Shantaram

Almost a year since our deeply moving time spent in India, and I’m still uncovering new sources of wonder.  The novel with this title, written by Gregory David Roberts, was given to me by one of our fellow travelers.  It is providing me with richly painted word-pictures of  all the wonders of that land and its people.  Roberts also scribes articulate insights into human nature world-wide, such as:

 

“There’s a truth that’s deeper than experience.  It’s  beyond what we see, or even what we feel.  It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception.  We’re helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay.  It doesn’t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabeker told it to me, just as I’m telling it to you now.”  Shantaram, p. 82

A Well-Made Bed

When I was less than two and my baby sister was a few months shy of being born, my father enlisted in the Marines.  I know in retrospect that my mother was grieved and angry, although she also understood why he felt so compelled to leave us.  The bombing of Pearl Harbor had just taken place, all able-bodied men not in uniform, were degraded and shunned.  He was treated that way too, by those who didn’t know or care that he was father of two and only surviving son of his Gold Star mother, and therefore exempt.  He signed on and served  in the Pacific, urged by both patriotism and shame.  Fortunately, he returned to us three yeas later.

My sister and I were eagerly watching out the front window for Daddy, who turned the corner and started up the front steps, still in uniform with a duffel bag over his shoulder.  Three year old sis took one horrified look, ran for the bedroom and hid under the bed.  Dear “Daddy”, to whom we had sent our drawings and letters, was a “MAN”!   She had seen so few of them in her short life, all passing strangers; one of these couldn’t be her dear Daddy!  Her terror shortly turned to mere shyness and then delight, and we were both were blessed with many years with Dad.

And what, you may ask, does this have to do with the title of this blog?  Dad was the person who taught me both the importance and the skills of a well-made bed.  Since he and Mum were both working full-time,  all four of us pitched in to do the housework on the weekends.  Mind you, this was in the years before fitted sheets.  Proud of his Marine-taught barracks skills, Dad showed us how to make a bed well:  four square-corners with the bottom sheet, and pulled so tight he could bounce a quarter off it.  Plus, how to center the top sheet and blanket precisely,  tuck in square-corners at the foot and add a six inch fold-over at the top.  Shake the pillows down into the cases, fluff’m up good and top with a carefully centered spread.

Patience and humor were his teaching tools.  At summer camp, in college dorms, at my own first tiny apartment, Dad was there in spirit as I made the bed.  I think of him still, every time I change the beds.  And I’m grateful for this and the many other lessons he taught me about the satisfaction to be found in detail, precision, responsibility and a job well-done.

A Course in Miracles

I first heard about this in the late sixties, from a friend who was part of a discussion group.  They were studying a series of insights from packets of mimeographed handouts.  These teachings, my friend said, were written in shorthand, somewhat unwillingly,  by an intelligent professional woman in a trance state.  The concept intrigued me,  being a long-term student of things spiritual and mystical.  However, being pregnant and commuting to my job in  NYC took all my energy.  My friend would pass me challenging tidbits for several years, but as a full-time Mom with a second and then a third child, I wasn’t ready to take it all in.  My husband’s career took us outside the USA for sixteen years while, unbekownst to me, study of the Course was steadily growing back home.  My career took me from full-time Mom, to Mom plus teacher, to spiritual teacher/healer for many years, without any direct nudges from the Course.  Then, about ten years ago,  the Course made itself known to me again, gently but insistently,  through a series of dear teachers.

My first teacher was a student/client* who insisted I read Gary Renard’s Disappearance of the Universe.  This is a richly entertaining series of conversations between himself and two Ascended Masters who appeared to him on random occasions for nine years.  They offered interpretation, expansion and clarification of the ACIM teachings.  At the same time I joined a church where quite a few of the congregants were experienced students of the Course.  Discussion groups were available and books about the Course were exchanged.  I’ve gone on to books by Ken Wapnick and Marianne Williamson (writings which preceded Gary),  plus Gary’s second book, Your Immortal Reality, and three weekend workshops led by Gary.

Two and a half years ago, I committed to the path of reading daily a Chapter segment in the Text and a Lesson in the Handbook for Students  (twenty to forty-five minutes)  plus every Sunday  a segment of the Manual for Teachers. This schedule allows one to read the entire Course, a total of roughly 1100 pages, in one year.  The first year’s reading was sporadic,  at times incomprehensible or even scary and angry-making, but enticing and more-ish.  I was also sweetly nurtured my my advanced student friends at church, and my teachers in print.  The second year’s reading was manageable,  insightful and encouraging.  I found I missed fewer lessons by having the Course on my Kindle as well.  Now, mid-June of year three, reading from the beginning again, I am on schedule, feeling truly blessed and enriched by the depth of comfort and insight I am receiving.

For over a year I have also had the joy of hosting a bi-monthly discussion group at my office, where ongoing students of the Course have met to share their experiences and insights.  Rather than set a study guide, we have chosen to take turns in letting the book just fall open.  We start there, reading a paragraph or two, then sharing our perceptions and insights.  Alternatively, someone with come in with questions about a passage he/she has recently read.  Each of us may choose to share perceptions or not.  All are received and accepted without critique.  We are free to pursue the path in our own way and at our own pace.

Most recently, I have been invited to facilitate an “Introduction to A Course in Miracles” workshop at my church.  Preparing this program has given me the joy of realizing how far the Course has already taken me and how much richness of new learning still awaits me.

* Introduction to Manual for Teachers, PP 1, Sen 5:  “The course .  . . emphasizes that to teach is to learn, so that teacher and learner are the same.”   (Hints of “Getting to Know You” from The King and I, eh?)

Goat Song

( For reasons I cannot fathom, I have decided to post this short story.  I wrote it in 1960, when I was a freshman or sophomore at college, and it was published in the literary magazine.)

Goat Song

Long before sunrise my father shook me roughly.

“Get dressed, boy.  We have decided you may go today.”

“Yes, sir,” drowsily, and then, “Yes, SIR!”  I leapt off my pallet and had my chiton half pinned before he was gone.    Last night I was sure he would not let me go.  I was pouring wine with Aklitis at the banquet when Phitas said to my father,

“Thedios, your son says he is not going to the fall festival.  Isn’t he the same age as his brother Dion was when he went last year?”

“No, he is a season younger.”

“But sir, I was a season younger last year, and the deme ruled that I might go”  Aklitis was my father’s favorite of the young men, and the only one who dared question him.

“I will not have this discussed before children.  Theos, you may leave.  Aklitis will pour alone.”

As I left I heard my uncle ask if I shouldn’t be allowed to see my brother once more.  Until then I had not realized that once my brother became a priest at the rites today he would be sent to another temple.  I had not seen him during the year of training, and unless I went to the festival today I would never see him again.  As I pelted across the courtyard I vowed a cup to Zeus for this last chance to see Dion.

At the agora, other households were gathering.  The mist of dawn seemed to swallow and disgorge the assembling men.  The stubble crackled underfooot and the damp chaff caught between  my toes as we passed the gates of the deme and crossed the north fields.  My teeth were chattering, but I bit my tongue to stop it.  Aklitis left his household and silently stepped into line in front of me.  I didn’t dare say anything to him, but I was glad he had waited.

As the line moved slowly toward the woods, individual trees shaped themselves from the mass.  The fog thinned; the sky above the trees glowed faintly.  As the first birds twittered, a soft chant rose from lthe men ahead of us.  It rippled along the line, swelling in intensity as each voice took it up.  Light filtered through the trees making the dewdrops sparkle.  The chant beat more intensely.  Ahead of me the line split left and right.  I paused at the entrance to a grass flat circled by lean trees and roofed by a dome of blue, and then went left.

We moved to the rhythm of the chant until we stood among the trees on every side of the glen, completely surrounding an altar rich with harvest offerings.  Piled against a drapery of tangled grape leaves were firm yellow and orange squashes, heaps of dark olives and stiff, soft-hued bundles of wheat.  Spilled in among the rest were bunches and bunches of grapes: deep purple grapes, round, shiny ones that popped when eaten, ones almost as red as the wine made from them, and black ones that smelled so sweet my mouth watered for a taste.

The chant pulsed louder, faster.  I sang, the music bursting from my chest, searing my throat.  I swayed, the rhythm pounding in my temples and my lungs.  We called Dionysus in screams and shouts and pleas.  From the woods on every side came a hollow rattling.  The priests leapt into the circle.  In the silence that followed, they pounded a heavy rhythm on the earth.  Their black goatskins gleamed in the sunlight; their strings of goat horns rattled a giddy call.  They circled slowly around the altar, calling the beautiful young Dionysus to came and receive our thanks for the crops he had given us.  The god came.  He sprang onto the altar as poised and graceful as a young buck.

“Dion!”  The god was my brother Dion.  We shouted to him, called his name.  Father was as excited as I was, and he gripped my shoulder.  Dion threw back his head and laughed.  He snatched up a sheaf of wheat, testing its balance.  He lifted it, aimed and sent it soaring over the treetops as easily as Zeus hurls lightening.  I had never seen him do such a thing before.  It was almost a mockery of the king of gods.  The priests moved slowly around the circle but shook a fast joyous rhythm with the rattles.  Dion jumped from the altar and danced.

Dion danced with exultation; every movement cried out the excitement of living.  He was every one of us in that dance.  He was every boy in the village and every man who once was a boy.  He could do anything and do it well.  His feet trod on only praise.  As he pranced and bounded the head priest crept up behind him.

“Dion, look!”

“Take care, boy! Behind you!”

Dion glanced back and ran lightly away.  He had never been caught in our games.

The creature began to pursue him, but Dion was adept.  He slipped in behind the altar, watching his hunter carelessly.  The demon came around the other side; Dion doubled back, leaping easily over the altar.  He crossed toward us with his pursuer close behind him and hesitated, deciding which way to go. With a twist and a quick side-step he was under the devil’s arm and off to the right of the circle.  He tossed a taunting laugh over his shoulder as he danced again to the protection of the altar.

The slow, stupid thing!  Dion could stand stock still in his tracks and still not be caught.  His grace and agility were quickened, his whole body glowed with the game.  He darted back and forth with glee behind the altar.  The black creature edged to within an arm’s reach of the youth.  A confident smile touched my brother’s lips as he braced himself to leap across the altar’s corner again. He sprang lightly into the air, his toe struck the altar’s corner, he was lying on the ground.  He leapt to his feet, but a dark arm gripped tightly across his chest.  An iron hand held his wrist.

“Father!” two brothers cried.

An anguished moan escaped my fathers lips.  The men around us cried out and wept.  The other priests took hold of my brother.  They dragged him to the altar.  Still glowing with the life of the dance and struggling for his life, he was forced down among the festal offerings.  The black-robed priest raised his knife high and sank it deep into my brother’s body.

I screamed as if the pain had been my own.  Around me I heard the screams and groans of the other men.  Dionysus is dead.  The giver of the crops is dead.  The fields are stripped and bare.  The woods are cold and do not grow.  The keening chants of mourning rose and fell.  I threw myself upon the body of the god, screaming my grief  They cut out his heart and put it in a casket.  I sang because I could not cry.  I mourned with the men for the dead Dionysus.  I followed the casket as the other men followed it.

I stumbled through the woods never taking my eyes off the casket of the god.  Beside me, in front, behind were men I did not know.  They ran with me.  They ran on me when I fell, I found them beneath my feet when they fell,  we looked only at the casket held high by the priests.  I dragged myself to the edge of the path gasping for air.  My father passed and Aklitis, but they were blind with grief.

Their cries were swallowed by the thick woods.  The silence paced the hours as I lay insensate.  The shadows were long when I felt the leaves beneath me.  I realized my hands were crusted with blood, my chiton was shredded and stained.  With no real purpose I followed the path of broken shrubs back to the ceremonial circle.  The morning returned as distinct as the shadows now cast by the setting sun.  The altar was stripped to the bare wood, but I saw it heaped with crops.  I saw Dion lifeless among the fruit and knew my brother was dead.

I turned from the altar and plodded down the path I had eagerly ascended at dawn.  I stumbled often, not because my eyes were fixed on a dead god, but because my vision was blurred and my throat ached with the pressure of tears.  The twilight chill pricked my bare arms and legs.  The damp chaff caught between my toes.  The agora was empty, the peristyle of our house empty also.  I started across toward the chambers where my mother and the children were quietly amusing themselves, out of sight when the men returned.  As I passed the great doors of the main hall, I entered without forethought.  No one would know I was crying here in the men’s chambers.

Didgeridoo Golf

About a month ago we had a guest speaker at church . . .  Phil “Shiva” Jones . . .  an Aussie of my own generation, a musician in London at the time of the Beatles and a practitioner/teacher of Hinduism and Buddhism.   After church he offered a workshop about the didgeridoo, an ancient Aborigine instrument of exceptional spiritual power.   He demonstrated the capacity of its sound and vibration to generate, in the physical/energy  body a profound sense of both total physical “groundedness” plus true spiritual bliss.   The effect it had, and continues to have on me,  is the capacity to immediately bring me back to a centered, aligned state of being.  It makes me feel anchored in the focal points of the vertical power current, as taught by Barbara Brennan, which are: molten core of the earth, Tan Tien, Soul Seat, and ID point.  And yet I also feel joyously free as a bird.

So, what has this to do with golf?    Now, when I set up for any shot on the course from drive to putt,  I first tune whatever low, droning sound I can find around me . . . mower, blower, ocean, airplane.  I then bring that sound into my body,  so that it creates the “didgeridoo/vertical power current effect”  within me.   The result?   One or even two strokes less per hole on my score card!

Gaia in flux

Whether you choose to call her Gaia, or Mother, or not “her” at all, there is definitely a lot of activity taking place on, around and within planet Earth.  From the intellectual, scientific, news-reported daily occurrences to the more esoteric, “non-ordinary reality” shamanic and spiritual perceptions those messages are much the same . . . there’s a lot of shift and change going on, and it may continue for quite some time.

The day that the earthquake and tsunami  occurred in Japan was also the day that planet Uranus moved into Aries. Uranus began a transit that marks a new cycle which will affect us for 84 years. Those who tune in to ley lines, and the energies shifting within the density of the planet, say that the internal loci to which we anchor our energy bodies are shifting.  This can manifest in a sense of ungroundedness and discomfort until we can realign ourselves.  The galactic and planetary shifts are requiring us to adjust and re-establish our energetic anchors.  Grounding exercises such as Chi Gong, Tai Chi, Karate and Yoga are very useful in reaffirming our commitment, as a spiritual being, to having a physical experience.  Whatever form of mantra, silence, meditation or spiritual alignment that serves you is also highly recommended on a daily basis,

Planet Earth is expanding and upgrading energetically and we are invited to consciously choose to do the same.

Reading or Writing?

Wow! Another whole month has gone by since my last post.  My list of great topics to write about grows longer and the time I try to carve out to write seems to evaporate.  Family, friends, clients, seasonal events all contribute to the evaporation of that allotted time.   And, the joys of reading . . .  the elegantly articulated and seductively insightful texts . . . also make major inroads into the chunks of “blogging time”.  Recent deeply satisfying, tough reads have included three novels with strong female characters:  Little Bee by Chris Cleave,  The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell,  and Beneath a Marble Sky by John Shors.   While the time frames (present, early 1900′s and 1600′s),  locales (England & Africa, Edwardian England, and Agra, India) and story lines of these three are quite diverse, they have in common a fierce tenderness and insightful clarity about the strengths and trials of women.  Definitely a nourishing, thought-provoking potpourri!

Power vs. Force

When we had completed our visits to the blue city, the yellow city, the pink city, the tiger preserve and the Taj Mahal, we returned to Delhi for two more days.  During the travels I had been reading Power vs Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior, by David R. Hawkins, MD., PhD.   That morning in Delhi, serendipitously, I had read this:

“. . . power originates in the mind, whereas force is rooted in the material world.  A related pivotal event in global history . . . came about . . . through the power of a solitary man: a 90 pound “colored” who single-handedly overcame the British Empire, which was then the greatest force in the world, ruling two-thirds of the face of the globe.
Not only did Gandhi bring the British Empire to its knees, he effectively brought the curtain down on the centuries-old drama of colonialism, and he did it by simply standing for a principle: the intrinsic dignity of man, and his right to freedom, sovereignty and self-determination.   . . .  Gandhi believed that human rights aren’t granted by any earthly power, but are ingrained in the nature of man himself because they are inherent in his creation.”

That morning we visited Gandhi memorial, a vast green park intersected by simple white walkways, where thousands slowly and courteously pass by the white memorial cenotaph to lay their multicolored garlands and bouquets of gratitude.

Holy Cow!

Apologies for the vacuum of unblogged days/weeks. The day after the Chicago blizzard I continue on to Delhi to spend three amazing weeks in Nepal and Rajistan. I’ve finally caught up with all the tasks that accumulated while I was way and have lots of blog-thoughts to share.

In each of the India cities we visited… Jaipur, Jodphur, Udaipur, Jaiselmer, Agra, etc. … we were taken to a hotel restaurant for lunch, greeted at the door with the mandatory blessed red dot in the center of the forehead, and a garland of fresh marigolds on a burlap string. One day while strolling after lunch with a few of my cohorts in the market place, I was approach by one of the ubiquitous sacred cows. These placid beasts seem larger than our cows (but I’m not on familiar terms with US cows), are white with a blueish tinge, and often have a calf alongside.   My particular visitor calmly took a gentle chunk of marigolds off my garland. Not wanting to dispute with her holiness or her largeness, I replied “You want it? You can have it!”,  lifted it over my head and dropped it on the ground.  She consumed the lot, burlap twine and all, in one gulp,  silently and majestically turned her rump to me and sauntered away.

The Front Loader/Dump Truck Dance

From the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows of a condo on the 28th floor, we have been watching these  remarkable machines dancing for most of the afternoon.  Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, has been closed for almost twenty-four hours now, although sufficient lanes were open this morning to allow the towing of about 200 stranded vehicles.  One of the plentiful, remarkable outcomes of the blizzard of 2011.

Two bright yellow-orange front loaders, in minutely detailed choreography, alternately curve in towards a mountain of snow, take a large bite, and gracefully back away.  First one, then the other precisely deposits a sofa-sized heap of snow into the bed of a patiently waiting dump truck.  It takes about twenty of these do-si-do passes to fill the truck bed carefully from cab to tailgate.

As one truck moves away with a full load the next is waiting 100 yards down the road.  The two front-loader dancing partners head out to dance again.  Bravo for the skillful operators of these magnificent machines.