this, and then in that inherent way that bringing attention to something and actually experiencing it rather than avoiding it dissipates it, this will be a month long meditative process.
Of course I go with excitement and love. I am fueled by the comfort and generosity I have with my tribe, to extend it to my family. Intending to learn and grow from any holiday stress that arises lets us all off the hook a little bit, doesn’t it? The world is a little jollier this month, decorated a little sparklier, as selfishness always seems to be ratcheted down a notch… And if everyone entered the season heart open, with a sprinkling of self-inquiry on mind, wouldn’t that make for a more enlightened December? Tonight the ladies of my family will feast, this weekend we will famine. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the opportunities in love with those nearest to me in this life.
6:30am the next morning (4:30am LA time) my sister’s alarm in the next room agonizingly rousts me out of a dream, twice, from my best sleep in a week. "Why the f**k is a spaceship is landing in my room?!" I shuffle to her room intercepting the silence before the 3rd snooze. Desperately tired and annoyed beyond reason that she can sleep through the sci-fi, space-age, musically whirling futuristic noise that is her cell phone alarm clock, I am exhausted and murderous. I hate that she can sleep through anything; I hate that I cannot. I hate that she has to go to work this morning… "Doesn’t she realize that as my younger sister she should be sensitive and subservient to my every comfort and desire??," my thoughts mutter to themselves… opportunities for love... deep breath... stand-by… and… go.
A cute TSA employee strikes up a conversation with me as I wait for the conveyor to push my laptop through the scanner.
“Chicago.”
“Is Chicago home?”
No, he’s not cute, he’s out-of-place-for-airport-security dashing; this guy… this guy can frisk me, no problem.
“No, New York is home, but my family is in Chicago.”
“How long will you be there for?”
I raise my eyebrows, “A month.”
“A month! Now that’s some visit!”
“Well, my mom is sick and I want to go help her out.”
He’s flirty. Maybe slightly unprofessional, but I’m not filing a complaint anytime soon.
“Did she talk you into that?”
“No,” I raise my eyes to deliver the line straight on, “I’m just a really good daughter.”
We laugh. His smile is dazzling. How nice. On four hours of sleep, hungover, with no caffeine or food in my system, I am surprisingly chipper. Perhaps I am still drunk. The rest of the journey to the airplane is like this. Everyone seems more polite than usual. People are extraordinarily courteous. I see strangers talking, making connections, expressing gratitude. Holiday music piping through the terminal, perhaps they are all drunk on the season, now unabashedly in full swing post Thanksgiving weekend.
I am leaving one family to go to another. My soul is juiced up after an unexpectedly super fantastic six days in LA. I yoga’d it up, I sashayed for hours beachside, drank far too much alcohol and even more green juice trying to counterbalance it. I had a birthday, a reading, Thanksgiving with friends and family Hollywood Hills dinners. I bowled a strikingly (pardon the pun) awesome 167 at the Lucky Strike lanes. For my birthday I received the new Jonathan Franzen book and a deliciously sweet truffle of a weekend romance.
Several of my closest friends have moved here—it started five years ago with my bestie Broadway veteran Adam…simply the most charming, charismatic person I have ever known. Period. The West Coast has propelled him to the brink of interior design reality show stardom and he leads me around like a trophy fag hag, which I am more than proud to be.
The wave continues with David and Logan who for a solid seven years (along with our relocated Vermonter Tesha) were so close, they were not my crew. They were, they are, my tribe. At one point we coined ourselves ‘lodamate.’ T-shirts were made. I’m not kidding.
So with the mass exodus West, what’s a girl to do but head for a visit?
My amazon goddess oneness sistah Katie was trying LA on for size, there were yogis peppered everywhere and friends I adore from high school are here I didn’t even get a chance to see, the schedule was so packed.
Being with friends like this is being with family. These are the people who with ridiculous generosity offer, “Here take the keys to this apartment, we’ll stay together and you can stay there for free.” They respond to pick up requests without a moment’s hesitation: “of course.” They will brew you a pot of coffee when they have a house full of guests arriving to entertain and your lazy, tired ass should have made it to Starbucks on the way there. They have your back. This kind of love, the connection, the support, is what life is all about. I think of the yogis I met in India, who would fall in love and abandon their own continents to be with each other—I mean, that is an incredibly deep knowing. When you find this, you hold fast to it. You vacation together, you move to be near each other, it IS family.
As the jet-stream glides me eastward away from them, so grateful for the week I have had, my thoughts transition to this month with my “real” family. There is the old Ram Dass adage thrown around: “if you think you are so enlightened, go spend a week with your parents.” A month in my mother’s home will be the longest I have spent there in seventeen years. I’m not planning to lubricate the situation by running out for a case of holiday season Belvedere (our family is essentially sponsored by the vodka) but am instead placing my mother, sister and I on a one week cleanse and juice fast to start, which is going to stir up every irritability that ever existed in any of us. This will quite literally be, my most in-depth spiritual retreat.
Because the thing about family is, the comfort and the warmth and the ease that all the familiarity brings can also rear its ugly head as the place we feel most comfortable to be our nastiest selves. Often times our parents or siblings can bring things up in us, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that are the biggest thorns in our lattisumus dorsi. Something comes from one of their mouths that could be processed quite palatably from a stranger, but because our mother says it, there is all of this “stuff” attached to it.: expectation, charges of emotional hurt from the past. Discomfort when we don’t see eye to eye or they nag us for something we want to do or a way we want to be.
I joke with the TSA guy, and I joke here, but I’m pretty dead on serious when I label this a spiritual retreat. I fully expect to learn more about myself in a suburban Chicago household than I would spending a month in India with my teachers.
It’s leaning into the fire. Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön has a whole book titled “The Wisdom of No Escape” that speaks to this theory and practice. I will purposely be reaching for the irritations so that I can see how I react to them, notice this, and then in that inherent way that bringing attention to something and actually experiencing it rather than avoiding it dissipates it, this will be a month long meditative process.
Of course I go with excitement and love. I am fueled by the comfort and generosity I have with my tribe, to extend it to my family. Intending to learn and grow from any holiday stress that arises lets us all off the hook a little bit, doesn’t it? The world is a little jollier this month, decorated a little sparklier, as selfishness always seems to be ratcheted down a notch… And if everyone entered the season heart open, with a sprinkling of self-inquiry on mind, wouldn’t that make for a more enlightened December? Tonight the ladies of my family will feast, this weekend we will famine. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the opportunities in love with those nearest to me in this life.
6:30am the next morning (4:30am LA time) my sister’s alarm in the next room agonizingly rousts me out of a dream, twice, from my best sleep in a week. "Why the f**k is a spaceship is landing in my room?!" I shuffle to her room intercepting the silence before the 3rd snooze. Desperately tired and annoyed beyond reason that she can sleep through the sci-fi, space-age, musically whirling futuristic noise that is her cell phone alarm clock, I am exhausted and murderous. I hate that she can sleep through anything; I hate that I cannot. I hate that she has to go to work this morning… "Doesn’t she realize that as my younger sister she should be sensitive and subservient to my every comfort and desire??," my thoughts mutter to themselves… opportunities for love... deep breath... stand-by… and… go.
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