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Sanctuary & Sangha

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Sanctuary & Sangha

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

As a kid and a not-such-a-kid, there are numerous pictures of me standing apart from the group.  

Whatever group.  

Any group.

Here is a picture of my Aunt Geri, my mom’s younger sister.

Can you find me in the frame?  

I learned to hide well.

(Hint: far left, one with the trees, not so much with the people.)

I understand my Lone-Wolf responses.  I wrote books about them, taught workshops about them.  Yet now, I find myself diving deeper into my aloneness.

The aloneness of that child, who had so many reasons to hide.

The aloneness of me, the adult, who is tender and healing.

The early pandemic, living alone, I met my introvert, my tender child, differently.  It was deliciously right to hang alone, to have permission to not be with people, to be thoughtful and cautious about interactions.  I befriended her broken heart, and we had a good time together.  (Lots of take-out food ensued—I’m not sure why or how that emerged as a response to the pandemic for me.)

That time worked.

Now, back home with my dear one, I am living into a time of physical healing and transition.  

I am discovering a new portal, an unraveling of the obstacles, that have blocked me from a deeper relationship with that aloneness.

I feel quiet and almost-shy, wondering where my people are (the answer? right here), wondering why I am feeling so young as I hover on my 75th birthday.

I dive deeper into my separate broken heart.  And it is a gift, a blessing, an unraveling with space and air and breath and possibility.

It’s just—well, not my plan.  Not my mind’s plan.  Perhaps a bigger plan?  

Yes, a bigger plan!  And I am okay with it, especially now that I am feeling physically more level.

I might as well be okay with it, since it is happening, right?

The interplay of the personal and the collective, our unique separateness coupled with our profound need for connection, is a dance long-considered in the wisdom traditions.  Here are two of today’s most elegant, more relevant, most accessible teachers in the Buddhist tradition, Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach.

This six-minute video says so very much.  The first half is excerpted from Jack talk on “Sanctuary“.  The second half comes from Tara talk on “Sangha”

 

~~

Friends, for your contemplation:

  • Where are your places of individual sanctuary?
  • What do you receive for yourself in those places?
  • Your sangha?  Your choir?  Your community of comfort and choice?  What do you receive?
  • What do you offer back to your sangha, your people?

~~

With gratitude 
For what was.

With commitment 
To what is.

With the possibility 
Of what might be—

Stay blessed,
Aruni 

Dancing Together—Will & Surrender

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Dancing Together—Will & Surrender

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

On a scale of 1-10, I would rate myself 13.7 on the Spectrum of Willfulness.  I learned to:

  • Do it.
  • Do it well.
  • Then do something else.
  • Keep doing it.
  • Then do the next thing.
  • Hope that maybe someone will like me.
  • Keep moving.
  • Don’t stop.
  • Make it happen.
  • Hope that maybe someone will love me.
  • Maybe not.
  • Better keep moving.

It kind of worked.  For a while.  
Oh.  At great cost.

When I was active in my addictions, I believed I was living in some cool counter-culture, some anti-silent-majority, a matriarchy of radical change.  Actually, however, I was dulled and drugged and not a member of any community, yet alone the matriarchy, yet alone, a community of self.

My willfulness in those 20 years manifested as righteous indignation.  Railing against what was absolutely spun me around and around, a cyclone of one problem leading to the next, rather than part of any fragment of any solution.

Then it all changed.  
Getting sober.
Coming to Kripalu.
Blessed be.

During early ashram days, I entered a phase of premature surrender.  Positive that surrender was the evolved stance (and then people would love me), I prayed and hoped and practiced like wildfire, ignoring my human responses, denying my need to take action, surrendering without touching into my human self.  And bingo, same pattern.  Flip side of the coin of the above list.

  • Do nothing.
  • Have no preference.
  • Have no response.
  • Have no action.
  • Surrender.
  • And then they will love me.

Time passed.  
Somewhere wrapped into those years, I incrementally realized—

ohhhhh! 

The right use of will,
A posture of such maturity and evolution!

Will and surrender
Dancing together.

Take action.
Let go of the outcome.

Attend to your humanity.
Your needs, your preferences.
And let go. 

Suffice to say—
The interplay of will and surrender is at the heart of Kripalu Legacy Teachings
And offers an effective and comfortable platform for living.

~~~
Here is the most wonderous, the brilliant, the bright light, Leonard Cohen:

“If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will.

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing.

From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing.

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well.

And to draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light.

In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will
If it be your will.”
~~~
And now, the song, If It Be Thy Will

~~~
Dear Friends,

On we go with this
Wild, this wacky
Experiment
Of
Living
Our
Lives.

On we go,
Day after day,
Experience
After
Breath
After
The
Next
Experience.

And here we are.

Practicing.
Living.
Feeling.
Relaxing.
And
Practicing.  

Human and divine,
Wrapped in a body.

Stay blessed,
Aruni

To Heal

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To Heal

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

 

We know this part, right?  Healing =

  • to make free from injury or disease
  • to make sound or whole
  • to make well again
  • to restore to health
  • to heal the sick
  • to mend.

Now check out the seemingly enlightened folks at Miriam Webster:

“Healing occurs through the integrating forces that restore, transform, sustain and nurture the whole person (body, mind, spirit) at each phase and in every dimension of life, and within relationships of the person to the creation, to other people, and to a sense of spirit.”

If you are reading this blog, I suggest that you are on a healing path, whether you know it or not.  

Whether your healing is physical, spiritual, energetic, emotional, relational, financial, etc., etc., etc., etc.

We are on the path:

  • To alleviate, 
  • To assuage, 
  • To relieve, 
  • To ease, 
  • To help,
  • To release
  • Suffering.

One day, one step, one moment at a time.
~~~
Note to self:
Healing is not a straight line.

This is not the journey from bad-to-okay-to good-to-better-to best-to-done.
We are traveling a road, dear friends.  
And it is fluid, and it is curvy, and it is all over the place.
And we are on it.
And—there is
No done
On this path.
It’s not over yet.
Oh, that sounds familiar…

Not Over Yet.
Title of my last book.

Simple Strategies to Struggle Less 
And Savor More.
~~~
I am of the Sturdy Constitution.
I always jokingly called it my Russian peasant stock.

Not a joke—a blessing.
I have been profoundly fortunate with my health.
Whatever has come up, I have been able to move through.
Only now am I living into a life-altering 
Physical experience.

“Wreckage of the past.
That rapacious creditor.”*

Gratitudes beyond gratitudes,
Not life-threatening.

Yet again, blessings abound.

So much to learn.
So much to honor.
So much to listen to,
To attend.

Learning how
To ask for help.

Learning how
To rest.

Learning how
To allow the fluidity
Come and go.

I am tired of it and so ready to be done.

Yet I am certain—
Befriending rather than exiling 
Is the way.

So, I learn, as best I can.
I listen, as I am able.
I make remarkable and obvious mistakes.
And learn more.

And on it goes.
Life in a body.
Life in an aging body.

A good life
In
A
Good
Body.

I am blessed.

~~~
Dear Friends, what is the nature of your healing journey?  What are you learning?

~~~
The Weight—Playing for Change

Look at these faces.  People from around the world, this glorious world of ours.  Making music.  Creating harmonies.  Individuals coming together, in the healing journey of music, from individual to collective liberation.

I loved this song 50 years ago.  I love it perhaps more today.

~~~
For the life I have been given, I am grateful.
For the body in which I live, I am grateful.
For the moments of clarity and health.
For those of fuzziness and pain.
For all of it,
One breath at a time,
Inevitably 
And
Eventually,
I am grateful.

To your brave hearts.
Thanks for being
In this world.

Stay blessed, 
Aruni

*quotes from 12 Step Literature

The Perfect Time for Coming Back

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The Perfect Time for Coming Back

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

Practice.  They said, practice.  They didn’t say—get it right and check it off the list.  What is this wacky human need we have to get finished, to be done, to be over it, for once and for f—ing all?

I feel too old to push myself in the same way.  Have I outlived my wacky willfulness?  To a degree?  A smidgen?  Even if a tiny degree, I accept!  I imagine, no, I’m positive, this is a victory.

Strange.  I feels, quite frankly, more spacious exhaustion rather than a confetti moment waiting to happen.  Funny, doing the right thing doesn’t always feel like one needs confetti.  Nevertheless, It’s a miracle, of course.  I have been the doer, the tap-dancer (not literally, folks—I’ll tell you about that some time.).  I have wiggled and wormed and danced around some core contradictions:

  • See me.
  • See me.
  • No, just kidding.
  • Don’t.
  • Yes!
  • Do.
  • Love me.
  • Please love me.
  • Do you love me now?
  • I can do more.
  • Will you love me then?

I’m getting exhausted just thinking about it.  

Practice.  Lean in the direction of relaxation, Aruni (and anybody out there who would like to join this subgroup).  Notice.  Breathe.  Soften around whatever is happening in your body, in your mind, and around you.

Self-observation without judgment, dear Bapuji said.

Notice.  And any time, ANY TIME, in any moment, when we see the push, the tap dance reemerging, that is the perfect time to keep coming back. 

Come back to the breath.  To the affirmation.  To the sensations in your body.  To prayer.  To candle flame.

Come back to:

  • To the red-winged blackbird.  
  • To the squawking crows.  
  • To the crystal in your pocket.  
  • To your dog’s smile.
  • To your touchstone.
  • To the smell of the air.

Come back to grounding, to neutral.   Come back to self.  To you.  To a self-blessing.  To a tap on your heart.

Folks—we cannot possibly do this journey wrong, this moment, wrong, this decision, wrong.  THERE IS NO WRONG HERE.  There is only practice.  

Watching and noticing and realigning and blessing ourselves.

By the way, the perfect time is the moment in which you notice, and you are able.  

The perfect time is when you do it.  When you return home.

And there is no wrong time.  

~~~
Here is my meditation on The Perfect Time for Coming Back.

Listen Here

~~~
For all I have been given in my life,
I am grateful.

For the people in my life,
I am grateful.

For the lessons
That continue
To grow me,
I am grateful.

For my heart
That is willing
To serve,
I am grateful.

Eventually 
And
Inevitably,

I am grateful.

Stay blessed,
Aruni

“The Nobility of Retreat”*

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“The Nobility of Retreat”*

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

I completely forgot about this quote by Swami Kripalu.
I love this quote.

Oh!

Come to think of it,
I forget about this,

I forget about
This entire practice 
All the time.

Let’s see:

  • Nobility  demonstrating fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals
  • Retreat   withdrawing, retiring, or drawing back, especially for shelter or seclusion

Especially for shelter or seclusion.

Oh.

~~~
I am
A
Worker
Bee.

I come from
Worker
Bees.

I am
Married
To
The 
Queen
Of
All
Worker
Bees.

I learned
Early on
Work
Was
Home.

Well, it was.

My dad’s
Corner grocery store,
The Colfax Market,
Was 
Two blocks
From
Our house
On Arthur Avenue.

They were
Always there,
Mom and Dad.

Coming home
For lunch
From grade school,
John James Audubon
#42,
Just a block away,

I went to the store.

Nobody was home.
Work was home.

When he wasn’t busy
Smoozing with customers,
Slicing meat,
Or
Worrying about something,

My dad would
Cut 
Open
A fresh
Hard roll,

Slathering it
With mayonnaise,

Slicing turkey roll,
Oh, so carefully,

Tucking it 
Lovingly
Inside 
The awaiting
Bun,

And
Adorning
A sheet of butcher paper
With this delight,
His
Finished creation.

Extending
It to me
On a paper plate—

It could have been
A plate
Of
Gold.

Prasad.
Consecrated.
Mana.

I would sit on
The magazine shelf,
And have 
My
Blessed
Lunch,

Loving it, 
Recognizing
The 
Blessing
Of it,

The being loved,
Being specialness 
Of it…

But:

 I wanted to go home.
Real home.
Like everybody else.

Another reason
To feel different.

They worked 
All the time, 
My people.

They worked,
For us.

For me,
For my sister.

I didn’t learn 
To rest,
To pause,
To relax,
To nap.

Napping was
Passing out… 

Like my dad,
Every night 
After our six o’clock dinner
On the couch,
To go back
To the 
Store, 
At 7:00.

Not to come home
Until 9:00.

Only to do it
Again,
The 
Next
Day.

I didn’t learn
To rest.

I learned
To
Keep 
Going.
~~~

Rest is Resistance—A Manifesto

This is an extraordinary book by Tricia Hershey.  Check out this quote:

“Rest Is Resistance is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism… Rest Is Resistance is a call to action, a battle cry, a field guide, and a manifesto for all of us who are sleep deprived, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of Grind Culture.”

Grind culture.  No kidding.

This short interview gives interesting insight:

Read Here

~~~
Locating rest in relationship with the political and cultural demands of capitalism, of racism, of classism puts a powerful new frame around the issue.

Oh.

~~~

Friends, how do you rest?

How do you work against the push?

Against the efforting?

~~~
Here is Beautiful Chorus, an extraordinary group from Orlando, Florida.  Their music offers me a sheltering, a deepening of my relationship with myself, a soft seclusion from my busy mind and my self-created busy world.

Family Mission Statement:

~~~

May we be healthy.

May we
Be present.

May we ride
The waves
Of our lives.

May we
Live 
In
Peace
No matter
What
We
Are given.

May we rest.

Oh, dear friends,
May we rest.

Stay blessed,
Aruni

~~~
*Bapuji, Swami Kripalu

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