Dearest Reader-People-Friends,

This is attempt numero tres for this week’s blog.  Initially, I tackled a few lightweight topics, like “forgiveness” and “living into your soul’s purpose”. Nothing lofty for me, in 800 words or less! Somewhere between looking for inspiration and wanting to go outside, I realized: MY INSPIRATION IS OUTSIDE.  So outside I did go, to indulge in the deliciousness of this long-awaited spring; for me, that means mowing, biking and walking.

It is infrequent in these past four years of my weekly postings that I have tap-danced between topics.  By the way, all the blogs live on my website, www.coacharuni.com/blog, good for the 2:00 a.m. insomniac amongst us—and I know you are out there.  But do check them out—I find it fascinating to hear how the strategies and practices over the years have stayed the same, while my voice, my relationship to them, has changed.

Since Ayurveda teaches us that repeated like behavior leads to imbalance and that unlike behavior takes us toward balance (Type A people out there, you do not need to do Type A yoga!), I am leaning toward less words this week.  No forgiveness or soul’s purpose for me, not now, not this week.

And since response to last week’s Happiness Challenge (check it out if you did not read) was so full-hearted, here is what you have been waiting for:

Last week I suggested that, for many of us, our tendency is to lean away from happiness, to participate in our own oppression.  Whatever form that takes for each of us (work, worry, the world, food, focusing on others, did I say worry?), happiness is available.  This practice is not to transcend the feelings, the hurt and heartbreak, the difficult and the disappointing. The way to the happiness is through these very feelings—they are the gateway drugs to full living.

As a practice, leaning away from the habitual behavior and leaning toward that which we choose to have in our life becomes our spiritual practice, one that can change the brain, the body, and behavior.  In that light, it is our responsibility to create the circumstances in which happiness can occur. With glorious spring as our backdrop, exploding colors and soft emerald grasses, what better time to practice?  Surely in a few weeks, we may not notice spring in the same way, it’s first bliss inevitably diminished by time. To draw on spring as the palette for our happiness practice, here are the details of this week’s challenge.  Here is my invitation, first to myself—

• To be outside each day, as much as I can.
• To do some physical outdoor activity (walk, bike, mow) daily.
• To breathe deeply into the spring air.
• To notice on purpose the gift of spring.
• To become aware of the moments that fling the doors of my heart open.
• To document those heart-bursts, with picture, word, sentence, and to share it with another.

Here is my documentation from yesterday afternoon.  Zac and I walked by the wetlands, clouds and earth and sky, all one.  This moment made me uber-happy!

Will you join me?  Take the Happiness Challenge II outside, let spring be the playing field.  Get out there, smell and feel, notice and absorb. Document the moments that burst your heart open.  Take a pix, write a sentence, breathe it in. Share it with another, share with me. Send the pictures onward, social media, to loved ones.  Share the happiness.

That’s the Challenge II.

Live into and love those springtime moments.

Be there for them.

And then, pass them on.

As always, please feel free to keep in touch.  I am aruni@rnetworx.com  As spring blossoms, let’s blossom our awareness of her glory; let’s partner with her in opening our hearts to this energy of renewal and rebirth.

All springtime blessings,
Aruni

This is the Last Thing on Earth I Want to Write May 1 Sunrise—My Happiness Moment

I so participate in my own oppression.  There are moments and chunks of time in which I am dodging, wiggling, running, doing anything I can to avoid the happiness, the grace that is right there, waiting for me.

Happiness!  What the heck?   Do I really have to write about you?  As I rediscovered this quote the other night, after feeling initially annoyed and irritated by its reminder, my internal response was a resounding:  YES.  WRITE.  ABOUT. THIS.

Let me begin by saying that I am a zillion percent more alive, more present, more filled with positivity than I was yesterday.  Each day is a teeny, incremental creep toward full living. I am healing. I am becoming more of who I am. And I am, as we are, a work in progress.

What a strange thing, this human dilemma, this wacky gig of being a divine being, living inside a body, while learning how to be human.  Eckhart Tolle says you cannot be any closer to Grace than you already are in this moment. Let’s weave this idea into the realm of mindful happiness.

Let’s consider our relationship with happiness, that blessing that is hovering and available, behind any curtain of reality.  This perspective is not to diminish any hurt, trauma, loss, heartbreak—and we have many—that may sever our reality and slash our hearts open.  Let’s use happiness as simply a spiritual mirror, a practice, into which we can see ourselves, accept ourselves, and lean toward its reframe.

The practice of happiness is not a premature transcendence beyond the pain and the loss; the way to happiness is through the pain and the loss.

Let’s offer ourselves a Happiness Challenge for one week, beginning with this simple, compassionate inventory, how do we run from happiness?  Here is my version—

How I Participate in My Own Oppression/How I Run from Happiness:

• Worrying about that which isn’t even real or hasn’t even happened
• Wanting people to be different than they are (good luck)
• Expecting myself to be more serene, more skillful, more evolved
• Not trusting life, despite data to the contrary
• Needing to see what’s going to happen before it happens

What about you?  How do you run from happiness?  How do you participate in your own oppression?  With radical compassion, just notice, perhaps even make a simple list for yourself.

Now let’s switch it around, with agency and discernment.  Let’s create a happiness practice. For one week, what are you willing to do?  For one week, what simple thing are you going to offer yourself? Here is my personal challenge:

My Choosing-Happiness Challenge:

• For one week, in the mornings, before getting out of bed, I will offer myself one minute of Loving Kindness meditation (see below*)
• For one week, at night, I will acknowledge one Happiness Moment from that day and note it (my picture of sunrise was one)
• At the end of the week, I will assess this plan, tweak it as needed and recommit for the next week

There are many forms of loving-kindness meditation.  Here is one that I have taught for years. I realize, in the writing of this blog, although I have offered it to many other people to practice, that I have deprived myself of its power.  Yahoo—I’m taking it back! You can substitute any words that resonate for you. And down the road, as you choose, you substitute the “I” for “you” and offer this to a loved one or a not-so-loved one.  Here is my version:

So dear friends, are you interested?  Please join me in the Choosing-Happiness Challenge.  What’s your inventory? How do you deprive yourself of happiness?  What might a more mindful practice of happiness look like for you? Please consider and, as always, send on your ideas.  I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

The snow tires of are off.
The lawn mower is tuned up.
The birds are celebrating.  Let’s join them.
With love,
Aruni

There is a Ship

After checking with my lifetime archivist, my best and monogamous childhood friend, Gladys, who, unlike me, has a steel-clad memory, this is a fact: the first concert I went to in my life was in our hometown of Scranton, Pa., at the Catholic Youth Center.  We were in high school, the year was probably 1964, and I was already fully in love with Mary Travers.

Peter, Paul and Mary were coming to town.  There was no greater joy possible. My elation, after listening obsessively to their album for a few years while compulsively and secretly watching Mary on television performances, with every flick of her blond hair, with every pouty move, I was sure she was the solution to my life’s pain.  It made no sense; I knew it wasn’t real. But neither was wanting to kiss girls; no word or concept existed for that in my world in 1964.

I remember little about the concert, as sometimes happens with profound life events.  It came and went in a blur of zealous excitement. The ending was a hollow, an emptiness, a return to fantasies at night, “stories” I would write in my head, pretending to be an author, imagining Mary close to me.  Shame blurred out those years, as high school merged into college, as comfortable nights eating pizza with Gladys became drunken alienation at college frat parties.

I followed Mary and the group, of course, through the years, as they followed me.  They provided the soundtrack to my life. Their political integrity inspired and energized me; they were on the right side of It all, for the People, against the War, appalled by the Man.  Even though I was a faux hippy, always plugged into the system, they represented that which I believed was real and right.

Mary represented everything to me, everything and nothing.

Time passed, as it somehow does.

I remember seeing Mary alone in a performance venue on Washington Square in NYC with my first girlfriend in the early ‘80’s.  Stoned out of my mind, as I imagined the situation demanded, I watched her seemingly flirt with one of the younger male musicians throughout the set.  I was incensed, personally upset, as if she violated our commitment to each other. It’s a strange memory for me today.

More time passed.  Rock and roll more loudly dominated my head as folk music hushed itself and receded further away, but always lived in my heart.

Through the years, I saw the Peter, Paul, and Mary perform here and there, always with deep fondness, always with a profound sense of intimacy with the songs, and always with bitter-sweet tears.  They aged and quieted down, as I aged and slowly found my own way. Mary forever held a place in my heart, undefinably precious.

And then, although it seemed impossible, it happened in 2009; Mary Travers died from leukemia.  My heart felt torn open in my chest. I felt as if someone I intimately knew had passed.

How is it that the death of celebrities can be such a personal and powerful transition for us?

Although I didn’t know Mary Travers, she followed the course of my life, she lived my life with me.

The sound of her voice resides in my body.

The words and music of their songs follow the flow my life, each song invoking and mirroring a time of me, becoming more of who I really am.

Mary was bigger than life; how could she ever die?  And die, she did, early, too early. If she, this blond, hair-flicking beacon of the folk era could pass, what does that mean about me, mortal little me?

Perhaps because she wasn’t “real”, perhaps I can more fully feel, I can more totally grieve her passing.

Our celebrities are like place-holders, marking times of joy, times of not, times of connection, of loss, for us, all.  Their passing shakes up the memory, rattles the heart, opens the body to the shared experiences with these people we never really knew.  Those folks who give us music, who create beauty, who become characters in movies that move us and grow us, they give us so much. Their leaving really does diminish our hearts.

Mary came back to me the other day in this song.  There is a ship, and Mary and I traveled in it together. Here is a three-minute gift to your heart:

~~~

And dear readers, what about you?  What celebrity passing has touched you? Where were you when John Lennon died? What do you remember—what do you understand—about our relationship to these mythical yet somehow real personas?

Keep me posted!  I am aruni@rnetworx.com

All blessings,
Aruni

Andre and the Phoebe Snow

His name was Andre even though his accent was decidedly Indian.  Manning the call center for this cheap-o-procure- airline -ticket-company, I imagined him sitting in a Bombay office, committed and upright at his desk, assuming his Western name with attempted dignity.  I imagined his name might be Sunil. I whispered it inside my brain, Sunil.  Somehow, I believed that companies who utilize folks from Asian countries to answer questions about the details of our first-world problems are forced to assume fake, Westernized names, so we, the callers, can feel comfortable and assured.

Did I make that up?

Poor Andre/Sunil.  I instantly felt badly for him, yet despite my overactive empathy, I couldn’t understand key words in our communication.  His accent was not of the “Andre” persuasion. I believe he told me that the airline tickets we had purchased for the weekend trip were for basic economy class, rather than standard economy class.  Both probably shitty enough, I imagine, ours most likely the shittiest.

I made a decision not to be angry at Andre/Sunil, to not fume within my inability, now that I realize I am of the basic economy class rather than any other, to pick seats without paying (guess what?) more money.  I made a decision to be a mindful adult and imagine this poor man doing his best in a language that was obviously not his own, to communicate with a privileged (me) first-world woman who wants only what she wants.

I made a decision.

I executed that decision approximately 82% successfully.  By the end of our call, I recognized my building anxiety, my voice tightening, my annoyance at not realizing any of these details previously.  Rather than lose myself down the slippery slope of privilege, I abruptly hung up, offering this man sitting probably thousands of miles away, doing his best, with a clipped and brusque good-bye.

A slippery slope, indeed.  Even as I write this, I flush with potential political-incorrectness.

My thoughts wander, my face warmed.

I remember the Phoebe Snow.

It was the flagship train for the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, which ran between Scranton, Pa., my hometown and Hoboken, NJ.  Although my parents worked hard for their money, both slaving (an intentional choice of words) seven days a week in my dad’s neighborhood grocery store, we went to New York City several memorable times during my childhood, riding on the Phoebe Snow.

The train ride is unforgettably imprinted into my cells.  I adored it and it terrified, thrilled and awed me.

The frenzied excitement of running between train cars, with the accelerated noise and vibration shaking me even more alive.

The scary bathrooms, the insufficient lock on the door, the shaking toilet seat—I probably didn’t pee between Scranton and Hoboken, initiating a challenging life-long standing battle with public restrooms.

The meal car!  We always had a meal, sitting around the uber-starched tablecloth, the silverware heavier than any I had ever seen.  The super-heavy-silver water pitcher, the writing out our order, my mom carefully writing our choices on the enclosed form in her flowing and lovely script, all these lovely differences.  And the Afro-American waiters, wearing coats whiter-than-white, more starched that God had ever intended for anything to ever be starched. They served us quietly with an unspoken acquiesce.

Did my parents talk to us about the waiters being “Negros”?  I have no memory of that. I remember my shyness, my delighting in the privilege of The Meal Car, yet somehow, somewhere, feeling uncomfortable, feeling odd—knowing I had something, even though I really had nothing, since Audrey Hepburn had not yet committed her love to me.  My family had nothing since they served the families of my friends; yet I had everything I could ever imagine. Nevertheless I had something these men did not have.

They were there to serve me.

I felt that slippery slope.

I ignored it in 1958, with both shame and silent delight.

Can I ignore it in 2018?

Can I afford to marginalize those who do not have what I might have?

Can I afford to make into “the other” someone whose life circumstance is different from mine?

Most of the people I know, most of the people I work with, are people just like me, who think and believe as I do.  The privilege of that bubble is delicious; its limitations scare me today. Just a little bit, perhaps not enough, I am frightened by it.

How do we manage these divides?  How do we live into our humanity all around the globe?

Yoga teaches us that you are just me over there, disguised as you.

How do we live into this truth?  How do we practice the inspired truth of our oneness?

Dear Friends,
Please send on your responses.  Hearing from you is a delight in my life.  I’m off to pack lightly (ha!) for my trip in the basic economy class.
All blessings,
Aruni