What is the Middle Road?

“Things are far too serious for us to lose our sense of humor.”

Says Terry Patten

The heat has almost felt debilitating to me, gnawing at my senior-flesh, leaving me moist and messy and morose.  

Walking with Niki yesterday, (why else would anybody be outside, I wondered, but to serve the cutest roommate on the planet?), I heard myself say to nobody, since nobody was around:

“I am in hell.”

I startled myself.

I looked around.  Clearly, this was not hell in which I walked.

TO THE CONTRARY.

Check out the picture—this was right after another massive rainstorm and just before sunset.  Such amazing colors.

The glorious Berkshires held me, the across-the-street farm, our neighbor-horses, the green of trees, birds carrying on, all defying my proclamation, as my above picture confirms.

WHAT THE HECK?

I am committed to positivity, to possibility, to life, to hope, and blah blah blah.

I am committed to understanding my privilege, acknowledging my resources, and using them in a way to serve and support others.

Blah blah blah. 

Yet here I am, in the midst of such blessings, cursing the world.

Feeling cursed by my world?

Well, truly, we can probably agree, the world is fairly fucked.

Pardon my “technical” use of the f-word.

One of my friends offered this descriptor—we are circling the drain.

That image brought me pause.

The IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change report has been shocking to me, yet not surprising.

The fires, the flooding, the future.

I can go down that hallway without return, and never hear another bird,

Never see another sunrise,

Never appreciate the glory around me.

Or—as some other folks that I know and love, I could put my head in the scorching sand next to theirs and continue along my way.

So—folks…

So—Aruni…

What is the middle road?

How do we bear witness to the suffering of ourselves, the suffering of others,

The suffering of our glorious and mistreated planet,

And lean into each other,

And lean into non-reactive action,

And lean into making the world a better place,

No matter what happens?

Terry Patten reminds us of humor.

The biology of laughter, the biology of humor certainly assures us that humor, mirth, and laughter contribute positively to the maintenance of health and survival—

Good things, that health, that survival.

How do we continue to lighten our hearts in the midst of the truth of what is?

~~~

Check out these more humorous inspirations for the week:

Here are two favorites—first, Wanda Sykes on the Colbert Show.  This clip interested me since she is talking about really un-funny things.  The piece is called, “What’s Going on Now is Not Normal”.  Enjoy.

Dear Life

Signed, Your Friend  Aruni

This blog post is also available on my Facebook page to make sharing it with friends and family easy for you to do.

Signed,

Your friend, Aruni

~~~

The lovely poet, Ellen Bass, says it in her amazing poem, The Thing Is:

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

~~~

Cliff Notes/ Folks you will meet:

• Swami Kripalu,  also called Bapuji,  renunciate and swami, spiritual leader of thousands

 

• Amrit Desai, also called Gurudev, a close disciple of Swami Kripalu founder of Kripalu Center

 

• Urmilla Desai, also called Mataji, Gurudev’s wife

Watch Here

Here is more info about Kripalu’s history, with a very cool timeline.
https://kripalu.org/content/our-history

~~~

Hey, friends, after sixteen months, I will be teaching an R&R on Saturday, August 21.  Then, starting on September 9th, I’ll be teaching on Friday mornings.  Here is a link to my R&R teaching schedule along with workshop titles.

Come on up and join me.

Opportunities for Study

~~~

Dear friends,

Oh, dear people,

Let’s see the beauty,

Let’s breathe through the pain.

With gratitude for your hearts—

Stay blessed, 

Aruni

Dear Friends,

A simple message this week for us—

A simple reminder 
To notice,
To cherish,
To celebrate,
To relax into,

The simple 
And 
Ordinary 
Things.

The ordinary things.

I gravitate toward THE BIG.

THE
MONUMENTOUS.

Imagining them,
Demanding them, 
Needing them
To be
My
Standard-bearer,

My mirror 
To
Self-esteem.

They—those big moments—
Carry disappointment
Within them
And
Never
Sustain.

It is
The ordinary things
With which
I choose
To line
The path
Of 
My
Heart.

~~~

Here are Pema Chodron’s insights:

CHERISH ORDINARY MOMENTS
“In our most ordinary days we have moments of happiness, moments of comfort and enjoyment, moments of seeing something that pleased us, something that touched us, moments of contacting the tenderness of our hearts. We can take joy in that. I find that it’s essential during the day to actually note when I feel happiness or when something positive happens, and to begin to cherish those moments as precious. Gradually we can begin to cherish the preciousness of our whole life just as it is, with its ups and downs, its failures and successes, its roughness and smoothness”. (From Taking the Leap)

~~
Mandatory Inspiration

Forgive me.  I must.  I have to.  I am compelled.
Sending this, the best dog video on the planet, is not a choice. 
It is the choiceless choice.

I MUST.

Please watch it.  It is on the edge of mandatory:  

The Best is Yet to Come

This blog post is also available on my Facebook page to make sharing it with friends and family easy for you to do.

Friends, time is ridiculous!  When was it? I don’t know.  Two years ago?  When things in my life imploded, marriage, work, diagnosis—to name a few.

In the midst of all of that, my dear friend Barbara gave me a present.

It was wrapped well, as one can expect from Barbara; some people just have the wrapping gene, unlike me.  The strangely shaped package was long and narrow, wrapped in soft blue paper, with a splendid silver ribbon.  I tugged at the pretty pale paper.

It opened partially, revealing something thin and long and wooden.

I tugged and tore some more.

And there it was.

It was a sign.

I mean, literally, a sign.

You know, one of those cool signs, thin and long and simple yet inherently decorative and simultaneously profound, and it said:

THE BEST IS YET TO COME.

I instantly hated it and loved it.

It rested in my hands.  I paused and breathed, feeling its weight.

I knew the truth of this message historically.  Life had gotten better and better, evidence-based data showed me.  But recently, getting older, imagining life as an old woman in our culture seemed, well, a stretch of the imagination, a leap I was not able to make.

It was a gloomy time.

I believed in the sign’s bigger truth.

I just wasn’t feeling its promise in the moment.

I put the sign on the kitchen shelf.  There, amongst its cousin mugs, it has quietly beamed upon me ever since, through COVID and apparent cancer, through lockdown, through caregiving and reconciliation.  

Through Donald Trump and the blowing apart of every fault line in our culture.  

Through insurrection and through fires and floods.

There it sat, reminding me:

THE BEST IS YET TO COME.

I ignored it.  

I randomly and occasionally noticed it.  

I riled against it.

I cursed it.

I snubbed it.

And you know what?

I am beginning—ever so slowly—ever so hesitatingly—ever so cautiously—to feel its truth.

THE BEST IS YET TO COME.

Why not?

~~

Some back story—

I come from this Jewish headset—kina hora—

Do you know what that means?

Something like:

Don’t say it.  Don’t even think it.  It’s bad luck.  You’ll jinx yourself, you asshole.  (my addition).  It is a warding off, a pushing away of bad luck, of the evil eye.

My attitude does minimize my imagination.  
My fear does limit 
My capacity to hope.

And then, how might I manifest?

(Expect the worst?  Yes, that’s a mantra I have lived into.)

I thought—spiritually, one had to simply surrender, not imagine, not to hope, certainly not to want.

Just endure,
Cautiously
And
Carefully.

Yet, the other day, in my in-box, came the reframe of superstition.  Check it out—

Knock on Wood

From the Free Dictionary:

In order to avoid misfortune and/or hope for good luck. This magical formula put as touchwood in Great Britain is based on the superstition that touching or rapping on anything wooden will avoid a disaster, especially after one has boasted. 

There may have been an ancient religious significance to the gesture, perhaps from the time of the Druids, who regarded certain trees as sacred, but the precise meaning has been forgotten.  

Knocking on wood is calling the tree spirits forth for protection and for blessing

(Picture by Eva M. Crowley, thank you!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~~~

I always thought being spiritual meant never, NEVER ask for anything.

Never, ever imagine good stuff.

Suffer and wait and see.

Endure and receive.

Amazingly, the other day, I heard Ron Young, an amazing spiritual teacher, end his meditation class with these words.  

He said:

“EXPECT WONDERFUL THINGS.”

Ron Young said, “EXPECT WONDERFUL THINGS.”

Omg.  

If he said it……….
He would never, NEVER be frivolous.
He would never encourage entitlement.
He is the opposite of frivolous.
He is the opposite of entitled.

Can I really expect wonderful things?

Why not?

~~~

A wonderful thing would be people healing the infinite chasms that separate us.  Here is a musical inspiration to that end:

Playing for Change, the miraculous global music cooperative offers us this song, created by more than twenty musicians from seven countries.  Check out the power of each voice, each sound, separate and together making something so profoundly powerful and heart-opening.  Enjoy:

Watch Here

~~~
A wonderful thing would be our remembering we are all one.  Here is poetic inspiration: hopefully to that end, the profound Palestinian-American poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, reading her poem, Gate A-4

I Sometimes Forget 

Poem by Hafiz

~~~
I sometimes forget
that I was created for Joy.
My mind is too busy.
My Heart is too heavy
for me to remember
that I have been
called to dance
the Sacred dance of life.
I was created to smile
To Love
To be lifted up
And to lift others up.
O’ Sacred One
Untangle my feet
from all that ensnares.
Free my soul.
That we might
Dance
and that our dancing 
might be contagious.

~Hafiz

~~~
Well.
That pretty much says it, 
I do believe.

To be lifted up,
And to
Lift up
Others.

I have been fairly ensnared in the events of the past months.

How about you?

I have been fairly ensnarled in the political, the cultural.

The inequities.
The injustice.

How about you?

And appropriately so, it does seem.

Bearing witness to my suffering,
To the suffering of others—
My Buddhist teachers tell me,
That is the journey.

Yet—how easy to forget—
That the bearing witness to suffering
Is the doorway,
Must be the doorway
To joy.

It is a continuum, I do believe,
This journey of healing
The broken self.

To ignore the suffering
Denies us the blessings
Of joy.

To deny the joy
Denies us
The benefit
Of suffering.

We get it all.
The more we are able,
The more we receive.

The more willing we are,
The more healing that is possible.

My Socially Engaged Buddhist teachers
Tell me that we are the world.

That everywhere we go,
We take the world with us.

We really are one.

~~~

What about joy?
What do we know about joy?

Clearly, we can’t force joy.
Clearly, we can’t make it happen.

Nor do we force suffering.

What is our role, then?

I believe
We create the circumstances
In which joy emerges.
In which connection flourishes.

Hum.

Dear Friends,
What do you do, to create the circumstances for joy?
How do you lean toward joy?

What do I do?

I play with my doggie.
She is the best snuggler on the planet.
I check in—as best I can—inside–
Asking my young self, asking that new/old question—
Honey, does this feel good? 

Tell me.

I get outside plenty.
I watch the birds.

I do my best to remember.
And when I forget,
I come back.

Let’s remember—
Let’s create the circumstances in which
Joy can be given to us,
In which
We can see
The grace
That is right there.

~~~
Michael Jackon.  Oh, dear Michael.  
He said it.  And here it is.  The truth.  The answer.
How can we be socially engaged?
How can we make a difference?  
How can we impact change?  
They all said it in 1985, all these musicians coming together, to respond to the famine in Africa.
And here we are, 11,000 years later: