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The day the health department showed up at our little chocolate factory to ask if it was really true that we were storing chocolate off-site was right in the middle of the period our employees were making each other cry.
For the last four years, Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates has been situated on the second floor of my sister-in-law Joanne Currie's bustling restaurant and bakery, Splash Cafe, in San Luis Obispo, CA. We have a pretty display case downstairs and a successful online business selling organic, fair trade chocolate in as many forms as we can invent.
My husband Tom is a truly great chocolatier, Joanne is a brilliant manager, and we have a crew of dedicated and creative employees. The reviews are great. We even won the SF Chronicle's Battle of the Bittersweets. So the orders keep coming: more big bags of bulk chocolate made to Tom's specifications, more co-packing contracts, more holiday business, more new items all the time.
All of which equals less space.
When the third employee came to Joanne's office in tears (there just wasn't enough room for that many people to do their work well) the moment she got off the phone with the health department, Joanne knew it was time to look for more space. Luckily for us, there was an empty storefront just down the street at 1445 Monterey. The economic downturn worked in our favor. We discovered we could rent a retail space for what we would have paid for warehouse space a couple years ago.
So the shop is a bonus, and I am having the best time outfitting it. This blog will mostly be about that. I'm collecting chocolate books for a library (any suggestions?) and buying old chocolate molds, pots, cups and tins to sell, designing the windows and even painting the furniture, while Tom and his crew invent new delicacies for the cases.
We're planning to be open in early July. I can't wait!
(photo by Michele Cruzel)
I just sent off the "final" copy of the manuscript I've been working on for the last thirty years.
Well, not exactly. Not constantly. Actually, it sat under my altar for more years than it did on my desk, but for the last few, it's been my main work. It feels pretty strange not to have it hanging over me, but the immense sense of relief I was expecting hasn't shown up yet, maybe because I know how much more work there will be between now and the printing.
All the same, it's gone.
Yesterday I realized that I'd forgotten the last piece, a list of aphorisms. In the typewritten 1960's manuscript I've mostly been working from, they're "tenets to live by." Most of them sound like they come directly from Baba's teacher, Tripura, who wrote the original Bengali text that Baba translated and modernized. There's very little of Baba's voice there — although he's made some of sayings much longer in tiny scrunched-up longhand much of which I didn't have the patience to decipher. So much of the work on this book was doing that - I used a magnifying glass mostly, but occasionally I scanned parts and blew them up using Photoshop. Some of it was real detective work, making careful comparisons to letters in other words. Luckily, Baba had beautiful handwriting; I could depend on it being pretty consistent.
Anyhow, when I realized that I'd never typed up the tenets to live by, I did, and then I listened to Ira Landgarten's Rochester Raps tapes, watched the video of Baba and Timothy Leary, and watched every one of Deniz's Youtube videos. I pulled out my whole collection of written materials, both by and about Baba, and looked through them more of less randomly. Finally I wrote to a bunch of Baba-friends and asked what they remembered.
Here is the result. (The first few pages of it, at least. There are lots of gems!)
Ganeshian Aphorisms
Once a psychedelic, always a psychedelic.
The next revolution will be a spiritual one.
It is our first job, perhaps the only important one, to maintain our body-mind machine – this space capsule – in its optimal operating order – O3.
Have no ambition, above all pretend nothing, but be at each instant the utmost that you can be.
Be an erect animal, not a bent-backed animal.
Don't screw up the pitch.
Keep your back straight, breathe deeply, relax, and all will follow.
There's a reason your head is above your heart. Keep it there.
As for your place in the universal manifestation, the Supreme above will fix it for you.
Take your feelings to the court of reason.
Transcending ‘time’ is real transcendence.
Sit up straight and breathe, dammit.
Sense enjoyment, though immediately pleasurable, is ultimately painful. Striving for spiritualization, though immediately irksome, is ultimately satisfying.
Carry your column as a column.
Guru can teach you how to swim but you have to swim to get across; no Gods or Gurus can do that for you.
Even an atomic holocaust can be a festival of life. Death is not the terminal of life; it’s the grand exit.
The soul is not confined to a capsule. It is ever-existent into infinity.
To individual evolution, I invite the aspirants of the world.
Simple living and high thinking should be the ideal of the spiritual striver.
Just as brass and copper ware have to be regularly rubbed to keep them clean and bright, so has the mind to be rubbed with Sadhana to keep it fresh and clear.
Just as in a dream, the objects appear real and prove imaginary on waking up, so shall this world appear dreamlike when we awake to the full blaze of spiritual enlightenment. After death also, the world will fizzle out like a dream.
We are responsible for the results of our own actions.
Butter is incipient in the milk, but cannot be had without churning. Similarly, the Self is incipient in our being, but cannot be realized without striving or Sadhana.
Go on doing your due duties in the world, while remaining devoted to the Divine within.
Do not try to impose your feelings on others by demolishing theirs. Who indeed knows what is the inner experience of another?
In the end we traded Lili in for Lily Too, a chow/golden retriever mix. She's here for a two week trial. So far so good.
Today I am taking the new dog, Lili, back to the Humane Society. If they won't take her - I will be honest about why she is coming back - she will have to go to the pound.
Lili is an extraordinary dog. So smart. So sensitive. She walks on the leash perfectly and doesn't sit on the forbidden sofas or beds. She's exceptionally beautiful. She's gentle and sweet with people and learned not to chase the cats quickly. She barely sheds and doesn't bark.
But on Sunday she jumped the fence in our backyard and attacked a neighbor and his dog for the third time. No one was hurt but the incident followed close on one last week that I saw. We were on the path near the dog park when Lili slipped away as I was leashing her and attacked a small dog. Her action was unprovoked and vicious. It took three of us to get her off the little dog who was screaming with fear.
I told Lili if it happened again, she was gone.
Then, three days later, just as we were leaving for a couple days visiting friends in Santa Monica, I realized that she hadn't come back from her short trip to the backyard. She bounded in when I called her in from the front of the house, but the phone and the doorbell rang monents later. Tom apologized to the neighbor's wife while I told the neighbor that Lili's time here was up. He was sorry, too.
The chore of taking her back hung over me during our visit south, and this morning there is no excuse. Sometimes you just have to face the truth and act on it even if it breaks your heart.
Some dogs have a vicious streak.
I've begun to put some of my painted furniture up on Etsy.
This week I'm going door-to-door in my neighborhood handing out or leaving flyers inviting people to Monday night's potluck at out house. I've been having the potlucks for years, but only recently began to invite the neighbors. The monthly neighborhood potluck is a big success. People are longing for connection; eating together works!
If you're interested in more ideas on how to build community in your neighborhood, check out Block by Block. It's where I'm putting most of my energy these days.
In today's world, nothing - or very little - is sacred.
We are so rich we throw our treasure, our pieces of eight, away. Cold Canyon, the landfill, so named because it wa
s a canyon, has been a mountain for years.
We even trash other people's gods.
In tomorrow's world, everything will be sacred.
Will we understand and respect that — before so much of our abundance is trashed that whatever is left becomes precious?
A shift in perspective is necessary.
∞
We can pay attention to what we have rather than what we don't have.
And, as Tolle tells us, all we have is the moment -
so all that's necessary is to attend to the moment.
Thus are the lilies of the field clothed in raiment fit to the gods.
Ganesh Baba once wrote,
"�Survival of the weakest’ is the basic trend of evolution in the human phase. It requires a unique synthesis of production and distribution in the four phases of our being, namely, physical, biological, psychological and spiritual. Synthetic evolution, survival, survival in all phases, is total survival, and not a partial process, as in the biological Darwinian phase. Now we are passing the Jungian, and preparing for the advanced analogue of the Buddha phase.”
He's saying that in order to survive, humanity must grow out of "survival of the strongest" into the "survival of the weakest", a shift to the heart.
The shift must happen in all four phases of our existence, the physical, biological, psychological and spiritual, in the way they interact, a unique coming together of nature and spirit.
Darwinian evolution is only a small arc in the great cycle of creation/evolution. Synthetic evolution goes beyond the Darwinian phase, through the Jungian, or psychological phase, and into a new spiritual phase.
Each age has its avatar or figure who embodies the age. Baba speaks of the avatar (or avatars) of the next age as being more like the Buddha than like the Christ, avatar of the passing age, more receptive than active.
And, indeed, the presence that is growing in so many of us now is more receptive than active.
The Tolle teachings are transmitting the wisdom of the new consciousness to anyone receptive.
And Ganesh Baba's teachings prepare the receptacle: posture, prana, practice, presence.
This came to my friend Roxanne Gupta when she was teaching her morning yoga class today.
When you’re sad, breathe deeply.
When you’re stressed, breathe deeply.
When you’re angry, breathe deeply.
When you’re anxious, breathe deeply.
When you’re happy, breathe deeply.
Breathe deeply.
while listening to Ganesh Baba on my iPod...
Some notes and thoughts
“We must become more familiar with the essence and structure of consciousness, because it is out of consciousness we come and to consciousness we return.” Ganesh Baba, “The Rochester Raps,” recorded by Ira Landgarten, 1981.
The cosmos is created out of consciousness vibrating at different frequencies, visible to our limited senses as a fractal world created from rainbows and scales:
"The eight broad categories all operate within the human psyche, but the physical body operates only in the first three dimensions: matter, energy and space. The fourth dimension, time, we can barely conceive; it is like a baby moving around in the womb trying to understand the outside world."
Errors in understanding the subtle worlds come when the mind claims greater wisdom than it has, and sees exactly the opposite of what is. Because as soon as the individual mind, the ego, enters into consciousness, consciousness flips and becomes its opposite: Mercury, in flight between worlds.
The möbius twist.
Thoughts take on a life of their own whenever they get the chance. Potential archetypes arise with every word we say, with every intention, with every mood, with every thought we have (conceive, give birth to, create), whether conscious or unconscious. Some are conceived in the unconscious and take on the dark aspect of things not understood, and others are born in the light of consciousness and bring wisdom and understanding.
We fear what we don't understand and project our fear outward onto others and into the future.
"Jung knew. The darkness is coming into the light now, willy-nilly."
The quality of the consciousness, receptive or resistant, high or low, subtle or dense, with which each of us receives and responds to the darkness coming to light now will determine our experience. Yet the only way to get to the next level is through synthesis.
These are times of highest synthesis, of enormous potential —
of the possibility of coming together without baggage,
of receiving and giving without judgment,
of being present, instead of just in time.
Baba says the darkness will rise in all four fields of our existence, the physical, biological, psychological and spiritual. There is no stopping it.
It will manifest differently in each of our lives, though some groups will share their experiences.
But once we recognize the light in disguise in what appears to be darkness, we will be through the twist.
Clearly we are coming closer to the möbius twist in perception that the coming weeks, months, and years must bring.
I'm so interested in how others imagine the transition unfolding.
I think it's up to all of us to try to understand what's happening and to respond to it in the best possible frame of mind, body and soul — to be, as Ganesh Baba said, in 03, Optimal Operating Order— because, like many of us now, I believe we simultaneously create and are created by our experience. Crippled minds and souls can create chaos.
I think about this: one's response determines one's experience. Group responses determine group experiences.
Attention is the key, isn't it? What you pay attention to generates. Attention creates an opening but consciousness only pours through when mind steps aside. When mind is too dense, too set, consciousness must either seek another channel or flow through limited and narrow, set pathways. With aware, alert, unfocused attention - the relaxed attention meditation aspires to - consciousness rushes in and we see that this world is a complex, many-aspected reflection of the Self. The sacred is apparent everywhere; the re-enchantment of the world occurs. What hubris to think that man's mind had a monopoly on consciousness!
It is a mass awakening to the cosmic intelligence underlying the ordinary world. The rise of the Mother - and there is already a great opening. It's as if we are in the transition stage of the birth of awakening.
And, thank godness, more and more people are practicing presence. More and more people understand that they are the stage as well as the actors, and more, that they create both the stage and the play in their minds. The more we open to possibility, the more easily the birth of the new consciousness will go. Oprah Winfrey was midwife to the birth of consciousness in tens, perhaps hundreds now, of thousands of people. Class, culture and education have nothing to do with it. That hierarchy is crumbling.
The new consciousness coming in now, in particular since 10/8/08, is insisting that we step back from our ordinary lives - some people are getting a nasty wake-up call now - and become observers of our own minds, both our projections (active) and our responses (receptive).
I think we are controlled by our minds via water and earth, and control with our minds via air and fire. Water and earth encompass the physical and biological fields, and air and fire, the psychological and spiritual fields in which we all function.
For the transition to go easily, open-mindedness, flexibility and balance are necessary. It would seem that those who are ready to give up all expectation, to be open to absolutely anything, who don't resist, will have the easiest time.
The cocoon is breaking down; humanity is coming into its butterflyhood. The imaginal discs are linking up!
Clearly we are coming closer to the möbius twist in perception that the coming weeks, months, and years must bring.
I'm so interested in how others imagine the transition unfolding.
I think it's up to all of us to try to understand what's happening and to respond to it in the best possible frame of mind, body and soul — to be, as Ganesh Baba said, in 03, Optimal Operating Order— because, like many of us now, I believe we simultaneously create and are created by our experience. Crippled minds and souls can create chaos.
I think about this: one's response determines one's experience. Group responses determine group experiences.
Attention is the key, isn't it? What you pay attention to generates. Attention creates an opening but consciousness only pours through when mind steps aside. When mind is too dense, too set, consciousness must either seek another channel or flow through limited and narrow, set pathways. With aware, alert, unfocused attention - the relaxed attention meditation aspires to - consciousness rushes in and we see that this world is a complex, many-aspected reflection of the Self. The sacred is apparent everywhere; the re-enchantment of the world occurs. What hubris to think that man's mind had a monopoly on consciousness!
It is a mass awakening to the cosmic intelligence underlying the ordinary world. The rise of the Mother - and there is already a great opening. It's as if we are in the transition stage of the birth of awakening.
And, thank godness, more and more people are practicing presence. More and more people understand that they are the stage as well as the actors, and more, that they create both the stage and the play in their minds. The more we open to possibility, the more easily the birth of the new consciousness will go. Oprah Winfrey was midwife to the birth of consciousness in tens, perhaps hundreds now, of thousands of people. Class, culture and education have nothing to do with it. That hierarchy is crumbling.
The new consciousness coming in now, in particular since 10/8/08, is insisting that we step back from our ordinary lives - some people are getting a nasty wake-up call now - and become observers of our own minds, both our projections (active) and our responses (receptive).
I think we are controlled by our minds via water and earth, and control with our minds via air and fire. Water and earth encompass the physical and biological fields, and air and fire, the psychological and spiritual fields in which we all function.
For the transition to go easily, open-mindedness, flexibility and balance are necessary. It would seem that those who are ready to give up all expectation, to be open to absolutely anything, who don't resist, will have the easiest time.
The cocoon is breaking down; humanity is coming into its butterflyhood. The imaginal discs are linking up!
Enter presence through sensing each of the four elements in your body.
Earth: The poet John O'Donoghue reminds us that the landscape was here long before we were - that we are, in fact, part of it. Feel the clay you are made of, he says. Sense your weight on the surface below you and throughout your body, but especially at the bottom, where it touches the ground. Your body is subject to the same laws of gravity and inertia as the rest of the physical world. That is the earth in you.
Water: Now attend to the water in you: in your bladder, your intestines, your stomach, your heart, your mouth. Water runs through you like streams on a mountain, trickling, rushing, pooling. You can feel it everywhere, running through your arteries, veins and capillaries, but it is most present in the midsection of your body. All of life on earth shares the same water; the water in you connects you to all of biology.
Air: Shift your attention to your breath. Feel your chest rise and fall as your diaphragm pushes air out and your lungs pull it in. Breath slowly and deeply. Now consider the subtler understanding of air we call mind. Fill your lungs with oxygen and imagine it traveling to your brain; imagine your thoughts floating around you and through you. The soft, relaxed rhythm of your breath reflects the expansion and contraction of the entire cosmos, the psychological plane of our existence.
Fire: Fire is the spiritual aspect of your body. It is the same sun in the sky that is the light in your eyes. Feel its vitality in your heart and mind. Feel its power. It is awareness, light, understanding. It is consciousness.
Enter presence through sensing each of the four elements in your body.
Earth: The poet John O'Donoghue reminds us that the landscape was here long before we were - that we are, in fact, part of it. Feel the clay you are made of, he says. Sense your weight on the surface below you and throughout your body, but especially at the bottom, where it touches the ground. Your body is subject to the same laws of gravity and inertia as the rest of the physical world. That is the earth in you.
Water: Now attend to the water in you: in your bladder, your intestines, your stomach, your heart, your mouth. Water runs through you like streams on a mountain, trickling, rushing, pooling. You can feel it everywhere, running through your arteries, veins and capillaries, but it is most present in the midsection of your body. All of life on earth shares the same water; the water in you connects you to all of biology.
Air: Shift your attention to your breath. Feel your chest rise and fall as your diaphragm pushes air out and your lungs pull it in. Breath slowly and deeply. Now consider the subtler understanding of air we call mind. Fill your lungs with oxygen and imagine it traveling to your brain; imagine your thoughts floating around you and through you. The soft, relaxed rhythm of your breath reflects the expansion and contraction of the entire cosmos, the psychological plane of our existence.
Fire: Fire is the spiritual aspect of your body. It is the same sun in the sky that is the light in your eyes. Feel its vitality in your heart and mind. Feel its power. It is awareness, light, understanding. It is consciousness.
For several months I've been deeply involved in Tolle's teachings and suggested practices. This, in the midst of writing a book called Crea Sadhana (crea: "creative action", sadhana "spiritual practice") based on my teacher's unpublished manuscript with the same title. The manuscript is mostly a manual for my teacher's "crea-tive" version of Lahiri's kriya yoga.
All fall I practiced crea as prescribed in the manuscript, seriously, up to three hours a day.
I came home from my winter trip to India, however, more excited about the teachings of trika yoga, a practice of Kashmiri Shaivism, which is a synthesis of Hinduism and Buddhism described in the tenth century text, the Tantra Loka. A friend in Benares, Mark Dyczkowski, had just begun teaching trika yoga (the day we arrived at his house!). Our first evening there, he led a meditation based on being aware that you are aware. For me, it was an extraordinary meditation, one of those experiences that touches you so deeply that afterwards, your soul longs to return to that place.
Mark's lectures on trika yoga and the Tantra Loka are online. I was back home listening to those lectures an hour or so a day when I saw Greg's original recommendation to tune in to Oprah and Tolle.
As it happened, I had a credit with audible.com, so instead of joining Oprah's online group, I downloaded Tolle's reading of A New Earth and began listening to it between Mark's talks. I was thrilled when I realized that Tolle and Mark are passing on the same message. I listened to A New Earth quickly and then slowly, and then slowly again, and then I listened to it with my husband more than once, and now, on Sunday evenings, a group of friends comes over and we listen to short sections of it and have a discussion. I've listened to the talks Tolle gave at a retreat in Denmark ("The Art of Presence") many times, and I reread The Power of Now, which I liked when I first read it several years ago but was not moved by it the way listening to A New Earth moves me.
I continued to work through Mark's lectures slowly, often listening to one lecture 4 or 5 times before moving on. I listened when I walked the dog or walked to the store for groceries, I listened while I folded laundry or worked in the garden. Sometimes Mark, sometimes Tolle. Mark is a scholar and practitioner rather than a spiritual teacher - his talks are largely interpretations of the text, and considerably more detailed than Tolle's broad-brushed synthesis — yet the message is identical, and in the end, very similar to Jung's, I think, though the language is different.
I started doing the practices Tolle prescribes, which, as opposed to most of the crea exercises, are done during one's daily life. For example, Tolle suggests trying to do everything you do as if it is not the means to an end. Every small action is given full attention - and it becomes beautiful. Quality trumps quantity.
Soon I was so engaged in the practice of being present that I lost interest in my regular practice. Crea yoga began to seem old-fashioned. Its step-by-step process aimed at an end I never reached paled in the face of the glory of the present moment. For several weeks I set the manuscript aside and gardened and cleaned instead. I wanted to be out of my head, to leave thinking and writing behind for a while. I stopped listening to talks and threw myself into the present as fully as I could.
I knew that eventually I had to go back to my crea practice (I have a contract for this book, after all), but the moment kept calling me to the garden. Time passed, several weeks, I think. My relationships with my family, pets and neighbors blossomed, and friends commented that there was a new light behind my eyes. My eating habits changed. I lost weight. My house and garden glowed, as anything getting that much attention will. Tolle's system is very forgiving - I stopped scolding myself for not doing this or that, trying instead to do my best at whatever was in front of me. His teaching trains you to be receptive, open-hearted, and non-judgmental. When you give up resistance, life flows along easily.
Periodically I would try crea again, but it wasn't the same. The exercises I had been doing for so many years were lifeless in comparison to the simple joy of going through life in this new awakened state.
One day, working in the garden, I had a marvelous aha! It struck me that time really is an illusion. In the philosophy of the yoga I practiced all these years, time is considered to be an illusion, and long before I met my teacher, I was convinced of the artificiality of time systems, but it wasn't until I stood there at that moment, trimming that rose bush, that I really got it. My perspective changed dramatically. I'm free, I thought! I'm no longer tied to yesterday or tomorrow! The realization instantly released me from the need to worry about my in-laws coming the next week and from all my regrets and resentments. And, marvelously, the moment I stopped believing in time, I had all the time in the world.
This euphoria lasted a few days. A couple of friends were experiencing a similar shift at the same time; it wasn't until the three of us got together that we saw the downside of our new perspective. We discovered we'd all missed a few appointments! So that's what happens when you leave time behind.
It occurred to me that the concentrative practices of crea would probably correct the imbalance, but it was another couple weeks before circumstance and my conscience got together and woke me up early enough in the morning and inspired enough to return to my crea practice. The intervening weeks went to family, a short vacation, and four days of stultifying heat.
As I began stretching that morning, the synthesis I'd sought was suddenly obvious.
Tolle's practice of presence is a being practice. Crea yoga is a doing practice. (Kriya is Sanskrit for "action.") It seems painfully obvious now, but it hadn't occurred to me until then that I could practice presence while practicing crea. The relaxed, alert awareness I practiced in the garden is the ideal background for crea.
Crea is a masculine practice, a step-by-step linear progression to a goal, the eventual re-merging of the self with the Self. It trains the attention to one-pointedness by blocking sense perceptions. Little by little it uncovers the spark of divinity within.
Being present opens the awareness as much as possible, welcoming sensation, recognizing the Now as the Source. It is a feminine practice.
Now, my crea practice is at a whole new level. I do each exercise as if it was not a means to an end. I gave each move, each breath, each visualization, each mantra, my full attention. I recognize and easily dismiss all thoughts of what I should be doing and let the process take over. Quality over quantity. Oh my.
The shift in consciousness that Tolle is talking about is happening now. Conscious awareness is growing whether you buy into his ideas or not. It's another manifestation, a huge one, of the rise of the feminine.
The trick is to move into the new consciousness without forgetting the schedule.
For several months I've been deeply involved in Tolle's teachings and suggested practices. This, in the midst of writing a book called Crea Sadhana (crea: "creative action", sadhana "spiritual practice") based on my teacher's unpublished manuscript with the same title. The manuscript is mostly a manual for my teacher's "crea-tive" version of Lahiri's kriya yoga.
All fall I practiced crea as prescribed in the manuscript, seriously, up to three hours a day.
I came home from my winter trip to India, however, more excited about the teachings of trika yoga, a practice of Kashmiri Shaivism, which is a synthesis of Hinduism and Buddhism described in the tenth century text, the Tantra Loka. A friend in Benares, Mark Dyczkowski, had just begun teaching trika yoga (the day we arrived at his house!). Our first evening there, he led a meditation based on being aware that you are aware. For me, it was an extraordinary meditation, one of those experiences that touches you so deeply that afterwards, your soul longs to return to that place.
Mark's lectures on trika yoga and the Tantra Loka are online. I was back home listening to those lectures an hour or so a day when I saw Greg's original recommendation to tune in to Oprah and Tolle.
As it happened, I had a credit with audible.com, so instead of joining Oprah's online group, I downloaded Tolle's reading of A New Earth and began listening to it between Mark's talks. I was thrilled when I realized that Tolle and Mark are passing on the same message. I listened to A New Earth quickly and then slowly, and then slowly again, and then I listened to it with my husband more than once, and now, on Sunday evenings, a group of friends comes over and we listen to short sections of it and have a discussion. I've listened to the talks Tolle gave at a retreat in Denmark ("The Art of Presence") many times, and I reread The Power of Now, which I liked when I first read it several years ago but was not moved by it the way listening to A New Earth moves me.
I continued to work through Mark's lectures slowly, often listening to one lecture 4 or 5 times before moving on. I listened when I walked the dog or walked to the store for groceries, I listened while I folded laundry or worked in the garden. Sometimes Mark, sometimes Tolle. Mark is a scholar and practitioner rather than a spiritual teacher - his talks are largely interpretations of the text, and considerably more detailed than Tolle's broad-brushed synthesis — yet the message is identical, and in the end, very similar to Jung's, I think, though the language is different.
I started doing the practices Tolle prescribes, which, as opposed to most of the crea exercises, are done during one's daily life. For example, Tolle suggests trying to do everything you do as if it is not the means to an end. Every small action is given full attention - and it becomes beautiful. Quality trumps quantity.
Soon I was so engaged in the practice of being present that I lost interest in my regular practice. Crea yoga began to seem old-fashioned. Its step-by-step process aimed at an end I never reached paled in the face of the glory of the present moment. For several weeks I set the manuscript aside and gardened and cleaned instead. I wanted to be out of my head, to leave thinking and writing behind for a while. I stopped listening to talks and threw myself into the present as fully as I could.
I knew that eventually I had to go back to my crea practice (I have a contract for this book, after all), but the moment kept calling me to the garden. Time passed, several weeks, I think. My relationships with my family, pets and neighbors blossomed, and friends commented that there was a new light behind my eyes. My eating habits changed. I lost weight. My house and garden glowed, as anything getting that much attention will. Tolle's system is very forgiving - I stopped scolding myself for not doing this or that, trying instead to do my best at whatever was in front of me. His teaching trains you to be receptive, open-hearted, and non-judgmental. When you give up resistance, life flows along easily.
Periodically I would try crea again, but it wasn't the same. The exercises I had been doing for so many years were lifeless in comparison to the simple joy of going through life in this new awakened state.
One day, working in the garden, I had a marvelous aha! It struck me that time really is an illusion. In the philosophy of the yoga I practiced all these years, time is considered to be an illusion, and long before I met my teacher, I was convinced of the artificiality of time systems, but it wasn't until I stood there at that moment, trimming that rose bush, that I really got it. My perspective changed dramatically. I'm free, I thought! I'm no longer tied to yesterday or tomorrow! The realization instantly released me from the need to worry about my in-laws coming the next week and from all my regrets and resentments. And, marvelously, the moment I stopped believing in time, I had all the time in the world.
This euphoria lasted a few days. A couple of friends were experiencing a similar shift at the same time; it wasn't until the three of us got together that we saw the downside of our new perspective. We discovered we'd all missed a few appointments! So that's what happens when you leave time behind.
It occurred to me that the concentrative practices of crea would probably correct the imbalance, but it was another couple weeks before circumstance and my conscience got together and woke me up early enough in the morning and inspired enough to return to my crea practice. The intervening weeks went to family, a short vacation, and four days of stultifying heat.
As I began stretching that morning, the synthesis I'd sought was suddenly obvious.
Tolle's practice of presence is a being practice. Crea yoga is a doing practice. (Kriya is Sanskrit for "action.") It seems painfully obvious now, but it hadn't occurred to me until then that I could practice presence while practicing crea. The relaxed, alert awareness I practiced in the garden is the ideal background for crea.
Crea is a masculine practice, a step-by-step linear progression to a goal, the eventual re-merging of the self with the Self. It trains the attention to one-pointedness by blocking sense perceptions. Little by little it uncovers the spark of divinity within.
Being present opens the awareness as much as possible, welcoming sensation, recognizing the Now as the Source. It is a feminine practice.
Now, my crea practice is at a whole new level. I do each exercise as if it was not a means to an end. I gave each move, each breath, each visualization, each mantra, my full attention. I recognize and easily dismiss all thoughts of what I should be doing and let the process take over. Quality over quantity. Oh my.
The shift in consciousness that Tolle is talking about is happening now. Conscious awareness is growing whether you buy into his ideas or not. It's another manifestation, a huge one, of the rise of the feminine.
The trick is to move into the new consciousness without forgetting the schedule.
The suggestions the other Americans made for improving the school led me to some reflections about time in India.
It began when Sarah responded to the outsiders' plea for a structured daily schedule, regular field trips, additional after-school programs, and so on, by saying, "I cannot ask my teachers to do more. They are already working long hours for reduced salaries. My teachers do what they do for affection, for love, not for money."
Values are different in India. Traditionally, it has been more important to ask after the family of the neighbor or relative you meet on the street than it is to get somewhere on time. Affection, caring, is of greater value than money or time. So, since many people still agree that responding to the need of the moment with love is more valuable than arriving on time or getting work done, the imposition of the Western values of efficiency and hard work is not always effective.
Values are shifting, however, as the Boom proves - young people are rapidly rejecting traditional value systems in favor of current fashion. All those new buildings are rising on schedule and the IT industry is delivering on time.
Nonetheless, I hope the person calling on that cell phone ringing in the temple of the sacred deity is asking about the family of the smiling young woman answering it.
The suggestions the other Americans made for improving the school led me to some reflections about time in India.
It began when Sarah responded to the outsiders' plea for a structured daily schedule, regular field trips, additional after-school programs, and so on, by saying, "I cannot ask my teachers to do more. They are already working long hours for reduced salaries. My teachers do what they do for affection, for love, not for money."
Values are different in India. Traditionally, it has been more important to ask after the family of the neighbor or relative you meet on the street than it is to get somewhere on time. Affection, caring, is of greater value than money or time. So, since many people still agree that responding to the need of the moment with love is more valuable than arriving on time or getting work done, the imposition of the Western values of efficiency and hard work is not always effective.
Values are shifting, however, as the Boom proves - young people are rapidly rejecting traditional value systems in favor of current fashion. All those new buildings are rising on schedule and the IT industry is delivering on time.
Nonetheless, I hope the person calling on that cell phone ringing in the temple of the sacred deity is asking about the family of the smiling young woman answering it.
Here's a letter I sent friends from Vizag:
Roxanne and I are in Vizag now, going to pieces of the wedding almost every day and hanging out at the school for developmentally disabled children the rest of the time. Another group of Americans is here, too, an advisory committee trying to help the school by giving a lot of advice and no money.
Vizag is very modern. So different from Benares and Bhubaneswar. Yesterday we went shopping for shoes to match my new saree for the main ceremony of the wedding, which is black and gold, very elegant (and only cost rs 1500). Driving through the shopping district with Sarah we saw a rickshaw - and it looked totally out of place. In Benares, you're often riding in a rickshaw seeing nothing but other rickshaws, bicyclists, and cows being herded through the streets. We went to a meeting at Andhra University, which almost could have been an American university. There are new high-rises everywhere, the streets are wide and clean and cell phones are totally ubiquitous. People chat away in the holiest places. Roxanne tells them to talk somewhere else in their native tongue, which usually shuts them up fast.
India changes both faster and slower than the rest of the world. The saree, which is almost the only clothing women wear here in the south, hasn't changed much in thousands of years, the food, which is still eaten with the fingers all over India, is uninfluenced by outside cultures as far as I can tell. But technology! After dinner at Devipuram, which is an ashram an hour and a half's drive from here, deep in the jungle, everyone watches TV after dinner. They have a satellite dish. Guruji, after sitting in a hut giving out mantras to infertile couples while overseeing his students as they practice ancient rituals all day, logs on to his computer in the evening. He showed us his group's latest productions on the TV, too, a very sophisticated animation about the chakras. All this was true last time too, but now it's not new; it's just part of everyone's life.
It's been very enlightening observing the other Americans. They make almost no attempt to assimilate the culture. They wear their Western clothes, eat with forks and knives and ask that the food be modified to their taste - then they adapt it to make it fit their categories, eating the dal with a spoon and calling it "the soup" instead of pouring it onto their rice, sweetening and cutting fruit into their curd and calling it yogurt instead of salting it and mixing it with their other food, making jokes about "where's the steak?" When we went to the tailor's to have Roxanne's and my blouses made, they commented "some neighborhood!" when it was quite an ordinary street of small Indian businesses. One couple went to church on Sunday and another woman refused the chairman of the psychology department's invitation to dinner because she doesn't eat dinner after 7 PM.
At the conference yesterday we each had to speak briefly (embarrassing Indian custom, but part of the culture around guests). Roxanne spoke on cross-cultural communication, emphasizing the importance of being sensitive to the perspective of the other. I hope our American companions heard her, but I suspect they are already doing their best. After all, they are here, trying to help. What is painful to me is that the solutions they offer are so based in their own culture that all the people at the school are hearing is how inadequate their facilities and pedagogies are. All the American solutions are about getting more things, about doing more, and about cleanliness. The Americans don't see that their solutions either can't or won't happen here because the values are different and because time runs differently here. The children don't need the constant stimulation they are recommending: they need to know how to "be" and well as to "do", because in their lives, being is an important skill. The performance impressed that idea on us - the children sat perfectly still watching their compatriots dance, sing, play instruments for hours. American children could never have done it.
So much of this part of the trip has been about watching East and West interact, and I have to say, the Indian side comes off as gracious, generous, and accommodating, and the American as inflexible, limited by their own perception of what is right, and rude to the point of being racist. They treat the Indians like children. It's painful to see.
This morning we saw the groom Srihari's feet painted and we took part in a blessing which involved putting rice and turmeric on his head! He's gentle and interesting young man, a drummer for the dance troupe his mother runs. After the ceremony his younger brother, who's the lead dancer, and his friend took us back to the school on their scooters. We took the road along the bay, which is very beautiful, riding sidesaddle with our bags in our arms and our scarves flying out behind us.
Tomorrow evening is the main ceremony of the wedding.
Here's a letter I sent friends from Vizag:
Roxanne and I are in Vizag now, going to pieces of the wedding almost every day and hanging out at the school for developmentally disabled children the rest of the time. Another group of Americans is here, too, an advisory committee trying to help the school by giving a lot of advice and no money.
Vizag is very modern. So different from Benares and Bhubaneswar. Yesterday we went shopping for shoes to match my new saree for the main ceremony of the wedding, which is black and gold, very elegant (and only cost rs 1500). Driving through the shopping district with Sarah we saw a rickshaw - and it looked totally out of place. In Benares, you're often riding in a rickshaw seeing nothing but other rickshaws, bicyclists, and cows being herded through the streets. We went to a meeting at Andhra University, which almost could have been an American university. There are new high-rises everywhere, the streets are wide and clean and cell phones are totally ubiquitous. People chat away in the holiest places. Roxanne tells them to talk somewhere else in their native tongue, which usually shuts them up fast.
India changes both faster and slower than the rest of the world. The saree, which is almost the only clothing women wear here in the south, hasn't changed much in thousands of years, the food, which is still eaten with the fingers all over India, is uninfluenced by outside cultures as far as I can tell. But technology! After dinner at Devipuram, which is an ashram an hour and a half's drive from here, deep in the jungle, everyone watches TV after dinner. They have a satellite dish. Guruji, after sitting in a hut giving out mantras to infertile couples while overseeing his students as they practice ancient rituals all day, logs on to his computer in the evening. He showed us his group's latest productions on the TV, too, a very sophisticated animation about the chakras. All this was true last time too, but now it's not new; it's just part of everyone's life.
It's been very enlightening observing the other Americans. They make almost no attempt to assimilate the culture. They wear their Western clothes, eat with forks and knives and ask that the food be modified to their taste - then they adapt it to make it fit their categories, eating the dal with a spoon and calling it "the soup" instead of pouring it onto their rice, sweetening and cutting fruit into their curd and calling it yogurt instead of salting it and mixing it with their other food, making jokes about "where's the steak?" When we went to the tailor's to have Roxanne's and my blouses made, they commented "some neighborhood!" when it was quite an ordinary street of small Indian businesses. One couple went to church on Sunday and another woman refused the chairman of the psychology department's invitation to dinner because she doesn't eat dinner after 7 PM.
At the conference yesterday we each had to speak briefly (embarrassing Indian custom, but part of the culture around guests). Roxanne spoke on cross-cultural communication, emphasizing the importance of being sensitive to the perspective of the other. I hope our American companions heard her, but I suspect they are already doing their best. After all, they are here, trying to help. What is painful to me is that the solutions they offer are so based in their own culture that all the people at the school are hearing is how inadequate their facilities and pedagogies are. All the American solutions are about getting more things, about doing more, and about cleanliness. The Americans don't see that their solutions either can't or won't happen here because the values are different and because time runs differently here. The children don't need the constant stimulation they are recommending: they need to know how to "be" and well as to "do", because in their lives, being is an important skill. The performance impressed that idea on us - the children sat perfectly still watching their compatriots dance, sing, play instruments for hours. American children could never have done it.
So much of this part of the trip has been about watching East and West interact, and I have to say, the Indian side comes off as gracious, generous, and accommodating, and the American as inflexible, limited by their own perception of what is right, and rude to the point of being racist. They treat the Indians like children. It's painful to see.
This morning we saw the groom Srihari's feet painted and we took part in a blessing which involved putting rice and turmeric on his head! He's gentle and interesting young man, a drummer for the dance troupe his mother runs. After the ceremony his younger brother, who's the lead dancer, and his friend took us back to the school on their scooters. We took the road along the bay, which is very beautiful, riding sidesaddle with our bags in our arms and our scarves flying out behind us.
Tomorrow evening is the main ceremony of the wedding.
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Your comments about Presence reminded me of how thrilled I was to read our new Reform prayer book, Mishkan Tefilla - Gates of Prayer in which God is named as The Presence - how beautifully this is in keeping with your teachings as well as Tolle's.
I think a whole new language around spirituality is being developed now that crosses religious and philosophical lines that haven't been crossed before.
It's exciting!