Sunday, September 27, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
"I would go on loving..."
To F.W
"I practised religious rituals that I adapted to the circumstances - solitary Masses without priests or consecrated Communion hosts, darshans without murtis, and pujas with turtle meat for prasad, acts of devotion to Allah not knowing where Mecca was and getting my Arabic Wrong. They brought me comfort, that is certain. But it was hard, oh, it was hard. Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love - but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I wouldn't be able to lift it back up.
At such moments I tried everything to elevate myself. I would touch the turban I had made with the remnants of my shirt and I would say aloud, "THIS IS GOD'S HAT!"
I would pat my pants and say aloud, "THIS IS GOD'S ATTIRE!"
I would point to Richard Parker and say aloud, "THIS IS GOD'S CAT!"
I would point to the lifeboat and say aloud, "THIS IS GOD'S ARK!"
I would spread my hands wide and say aloud, "THESE ARE GOD'S WIDE ACRES!"
I would point at the sky and say aloud, "THIS IS GOD'S EAR!"
And in this way I would remind myself of creation and of my place in it.
But God's hat was always unravelling. God's pants were falling apart. God's cat was a constant danger. God's ark was a jail. God's wide acres were slowly killing me. God's ear didn't seem to be listening.
Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed. A school of fish appeared around the net or a knot cried out to be reknotted. Or I thought of my family, of how they were spared this terrible agony. The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving."
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
(This novel is about a boy and a tiger in a lifeboat who survived for 227 days in the vast Pacific Ocean)
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Monday, September 7, 2009
The Inner Garden
"...the truth of things can only be expressed aesthetically - in story, picture, film, dance, music. Only when ideas are poetic do they reach the depths and express the reality. ... You have that capacity within you to be the poet to your experience. ... You have to learn how to "sum up" your experience in images that convey your personal truth. ... Many people write songs, poems, and stories. Some, less obviously, make gardens." Thomas Moore “Dark Nights of the Soul” Q: I’ve known you for a while and have seen you transforming dumps into gardens; I’ve seen plants establish themselves in areas where nothing - ever - used to grow. … What is gardening for you? Well, it is such a large question… It is like asking “what’s love?”… It is everything to me. It is sacred. In learning that there is a time to sow, a time to water, a time to feed, and then a time to reap and in accepting that there are some things that need a lot of care and there are some that don’t need much at all, lies a valid spiritual path. It is something outside of myself. The world, our ego identities - our likes and dislikes - can be overwhelming at times. So with gardening there is grounding that takes place, and as a result of it my response to the world at large gets recalibrated. For me having a garden quiets my mind - particularly and specifically, the aspect of our mind that wants to analyze, and catalogue, and put everything in its little box, and which, in essence, devoid of emotions and passion. Working with the garden allows me to get back to basics. It is a very natural energetic-ness: in doing a garden my physical body is working with the earth. So, by default, I am going to connect with a consciousness greater than myself, consciousness greater than that of “I am human,” “I am special,” “I’ll have things my way”. In and of itself such a consciousness it is not a bad thing - it just can reach a point where it is dysfunctional: oftentimes people driving on the road can feel like that road is just for them and anyone in their way is an enemy. Being in such an ego-centrical mode not only do we separate ourselves from other human beings but also we separate ourselves from all of life - it is something that just follows in of itself… Another thing is that, as humans, in our day and age we get overly caught up with a destination rather than a journey - all what we want is to be able to push that button and have an instant gratification. Then, once we have a thing (whatever it might be), it is over with and we are looking for the next thing to have. Time and again we get way too much in a hurry, so we miss details, we miss specifics, we miss moments - we are not aware of our inner voice, of the teacher within, and we don’t hear inner messages about our journey… In doing the gardening we plant things and watch them grow. As the garden unfolds and continues to evolve we become very aware of the stages of its growth: in the beginning, like any new project, it needs a lot of nurturing, tender loving care and watchfulness; then plants reach the place when their capacity to draw upon from life all around them enhances and they are able to stand on their own feet, so to speak… As we align with and embrace each stage that takes place within the plant world, we come to recognize that it is never about the destination - the “final” stage - when flowers for example, will bloom. We learn to appreciate each stage being as meaningful and magnificent as the “final” - blooming - stage. So, in working with plants and observing this authentic process of a natural growth with its very distinct stages, we are able to realign with our own inner gardens; we become more accepting of our stages of growth, more relaxed and less of “just-hurry-up-and-get-through-this part-to-the-next-part”, more apt to remember that we all are a work in progress and that tending to our own inner gardens is “all about the journey” after all. Q: Do you ever wish for a bigger garden? The natural inclination for all people is to grow. Whatever is that we do on a regular basis we are going to grow, to evolve, and it happens regardless of whether we are conscious of it or not. It is not uncommon for us to get ahead of ourselves, as they say, “to put the cart before the horse” and make an attempt to control our evolvement, hurry up the process, which really, really discombobulates us. Where I am living right now, when I first came, the only little tiny area suited for gardening used to be out at the front. For me, as for any human being, in dealing with very rough phases of life, trials and tribulations, so to speak, the intent need is to get outside of myself, so I started to garden. The earth was compacted, so as I was digging and tilling it to clean it up I discovered the bricks buried in the ground - enough of them to outline the whole front yard… So, here it was - “as ye apply, the next step is given” - the garden in and of itself was evolving: for the brick border wasn’t as much for aesthetic reasons as it was to allow the moisture to stay within where all the things were growing. As the sense of having a garden, doing a garden, upfront, had evolved and I was able to handle the gardening area there was, then the next – expansionary – step was to go on the back behind the building and create a larger spot - another gardening area – which was nothing like the garden upfront – it was more shady, cooler, a lot of rocks in the ground - even grass wasn‘t growing very well there… As the area on the back became established, the garden expanded onto yet another spot - a set of land next to the apartments - that was on the slope, heavily mulched and had more light than the area on the back. Primarily, the intent of gardening is very structural: to grow specific things in specific areas; however, any garden would teach you that sometimes it is helpful to let go of any rules and adapt “let’s just take seeds and plants, broadcast them everywhere” approach allowing things to come up as they would. And that was exactly what I did after having taken into consideration people who owned the property - what was allowable and how they felt about it … Q: After all these years of creating gardens on the land that never belonged to you don’t you feel any regrets when you have to move on? Don’t you feel any frustration, sadness, loss knowing that you have to abandon “your” garden once again, go somewhere, and, knowing yourself, start all over - from scratch, from compacted earth with lots of rocks in the ground? Don’t you ever wish for things, your whole life, to be different? Don’t you ever wish to have your own garden - so you don’t have to move, start all over again, leave and repeat this circle endlessly? Well, of course, sometimes… There are the places where I lived for quite sometime growing trees from seedling. For me, it is a very personal relationship; it is a family, and you can feel sadness when you have to leave … Gardening and landscaping is something that is not done in one season. It takes at least three to four years before you really have something established… So, there is a lot of time and energy invested. And, on one hand, there can be an aspect of you that cries out loud “Wow, I put all this time in it and now I have to leave it?!?” On one hand…. On the other hand, it is the journey… Any garden is a viewpoint of what the nature of life is and we know, as it were, that like with any other process, after a certain point the strong roots are established, the garden can take care of itself and is going to do just fine. You carry yourself with you no matter where you go: there is always another gardening area to begin. As human beings, we are going through stages of life, evolving, just like a garden. It is not uncommon for us upon reaching the end of a certain stage to feel sadness and grief when time comes to move on. It is not uncommon for us to put our evolution on hold because the transition seems to be hard to make, and so we are not willing to go beyond what was. As a young adult, I was in the service. It was something I was very good at, very acknowledged for, something that I got a prestige from. Life had it that I had to leave the service and go from a person in a position of authority to someone who was literally pushing a broom and dealing with a civilian life, which in comparison to a very structured military life seemed to be very chaotic. It was a totally different world, a totally different garden, so to speak. Now, the only way to evolve, to continue to grow for me was to let go of the phase in my life where there was service; to let go of that garden. You have to let go in order to evolve, to keep moving on with your life. People get so caught up in “we have been structured this way and this is the only way it should be” that they are missing the flow of life, which says to them “ok, the way you did things worked, but it can evolve to where it works even better”. As soon as you allow for the evolution to take place, you don’t feel stuck anymore and you will experience the sense of centeredness, authenticity and joy… So, when you have the garden going on what you see is how it benefits all life around you: all these butterflies and bees, birds and caterpillars, and so many other - often unseen - things as well as the human form are drawn to it. The quality of your life increases not only because you are authentically doing something for yourself but also because you see that all the life around you being nourished by your doings regardless of whether they are conscious of it or not. Q: So you never wish to have something more that is presented to you at any given moment? You seem to accept the cards you are dealt with without a question or complain, knowing that “as ye apply the next step is given”… What about co-creating your reality by using affirmations wishing for something bigger/better/more stable/more permanent? I do occasionally structured affirmations. As human beings, by default, we need areas that have structure to them: “we must eat“, “we must breathe“, “we must bathe“, “we must sleep“, “we must work“, “we must play”, “we must relax”. Structurally co-creating your life is wonderful; it is an integrate part of it. “What if I had several acres to play with and do as I would?” is in and of itself an affirmation. In your imagination, in your heart of hearts you are looking at this new life called “the garden” that you are not physically doing and pondering as to how you would put together within it all these different areas that have structure to them. What you come to realize is that the size of the garden is not how large it is or how permanent it becomes. It is always nice to have more area, however, in and of itself is not the goal. So, what’s the evolution of the garden? It is an expansion in order to have a greater influence on your own life and on life around you. For years - because I had to travel all the time and live in my van - I had a couple of dozen of miniature plants. As small as it was, it was my garden and from interacting with that garden (which wasn’t time consuming at all) I still received the sense of connectedness to my own inner garden and to life around me. By nurturing outside of myself I allowed the nurturing to take place within myself… I allowed for the outside to nurture me… How large the garden is doesn’t mean you get more of it. And there is another aspect to a garden evolving above and beyond. I do gardening to inspire people so they see the magical-ness of life in and of a garden. Lots of folks awed by the plants - “oh, how beautiful and wonderful they are” - stop by to talk to me. I wish to inspire people and I inspire them - “all what you need to do is put a seed in the ground, water it and look after it“. The lady who works in child care in the church nearby had gotten so inspired by the sunflowers growing in the front yard that she planted them at the playground with the pre-school children so they can grow up and be exposed to the magical-ness of a garden and inspired by it. Here, I have another garden going on and I am not even doing it. There was a time when after I had been doing a lot of counseling for a two or three years I needed to take a sabbatical. So, I got myself some part-time work and moved in with this gentleman I was teaching at the time. He lived in a very low income ghetto area - whites and blacks, few Latinos - trash, junk, litter everywhere on the streets. You couldn’t leave anything laying around because people would steal it. Everybody was very suspicious of one another, very needy, in a victim kind of mode… I wasn’t bothered by it - people are people: all of us would do better, if we know better or are shown better. I began by cleaning the place up and creating a gardening area - I had plants and flowers in the pots too – there was a porch – but most of them were growing in the ground. People would see me on a regular basis nurturing, watering, growing and admiring the plants. People would see me out there picking the trash up - there was the sense of the natural order: it is a natural order of all life to keep their place cleaned up. It was a very public display of my intent to raise the vibrations of and in the neighborhood: if these are the cards you are dealt with right now, it doesn’t mean you have to get stuck, stop evolving and not to enjoy life. It was similar to a rippling effect of a stone thrown in a pull of water. Everyone is connected - I knew that the vibrations would raise. So, one day eight or nine little children came over before school. One girl, who was a spokesperson for these kids, commented on how beautiful the flowers were and asked me if they could have some to give to their teachers? I said that yes, they could have some. Well, they were children and they hadn’t had the gardens in their neighborhood before - some of them were pulling the sunflowers up. As painful as it was for me to watch it, I knew that in this very moment the energetic paradigm for the entire neighborhood shifted. What started to take place immediately afterwards was people started picking up their trash and having plants in pots and in some little areas around their houses; they became more connected to one another - they started standing up for themselves and one another instead of just allowing victimizing to go on. It was almost as if they said “enough of that - I can pick up my trash and I can have flowers too, you know“. People felt better about themselves… *** I know that when I am doing gardening I am glowing – there are no issues, no time tenses, no pain; it is letting go of your human form, when you find yourself being totally immersed in your centeredness; all the voices in your mind fade out and oneness with yourself and life around you prevails. I am very connected with the garden; I am participating with the plants and the elements. I don’t grow anything – if it wasn’t for the earth, water, sun nothing would have happened. There is no room for desiring any end results – whatever stage the garden is at I am one with that stage. I am glowing; I am as enlightened as I need to be. As people see me doing it, see me being in such a contact with that garden they will get affected. And I am not unique in that – there is something that each one of us does that makes us glow and it does have a profound effect. When I am silent, quiet one of the energies that prevails is the energy of the peacemaker, and it does have effect not only on people but on the world around as well. As Mary Ann said it: “Robert when you are doing gardening you are so quiet that I never know where you are at” Being aware of that kind of silence benefits my personality, my perspective. Way too often self gets in the way when we are looking to see how we can navigate through this or that situation. When we stop, when we silence the mind from that constant chatter that goes on inside of us, the self gets out of the way and all of us have these “aha” moments - we get charged up and our perspective about whatever changes, simply because we are able to draw upon all of life around us more fully, more maturely, more comprehensively… |
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Мои Работы В Местной Кофейне
"On the Back of Main Street" is on display at The Coffee Zone until January 8th, 2010. It is a part of ongoing series called "Faces of Waynesville".      |
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Thursday, September 3, 2009
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