Trying to put “swami” into a Western context is like trying to squeeze a tomato through a keyhole. Sometimes a swami is regarded as a monk. That seems easy at first, as many spiritual traditions have an established and accepted order of monks. But, hey, I’m not a monk, and I’m not a nun, either. I’m a sannyasin. Monistic, not monastic. Continue reading
Monistic not Monastic
Posted in Meditation, Philosphy of Yoga, Sannyas - Being a Swami
Tagged article, initiation, monastic, sannyas
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Sanskrit and me
Years ago I wanted to learn Sanskrit. I played around with internet searches and even the Teach Yourself book (yuk), read books on Indology and read about Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. Nothing, really. I was seriously interested in the Yoga Sutras and some other texts, so I bought a Monier Williams dictionary so I could look up word by word what I wanted to know. What a shock I got when I tried looking up anything in MW! Without bothering you with the technicalities of an MW search, maybe you’d get the idea if I say that you might have to dig four entries deep to find the word you want, and then, unless you have a clear understanding of the declensions of nouns and the conjugations of verbs, you may wander in the desert for ever. My years of Latin at high school finally paid off, sorry about all the derogatory remarks I made about it in my text books at the time. Continue reading
Friendly Voice of Reason
I want to add a friendly voice to those clamouring at Ian Gawler – it is a sad thing when someone, who found himself at the edge of death yet is still alive 40 years later, has to defend himself from those who have never touched the void and have never done anything to help others understand that to live well and healthy is their own responsibility, and the only means by which they themselves can help to ameliorate illness, along with whatever medical treatment they also receive from professionals.
He has commented that, if he did not have cancer but only TB, the chemotherapy he was treated with, in suppressing his immune system, could well have enabled the TB to make an end of him. That is pretty compelling. But the argument ought never to be made at all.
Every public health care system in the developed world is worried at the billions spent on a purely medical response to illness, when healthy living could prevent some illnesses, reduce the risk of many, and better manage most of the rest.
As the founding secretary of the Gawler Foundation, I never once heard Ian recommend anyone to quit their doctor or abandon medical treatment. I have certainly heard him encourage people to maximize their own psycho-biological resources to help themselves at the same time. Who could possibly be offended by that?
My time with Ian prompted me to pursue undergraduate psychology studies, followed by a Postgraduate Diploma in Health Psychology at La Trobe. That is an academic discipline where health is defined as a “biopsychosocial” issue – which Ian teaches from experience. That is the model which inspires people.
Personal Reminiscences
They say Ian is “charismatic”. I always wonder what that exactly means.For those who understand yoga-speak, I would say, “He has the shakti”. Maybe it comes from a few different things. One might be that he never seemed disabled by his illness.
For instance, although he walked on crutches, he would always open the door for me, prompted by his middle class manners. You’d expect, though, that the two-legged person should open the door for the crutch-walking person… well, wouldn’t you? It never even occurred to most of us to think of him as disabled at all. Except once, perhaps, and I remember the occasion because it was rare. We were walking down some stairs, and he asked me to carry something for him as he needed his hands to manage the crutches on the stairs.
Meditation Teacher
Ian teaches meditation mostly by guided imagery, while my approach is still-mind. Yet, because he is gifted – has plenty of shakti – when he would take people into a visualisation, they would move past that into sublime stillness. In a room full of people, or even a public hall, the depth of that silence and stillness was profound. Many found the experience life changing, while a bit of imaginative mental activity can’t do it. (If you come to me, you just have to get it by the hard work of practice, practice, practice!)
Room of light
And here is the strangest experience I had with Ian. I had a transcendent experience while awake and not even meditating. Suddenly I was standing with Ian, who – his body whole, no crutches – was opening a door for me. The door opened into a room full of white light, and I stepped in. It seemed to be a light full of peace and potential, and love, and felt like an invitation to that which lies beyond the ups and downs of ordinary life.
Prejudice and Reason
Prejudice announces itself in many ways, but it is always ugly. I think it is entirely reasonable that Ian claims to have survived cancer. It is only prejudice against his teaching, that health and well being are important in managing illness, present or potential, that brings on attack. “Men feared witches and burned women” said US Justice Brandeis, quoted in Al Gore’s book The Assault on Reason. It seems to me that a real person, in this case, Ian, is made to suffer when prejudice attacks reason.
Posted in Conversations with the Swami, Unusual People
Tagged article, health, Ian Gawler, meditation, prejudice
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ILLUSION – A NORMAL STATE OF MIND
We all have illusions. Sometimes it is the little dream that you are up and about while really you are still snuggled in bed. The bigger illusions are those that keep us hooked on feelings of neediness. Fantasies around them prop up our sense of self or our sense of being OK in the world.
Whose illusion?
An example: A few years ago, I was giving a Learn to Meditate program, and I must have made one of my unthinking quips, forgetting that not too many learners have done any deep work before. I said “No thoughts, no aims – just give up hope”. Afterwards, two of the attendees were waiting for me outside. One was very angry with me, and one was pleased. The angry person said, “I”ve got cancer, and you’re telling me to give up hope?”
Of course I assured her that I wished her all the best for a full remission, and to this day I am sorry that I challenged her feelings of vulnerability so glibly. But consider the other side of the coin.
The other one waiting for me said, “That’s the best thing anyone has ever said to me. I had an abusive mother, and I used to hope that she would start loving me. Then I married an abusive husband (of course!) and I used to hope that he would stop beating me. So many years of misery. If only someone had said what you said while I was still a child, I wouldn’t have hoped for what they couldn’t give me. I could have been ok.”
llusions hook us
A problem with illusions is that they seem so reasonable. They invite us into a dance that we can’t rest from till we are weary and bloodied by the engagement with them, because their “reasonableness” stops us from seeing the cause of the pain. Don’t you wonder what it would be like to be free of them? We can go deep, or shallow, but if we’re on the hook, it will hurt till we finally figure out what it is.
A basic illusion will generate a fantasy. Getting off the fantasy is hard enough, because it reflects our view of the world. Finding the illusion that supports the fantasy is more difficult, because the illusion supports our view of what our self is. You might suppose fantasies and illusions are weird, and you would never have any. But they are shockingly normal and part of everyday life – until you become aware of them. Here are a couple of examples:
Example – The motherhood myth
A young married woman can’t wait to have a baby. She loves the very idea of it, sets up the nursery, plans the child’s schooling and dreams about the holidays the family will have. Eventually, yes, she is pregnant, and ecstatically happy.
Three months after the baby arrives, the marriage is over. From day three, the babe spends most of the time with Grandma, and the young mother is shocked by the demands of looking after an infant. The perfect husband turns out to be unhelpful and criticises her for the mess now engulfing them. The dream turns to a nightmare.
Example – The empty nest
A mother whose child has grown up and moved away dreams that he would soon marry and come back to their district to settle, so that she could be near him and his children. Of course, the fantasy would include his having an amenable wife who would be perfectly happy and complicit in the arrangement, for the mother-in-law to be a close part of their lives.
Example – The freedom myth
A woman in her 40s decides that she had had enough of her husband and walks out. OK, good for her – if she could do it without fantasies. The fantasy? Many fantasies. Telling tales about how villainous he is, when the truth is that he is just an average joe, with nothing worse about him than anyone else in the stress of a relationship that is breaking down. Let him have the house and the savings, she didn’t want anything from him? So she does little in negotiating her share of their considerable assets. The fantasy of herself as heroine costs her hugely. Then she doesn’t not see that in middle age, she is not the prize she might have been at 18, and so goes to dances, where she finds faux romance from the neediest of men at dance halls. The possibilities that were part of the excitement of youthful dances just aren’t there. After shifting from one cheap rental to another for years, surely her ex in-laws will provide a house for her?
Now in her middle 60s, real old age is staring her in the face, and it is looking pretty grim. Her ex-husband lives in style in the house they both owned, while she has nowhere secure to live. She has had the freedom she wanted… or has she?
It is only incidental that these are all sad fantasies of women. The thing they have in common with each other is that, at the time, each person was convinced that their life story was true, and could not look past their entanglement with fantasy to work with the reality that is as plain as the nose on one’s face .And often, even to acknowledge the fantasy is soooo painful that as one fantasy fails, another is woven seamlessly to replace it.
How to notice when your mind expresses fantasy
Every-day fantasies have a certain ring to them… “I have a problem with my boss”; “I’m an easy-going sort of person”; “He would never hurt a fly”; “My life will be perfect when…”; “I’d be ok if it were not for the fact that….”; “He would never be unfaithful to me”; “Our love will last forever”; ‘Everyone likes me”; “I know what’s fair”; “It’s all your fault.” Can you hear the clank of a shonky hold on reality? It is an assertion of something that makes you seem perfectly right. You have an ego investment in the assertion. It is loaded!
And fantasy can hook you easily. Anyone who points out your fantasy is in dangerous territory, because pointing it out challenges your ego’s position – it provokes much angry huffing and puffing and blaming, so as to avoid the pain of letting it go. But wouldn’t you wonder why fantasy, for most of us, is so preferable to simple reality?
For the rare person who can manage the extraordinary feat of getting off the hook of a fantasy, there might be a new discovery: the feeling that something else is hooked even deeper into us. What could that be, and how to get to it?
The Illusion of what self is
Underlying everyday fantasy is a much deeper illusion, much harder for the mind to get at, and harder than all to unhook from. “I’m your Mum” seems so so so reasonable. “I want to be free” seems so reasonable… and yet there is illusion in it.
I’m your mum; I should be free; I’m someone with a problematic boss; I’m suffering because of you; I’m an idealist… What is the common thread here?
Don’t you get the sense of what the basic illusion is? The real question, when the mind bumps harshly against reality, is WHO AM I? The fantasies start when we add something on after “I am”. Whatever is added on has to be validated, elaborated, defended at all costs. And the costs can be devastating.
The illusion is that the mind’s idea of itself has an existence and identity somehow outside the existence of the mind and body. It acts as though it is outside the body looking back at it (my body, my mind, my ego). The mind then comes up with an external reference to validate that self-idea. You can be sure there is something uncomfortable deep within us, if that attribution has to be defended.
Easefulness with self – the alternative
So how can you recognise the way we put a label on ourself (ie, self-attribution, self-fantasy)? Deep ease comes from recognising the processes that build both the mind’s idea of itself (“This is me, you know!”) and the fantasies that support it.
Well you could take each of them and look unflinchingly at them to realise what their real aim is. Eventually you might realise that the very first one starts when you are little, when you accept the story of yourself, and of how life is, that the big people around you taught. And then you have the super-big question: If that was just a bundle of labels and ideas about myself, what am I really? Which might take you to fundamental issues of…. just being
Just being sits superbly well with reality. No projecting, constructing of “the sort of self that I am”. Then we have the eyes to see reality for what it is.
No investment in fantasy. How to get to that state, though? Still-mind meditation is a reliable route! – but it does take time, practice, and accompanying contemplation.
PS:
If you have found this thought-provoking in any way, you might like to consider booking in to learn Still-mind Meditation and Mindfulness with me. The next program starts on Wednesday 13th January, online, at 11.00 am or 7.00 pm.
Or come to the Still-mind Retreat at Bendigo on the weekend of Friday 12th February to Sunday 14th (Friday… room access is after 3.00 and program starts at 5, but arrive when you can)
Call Robert at 9833 4050 to book.
The Heretic’s New Year
Do you sit easily with what you’ve learnt from growing up? That is, moulded by convention and conditioning. If not, watch out, you’ll soon be seen for the heretic you are. Here’s how it is in heresy land.
Heretics don’t make New Year’s resolutions
– they would feel ridiculous
Heretics enjoy their own being. They love, they laugh, they don’t criticise themselves or others, whom they only wish well. They would feel too ridiculous taking up any position of struggling against themselves, or berating themselves. When something arises that entails doing, they notice, and do it. They may notice an achievement. If they don’t do it, they notice the opportunity that slid by. If they do it but don’t achieve, they notice the failure. None of it pulls them out of their gladness of being. None of it makes them unmotivated to engage in the world. None of it pulls them into the compulsions of conditioning and group pressure.
Heretics find no inner or outer
We often hear about the God within, or are encouraged to respect the God within one’s neighbour, or we are exhorted to nurture the spirit within. Heretics don’t know what that could mean, as they find there is no inner self, no spirit living inside a body that is outside of it. Their experience is not so. They find that what is outside is also what is inside, and they don’t, can’t, exist outside that goodness and gladness. Their spiritual self manifests as their body, mind, personality, and as what there is. It doesn’t have an inner territory, because there isn’t an outer territory. It is free, moment by moment.
So heretics don’t undertake to get closer to their spiritual self, or store up inner energy. They don’t see a difference between before January and after January. They just experience what is so.
Heretics don’t live in comparisons
When minds are still formed by unquestioning convention, they assume that there is some ideal state that they have to reach, and they compare themselves to it. Oh dear! The tears and the tragedy. Then, one fine day, suddenly they find themselves in the heretical state of completion and contentment. They notice what their minds had been doing, how they created the “me” that compared itself with an ideal it could never meet, how it compared itself with others, and how it compared others with an ideal they could never meet, either. And so they give up comparing. They find that the “me” is a bundle of tensions and strategies, even in the best of times. Personalities and minds are just as they are, capable of greatness and meanness, and somehow the whole spectrum is enjoyable. Heretics see the games and struggles that minds make while they are still normal. They wish them well, and hope they find their own heresy soon.
Your objection? “But you….”
Ah, but heretics get fat like the rest of us. Shouldn’t they make a resolution to slim down?
There is eating, and there is noticing the way the mind craves things for the palate. Perhaps they remember that eating is primarily for survival. That seems enough. Why worry about it?
But they are making the decision to be a certain way. That’s what we all do.
Yes, we are all the same fundamentally. Maybe not the same as the way you think, though.
I’ve heard you say that when you look within, you find peace and love. Yet you say that the “heretical” truth is that there is no within and without.
Yep, that’s right. Inside and outside are all the one stuff. Yet language is messy. The mind uses language to create conceptual differences and then treats them as though they exist outside the mind. If I were to say “I am peace and love,” you would be offended and tell me I am a heretic. The nearest other words are, I feel peaceful and loving.
Well, this is new. I’ve known you for a long time, and I sure saw lots of struggle, criticism and judgment.
Haha…yep, that’s true too. I just got lucky, I guess.
One day I “sort of heard” Baba Nityananda, the founder of our lineage, “sort of talk” to me. He said, “I will never criticise you.” That felt like such a relief, and I began to see that, actually, I had been nurtured through my life, whereas I had imagined myself alone in the world. When I saw that, I was shocked to find how much I criticised others. So I began to give it up. Then some other things happened… and I realised one day that personality is a bundle of tensions and strategies, not a “self” at all. Moment by moment being, not “being someone”. “Me” is a function of a mind, not a state of being.
Heretics get to their heresy in different ways. I used to be a good person struggling to be better. During the struggle, I think I got worse, not better. At least I saw the downside of the “good person” fiasco. Others might be born heretics. Others might have to go to the desert for a period.
But anyway, this is about the New Year, not about spiritual journeys.
What else for the heretical New Year?
Here’s a suggestion – let’s have it on the solstice, 21st December, the real beginning of the new year of seasons and natural rhythms, that fits the planet. And the natural cycle provides lots of new beginnings.
And here’s another: not a resolution, no trying to be better, just a firmness. When some dislike or reaction begins to form in the mind, wrap ease around it. In that easefulness, you are certain to find love, too.
So – let’s wish us all a Happy New Year, and the joy of being, now and always.
And perhaps consider coming to the Retreat ?
Still-mind Meditation Retreat, February 2021
Still-mind meditation retreat … not just for ancient forest dwellers….
Ancient forest dwellers are not the only ones who got this. Life follows the same pattern generation after generation, getting caught up in conceptual idea of self and reality, until suddenly one sees that self and being cannot be just a series of reactions to thoughts and ideas. There is a steady state of being which is always satisfied, no matter what rolls through the mind.
Explore further what this state is, in your own life. Still-mind meditation is the foundation of a more realistic life than chasing one idea of yourself after another and another and another…
Starts Friday 12th Feb at 5.oo pm (or when you are able to arrive) Room entry after 3.00 pm
Ends Sunday 14th February at 3,00 pm
Christmas, Jesus, Yoga
Another Christmas… it is often represented by children’s faces glowing with wonder and anticipation as the presents start to pile up under the tree… followed soon by the predictable gripes about the commercialisation of Christmas.
I don’t remember it exactly like that. The presents might have been a big feature of my childhood Christmases, but actually, my memories are quite as much about a sense of pleasure in Jesus and his birth. I loved him. I still do. Continue reading
Posted in Philosphy of Yoga, Spirituality and Religion
Tagged article, Catholic, Christmas, Jesus, love, Matthew 22:37-39, Yoga
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Yogic Solutions
All of us have difficult situations and unpleasant people to deal with throughout our lives. If only we could find yogic solutions for having loving engagement with others, easy truthfulness, powerful articulation, clear insight into issues, untouched by manipulative ploys. Our lives might be more peaceful, more fulfilling and more effective. Meanwhile. even, dealing with pleasant people sometimes has its difficulties! Continue reading
No More Being Manipulated
Do you feel manipulated when…
you have a legitimate issue and the other person slides out of it? Or puts you down, sometimes claiming that he is only joking? Do you feel that you have to be careful of what you say sometimes, because the other person begins to look angry, and you feel it is like walking on eggshells around him or her?
Is there someone you feel repressed by, and every time you try to talk about something it ends up in an argument?
Common Manipulative Ploys
There are some ways that people manipulate others that are easy to recognise, with a bit of help. When you are being manipulated yourself, you may feel so tied up in frustration and emotional reaction that you can’t see what the basic ploy is, and you just fight… and so the manipulation has worked. You might feel enraged, or you might feel depressed, as though things just don’t work for you, when in fact, you have become entrapped in someone else’s game. To unsnare yourself, you have to become aware of what the mechanism is.
Here are just a few of the major and most common ploys:
- Sarcastic humour or irony
- Put downs
- Denying
- The Silent Treatment
- Personal attack
- Blaming You
- Delaying tactics
Have you experienced any of these? You have a legitimate concern about how the other’s behaviour is affecting you, and he is sarcastic. It means you cannot come back with your issue. He puts you down, so that you actually feel small and useless and unable to challenge him. She denies that it ever happened, and follows that up with further derogatory remarks intended to make you feel foolish or doubt your own perceptions. He actually attacks you, saying that you are the one who is causing all the trouble. A nice variant of this is where the other person makes a pre-emptive move, blaming you for whatever has happened, and you are on the backfoot sounding as though you are trying to get out of something. Or she says, “not now, let’s talk about it later…” but later never comes, and you are left swinging in the breeze waiting for the never never. The point of all manipulative behaviour is that it is the manipulator’s way of being in control, anavoiding the give and take of real relationship. Possibly they are protecting a feeling of weakness, relating back to childhood and the childish methods they found for dealing with was beyond their control with adults who were manipulative themselves. Whatever the source of their manipulative behaviour, your responsibility is to recognise what is happening without judgment but with skill.
There are more ploys, too, that you can learn to recognise. Sometimes the manipulation is quite subtle, even apparently playful. When you can see what the process is, you can do something about it. When you are simply reacting, you do not see how you have been manoeuvred. When you do see, you stop reacting and do something much more sensible.
Doing something about it – some ways of handling manipulations
You can learn quite quickly to practice some tools for circumventing manipulative behaviour and feeling grounded and stable, even in the face of the other’s manipulative tendencies. For instance, learning the art of the “meta-conversation” ( eg: I feel belittled by your comments and then I feel silly asking for what I want). You can learn to put another process in place. And there are several, very effective methods, that anyone can learn. A tip: Never Argue !! That is not so easy, is it? But arguing plays directly into the other’s game.
The Empowerment Pause – respond with silence for a moment or two
Into the Lion’s Den – enquire about what the other person sees as the issue ,without having to engage with it. “Ah, that is how you see it”.
Turning off the fuse – validate the other’s emotional state (but not their behaviour)
The Strong and Subtle – Agreement in principle – agree to things that are true in general and to things which are true about yourself (but not to all their projections on you)
Meta-conversation – describe what’s going on in the conversation. (You’ll drive ‘em nuts, but it will shift them out of their game plan)
Non-argumentative – just state your position. Restate it again and again if need be, with no elaboration. Just one simple assertion.
Self-Enquiry – Knowing your own state
While getting your kit of new tools together, a deeper understanding comes from seeing your own mental and emotional patterns. Looking into your own rage, for instance, would show you a lot about why you have accepted the game in the first place. And then, there are two ways of going about self-investigation.
Quick or deep self enquiry
One form of self-investigation is simply to work out what it is that you are objecting to. Stop telling yourself it is because of the other person. Even if you can see what the manipulation is, the real point is to discover why it presses your buttons. If you were watching the same interactions on a TV sitcom, you would probably enjoy it.
The other is a deeper method of investigating your own processes, to find out how your personality strategises its life-plan. This is very deep work, and may be confronting from time to time. Are you manipulative yourself? This is also the deepest spiritual work – eventually finding out what your ego actually consists of. It is the way to enduring peace. And it is best accompanied by a solid practice of still-mind meditation.
Farewell Fr Sweeney
I heard the other day that Father Kevin Sweeney had died. I would have liked to attend his funeral. He brought peace to my father’s troubled soul. He married me to my former husband. He gave me a job teaching, when I had no qualifications. And he let me write sermons for him. Was I the first, or perhaps the only, woman to have delivered a sermon in a catholic church? In Melbourne!! What would a patriarchal hierarchy make of that? Continue reading
Posted in Spirituality and Religion, Unusual People
Tagged article, biblical, Kevin Sweeney, sermons
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Query on aspects of the Yoga Sutras
This is a discussion on the notion of “vrtti”in the Yoga Sutras, prompted by a query from a student. The phrase, or paraphrase, for “vrtti” as “ideational choice making tendency of the mind” is from P.Y. Deshpande, The Authentic Yoga Sutra.
DC: I would like to clarify word usage and interpretation within different translations of the Yoga Sutras. I have a copy of The Authentic Yoga by Deshpande. It is his discussion of the word “choice” and his use of “ideational” that I am interested in clarifying. Firstly, what is “ideational choice making” and what Sanskrit word does “ideational” relate to? Continue reading