I was in the line at the supermarket a few weeks ago. In front of me was a woman with her grandson, about three years old, sitting in the cart. She was in her fifties, with tattoos, and long blonde bleached hair. I noticed, as we stood in line together, that I had made her into someone separate from me. It was easy to notice this, because my heart and my body closed down. It was as if she was standing outside a boundary, a line that I had constructed.

As soon as I became aware of the separation, I became very curious about it. What was it about this woman that made it difficult for me to include her in my own being? What was it about how she appeared that moved me to exclude her, to treat her as an object?

After a minute or so, I realized it was the Pepsi bottles in her cart, the Pepsi that her grandson would probably be drinking.

As soon as I realized this, I could feel myself begin to relax. I began to engage in something which I used to call inquiry, and which often feels to me more like prayer. It’s a willingness to see beyond the filters of my own conditioning, to open to conscious presence, to that which is true,

“Okay,” I said, speaking to the love and intelligence that live in every being, and that are always available to us, when we call on them. “Help me to see this woman. Allow me to see her through the eyes of the heart. I am not going to let a few Pepsi bottles stand between me and the magnificence of who she really is.”

As soon as I began this inquiry, this small prayer, everything started to change. The reality that we construct in our minds, with edges and lines and boundaries, is really so fragile. It can disappear in a moment.

I heard her speaking to her grandson with such love, about how fast he was growing up. Then her husband appeared, a beautiful man, tall and bright. They stood there together, right in front of me, sharing a stream of sweet love with their grandson.

By this time I wanted to speak with her, but she already at the cash register. Then I saw how wrong I really had been. This woman spoke to the young girl behind the cash register with such a natural warmth, as a fellow human being. She did not put a barrier between them. She paused, looked her in the eye, and took a few moments to really connect with her.

Then she and her husband strolled gracefully away, with their little grandson and those bottles of Pepsi.

I love being wrong like that. I look forward to the next time I am wrong like that! “I don’t know anything, “ I told myself, as I left the store, thinking I might get myself a Pepsi to celebrate the occasion.

I don’t know anything, and yet I do know that I no longer need to fall for the stories my mind makes up about how people appear, on the outside. The ideas, the stories, happen so quickly. In one split second, that wall comes up, and someone is standing on the outside of it.

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In the last few years, I have been exploring the relationship between awakening to the nature of awareness, or presence, and the natural embodiment of this in my human life.

The more fully and clearly I realize that I am not a separate solid self, the more my whole life realigns itself with this clarity.

The ways in which this natural realignment happens can be quite surprising and sometimes disturbing. I notice that presence is fine with all of it, even the chaos and suffering that seem to result from this realignment.

I’ve been looking very deeply at the whole field of relationship, and how our relationships evolve when we are not holding ourselves as separate. It seems possible at this time to envision a radically different way of being with each other. Sometimes I call this ‘an evolutionary’ kind of community. In this community, our relationships do not rest on or function within the ancient and habitual agreements and conditions that have been with us for thousands of years.

One of the things I’ve been wondering about is this: How do we have fun together? How do we celebrate this incredible gift of life? How do we celebrate?

The other night a group of friends asked me to come and play a game with them which is a form of dominoes. I have never been interested in such pastimes, so I decided to approach the evening with an open mind, and see what emerged.

In this game, there are solitary players, each one trying to accumulate as few points as possible. As we began to play, I decided to throw myself into the spirit of the game, which was based, as many games are, on trying to win, or trying not to lose. As the game progressed, one of the players became more and more successful, while some of us began to lose quite spectacularly. I let myself lean right into the whole experience of wanting to be the winner, and trying to prevent the one who was winning from her continuing success.

I noticed that it was difficult to play such a role without feeling a contraction in my body. I also noticed that the woman who was winning was also playing her role all-out. I really didn’t know how real all of it was to her. I did notice that when she was celebrating her victories, she did not look as beautiful to me as when her face was at rest.

When she raised her fist in the gesture of victory, something lean and pinched looking came into her face. I could feel the same feeling run through my body as I got more and more into the spirit of trying to win. It was a kind of adrenaline rush, that I used to enjoy quite a lot.

The man beside me, who was involved in a big streak of losing until the very end of the game, became more and more appealing. His graciousness in the face of defeat was very attractive, even though it was only a game.

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This writing, on how we can respond to the current challenge of massive levels of radiation in our environment, is one of the best articles I have read. It is a stunning and documented affirmation of the truth that ‘everything if for our evolution.’

Thanks to Rama Jyoti Vernon, who wrote it.

 We are now facing more tides of change. The danger of radiation spewing into the environment hovers like an invisible shadow over the survivors in Japan as well as other parts of the world. We do not yet know how the cascading  effects will take shape. A few days ago, the news broadcast that traces of radiation were found in California but it has not since been mentioned. There is usually a tendency to downplay its presence and impact for fear of panic. I have  received calls from Yoga teachers throughout this country who know of my exposure to radiation and depleted uranium in Chernobyl, Kosovo and Afghanistan. They want to know what I have learned about living with radiation after enduring damage to my health and surviving two near death experiences as a result of thisexposure. The greatest piece of knowledge I can share with you I learned from  the Soviets during my eight years working in the former Soviet Union.
 
 Some of my Soviet colleagues were working with the children whose lives were shortened since the fallout of Chernobyl. They built salt rooms that looked like crystal caves for the children to remain in for a specified length of time. They used medicinal herbs indigenous to their region. Yoga was a mainstay for strengthening bones, balancing the endocrine system and raising the blood count 
 on those little beings dying of leukemia. Before Chernobyl, the Russian children had strong bones, strong bodies and thick lustrous hair. After Chernobyl, I wasshocked to see the children with their wispy hair, weak limbs and alarmingly thin weak bodies. Some children would be fortunate to reach the age of 15, diagnosed with illnesses of many names but all traced to the aftermath of Chernobyl.
 

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About five years ago I was at a retreat in the mountains. One night I was sitting beside a young man about 30 years old. I was right in the middle of a very difficult experience, when I heard him softly say ‘Help’.

Immediately a strong sense rose up in me that I was in no position to help anyone. It was one of those moments that you’d like to wriggle right out of, if you could. I sat there, wishing that I was in a more balanced and grounded state, and hoping that I had not really heard what I had heard.

It was very quiet. And then it came again, just a soft voice, out of the darkness: “Help.” I realized there was no getting out of this one. My mind was telling me that I could not do anything for this person beside me. I was not feeling well at all. I didn’t know what to do, so I sat there and allowed myself not to know. It was not easy to allow that, even though it was the plain and simple truth of my experience.

And then, right in the same moment that my mind was saying, “I can’t do this,” I felt another kind of energy move me toward him, quite effortlessly.

I leaned over, and asked him what was happening.

He said, “I am very frightened.”

“Let’s breathe for a minute, together,” I said.

“Oh!” he said, “Breathing, what a great idea. I forgot about breathing.”

We breathed, and I allowed myself to become fully present for him, even though I had no idea what was going on. I could feel his fear, his distress, and I felt my own willingness to just be there with him exactly as I was. I could see things start to shift around in his body and mind.

And I was noticing something interesting: the moment I allowed that energy to move me, my entire experience shifted. I felt calm, balanced and present, without any idea of how that had happened.

I continued speaking with this man for quite a while, until he was okay on his own. When I sat down again in silence, I found myself wondering about what had happened. What was that simple, effortless flow of energy that seemed to have an intelligence and power of its own?

After sitting with this question for a while, the answer came to me: “It was the movement of love.” That was surprising. This experience was something quite different from how I usually understand love.

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The Homing Instinct

This writing describes one of the core practices, or fundamental views we will be working with together, in the Mutual Evolution 5 day retreat, July 29-Aug. 3

To find out more about the retreat, or to register: ‘Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together’

I was working with a beautiful group of women this spring, exploring what it is to listen and express from the heart. We were opening to the simplicity of just being present for whatever shows up, without any agenda of our own. Of course it’s not so easy to just snap your fingers and make all your egoic agendas vanish, but with a lot of willingness, many of our habitual preoccupations were falling away. 

At one point one of the women said to me, “But we do have agendas.”

“Of course, “ I said, “sometimes agendas are appropriate.”

“Then what to do?” she asked, “Try to get rid of them, one by one?”

“No,” I said, “that kind of practice will only create conflict. What you can do is just keep noticing, not with your mind, but with your whole being- heart, body and breath. Notice how it feels when you have an agenda, an expectation, a demand, and notice how it feels when you don’t.”

After saying that, my own awareness seemed to open to a deeper level. I began to notice in such a simple way how my body feels when I am holding any kind of agenda. There’s a tightness, a hardness, a solidity. When I am simply present, everything softens, expands. Without making any kind of value judgment in the mind, my body simply recognizes the basic sanity of being present. It feels good.

The more I noticed, the more I could feel my deeper being returning to presence, again and again, all by itself. In some spiritual teachings, this natural movement is called ‘the homing instinct.’ (I first heard it expressed this way in ‘The Radiant Mind’ course with Peter Fenner.)

Without a sense of this natural movement inside us, life can be quite bewildering. I was talking to a brilliant young woman in France last week. When I asked her what she wanted, she replied with great candor, “Shayla, that is the most terrifying question of all.” Her response was so genuine that it stayed with me, and I pondered it for days. I realized that the vast majority of the people I work with do not have a clear sense of what they really want. Isn’t that amazing?

There is often a sense of shame or helplessness that comes along with this, as if this not knowing is a sign of something wrong, a flaw or weakness. In my heart I know that this is not true, that there is another way to look at this phenomenon. How could so many people not know what they really want?

For me, this is a sign of how out of touch we are with our authentic being. What we relate to as our self is our conceptual self- the ideas, memories and images we have of who we are. There is really nothing wrong with this, but it has nothing to do with our living experience. If we open to the alive and present sense of who we are, we notice that everything is fluid, and unfixed, even our own identity.  As Bucky Fuller put it, “You are not a noun, you’re a verb.” In Buddhism they refer to it as our mind stream. This stream is who we are, not this solid, separate identity.

What happens when we really allow ourselves to be in touch with this flowing, unfixed experience of ourselves? At first it can be bewildering, disorienting. But after a while, a clarity, a brightness begins to shine. Whenever we stay with our own experience, the natural intelligence within us starts to reveal itself. Insights, flashes of deep wisdom and compassion appear out of nowhere. And we know what it is that we want. We know it in the same simple obvious way that we know we are hungry.

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The Joy of Inquiry

‘Living Inquiry, Endless Surrender’ 12 month online course

A few years ago, when the Olympic games were in Athens, I was watching them one night on T.V. The American commentator decided to give us a taste of Athenian life, so he walked down to the main square with the T.V. cameras. It was about 5pm, and the square was just filling up for the evening. There were children skipping rope and playing tag, teenagers on skateboards, mothers with babies in their arms, students drinking coffee, businessmen with newspapers and liqueurs, and old men playing chess. He strolled for a few minutes around the square, taking in the vitality and general friendliness of the scene.

What I noticed was how many people were actively engaged in talking with each other. Not the cursory cell phone kind of conversation we are so used to now, but real dialogue. It intrigued me so much that I lost interest in the games. When they were over, the same commentator went back to the square at one in the morning, “just for fun” he said. “We’ll see who’s left.”

He was astounded to find that the square was still full, and not because of the games. The mothers and young children had gone home, but they had been replaced by people of all ages who were still talking. This was quite unfathomable to the commentator. Finally he approached a white haired Greek patriarch, who stood up to speak with him. “Excuse me sir,” said the American, “could I ask you a few questions?”
“Of course,” the man beamed. “What would you like to know?” He was a remarkably tall and handsome fellow, towering above the American.
“What do you do here all night long?”
“We enjoy each other’s company,” the Greek replied. We laugh, we sing, and we engage in dialogue. We are eager to find out what is in each other’s hearts and minds.”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“Will you be on time for work in the morning?” the American asked.
“Of course,” the patriarch replied with a huge smile. “But we Greeks have a different understanding of time and work than you North Americans.”

A few years later, I spent some time running a series of conversation cafes in our community. My intention was to bring as much of the community together as possible, and create an environment where they could engage in dialogue. I had been living in India for 25 years, where dialogue and inquiry are like part of the air you breathe. The people in India, like those in Greece, are not afraid to ask what I call ‘the big questions.’ As my teacher there used to say, “Any rickshaw driver will talk to you about God, life and the universe.”

It was when I was facilitating the conversation cafes that I discovered how different it is in North America. In this culture we have never really learned how to ask ourselves and each other the important questions, and how to listen. We leave that to the philosophers, theologians, preachers, scholars, and scientists. One evening, at one of the cafes, I looked around the room and realized how many people there were who did not really know how to begin engaging in dialogue.  I grabbed my friend David Mackenzie, who was my co-facilitator. “David, I said, Help me! Do something so that these people start really talking to each other.”

David really rose to the moment. He stepped into the centre of the room and said, “Okay folks! Stop. We are all on the Titanic, right now. These are the chairs on the deck of that great ship. Smell the ocean air, listen to the sound of the waves. We’re all going down in about 10 minutes. That’s all the time you have left in this world. Now, what do you have to say to your companions on the deck?”

That certainly livened things up a lot. And it became one of the questions I ask people in my Heart of Communication course. Along with “What or who have been the greatest teachers in your life? What is your deepest longing?
What calls forth your greatest aliveness? What is your biggest challenge? What matters most to you? What are you saying Yes and No to in your life? What do you really love? Who are you really?”

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On a recent telecall I responded to a question asked by Barbara, from Argentina, about nondual practice and the ‘Living Inquiry, Endless Surrender’ online course. She asked me to write down for her what I said in response to her question. Here it is:

Nondual awareness is the unconditioned presence that is right here, not separate from anything. This is the foundation for all of our work in this course. You might have heard that in the space of nondual awareness, the nature of what we call ‘I’ is radically different, or that it doesn’t really exist. When we hear these things, it can feel very confusing or abstract.

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On a recent telecall I responded to a question asked by Barbara, from Argentina, about nondual practice and the ‘Living Inquiry, Endless Surrender’ online course. She asked me to write down for her what I said in response to her question. Here it is:

Nondual awareness is the unconditioned presence that is right here, not separate from anything. This is the foundation for all of our work in this course. You might have heard that in the space of nondual awareness, the nature of what we call ‘I’ is radically different, or that it doesn’t really exist. When we hear these things, it can feel very confusing or abstract.

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