from the mountains to the sea

16/04/2011

I have travelled from the mountains of Himachal Pradesh to the ocean at Goa. With it, the whole feel of things has changed. The cool, crisp clarity of the mountains has become the soft, warm fuzziness of the tropical beach life. It is like moving from the masculine to the feminine. The mountain energy is full of a deep silence. Here in the heat, everything is melting, oozing and luscious.

Plunging into the warm ocean, the feeling of abandonment comes easily. Floating, bobbing about in the waves, watching the eagles as they glide effortlessly in the sea breeze where it rises against the cliff, one can also become effortless. In the mountains, one can penetrate into the very heart of stillness and silence. Here one merely melts into all that is...

how likely is a ladybird?

10/04/2011

Here in Himachal Pradesh, it is the time of the ladybirds (ladybug in American English). There are many of them. And they are such beautiful little creatures.

How likely is it that ladybirds have come into existence? Of course, we know that they have, so it might seem a rather strange question. Think about it though. If you had never seen a ladybird, nor heard of them, would you ever imagine such a beetle? If a child drew a picture of one, we would exclaim that she has a vivid imagination.

This is the beauty of life. It creates the most unlikely of beings; and such beautiful ones!

At this point, the scientists amongst us will be proudly quoting Darwin’s theory on the origin of species. Have you noticed though, that the theory only works in retrospect? Given an existing species, one can dream up how its features have given it some survival advantage. Looking forwards, though, it is impossible to predict what nature will create.

All this applies not only to ladybirds and other species, but to individual beings too. Who amongst us can predict the exact shape an individual tree will grow to be? Isn’t life rich and wonderful for all this unpredictable diversity?

Each if us humans, too, grows to be a unique being, quite unpredictable at the outset. So we can also ask of ourself, how likely am I? The answer, of course, is that each of us is extremely unlikely. Yet here we are, each of us a beautiful, unique being, adding to the rich diversity of life.

happy new financial year!

05/04/2011

I might be wishing you a happy new year on a number of days in the year: There is the winter solstice, after which the hours of daylight increase in the northern hemisphere; The Gregorian Calendar seems to have become a de facto standard with a new year starting on the 1st of January; Rosh Hashanah, sometime in September, is the Jewish new year, if I’ve understood correctly; The Chinese have a new year of their own and doubtlessly there are many others.

In the UK, a new financial year starts on the 5th of April, so Happy New Financial Year!

Most of us are totally obsessed with money, so let’s celebrate this occasion! We should have fireworks and dancing and wild parties running through the night.

Of course we don’t celebrate. And the reason is that we are rather ashamed of our obsession with money. It seems so superficial. It is so superficial. But if we are obsessed with it, if we are living superficially, we should admit it and make the most of it. In this respect, the financiers in the City of London are more honest than most of us.

Amongst spiritual seekers, money is something of a dirty word. When we break free of the obsession with money, we invariably swing to the opposite extreme. Anything to do with money is seen as evil, loathsome.

Ironically, though, this aversion to all things financial is just as much of an obsession as that of people who are yet greedy for money. We are still obsessed with money but now in a negative way, with the energy of repulsion rather than attraction. We are still living under the spell of money.

To really break free of this emotional entanglement with money, it needs to lose its significance altogether. Then we can relax about it. Money can be felt neutrally, as a useful de facto standard helping social exchange of energy, just as a de facto standard calendar helps us arrange social meetings.

Until we reach such a relaxed attitude to money, though, let’s celebrate: Happy New Financial Year!

save yourself before saving the world

01/04/2011

The woman wanted the world to be a better place. She saw injustice and iniquity wherever she looked. It is up to us, she asserted, to make things better.

Where is this line, between us and them? Who are these other people, who are the wicked ones, whilst we are the good? It is an illusion, of course. We see others as bad because we have a dark shadow side to our psychology; all the things that we have not accepted about ourself. The others are no different to us. We are almost all in a mess on the inside. No wonder, then, if the world on the outside appears to be in a mess too.

How can one save the world, if one is still messed up within oneself? Whilst there is a mess on the inside, even with the best will in the world, we can only create a bigger mess on the outside. So I agree that it is up to us to create a better world but we won’t do that by pointing the finger at others: the first work is to sort ourself out.

I am reminded of the advice given in the aeroplane safety briefing: Put on your own oxygen mask before trying to help others. Otherwise, you will be asphyxiated and you won’t be any help to anyone. Likewise, save yourself before saving the world. Otherwise the mess will only get bigger, inside and out.

Perhaps the strangest thing is that once one has saved oneself, a great compassion arises towards others and no-one is felt to be a bad person, even if they are acting in a way which we don’t like. With this change in our own attitude, we suddenly find ourself living in a better world, without having had to change the others at all.

spring cleaning

20/03/2011

A storm came in the evening. For two hours or more, flashes of lightening lit the sky, coming in quick succession like a well-choreographed light show. The rumble of thunder was almost continuous. And the rain came down. Up here in the mountains, one was not beneath the storm but rather in it, at its heart.

This morning, the air and the land feel fresh. The storm has given everything a spring cleaning. And with it, my being also feels cleaned. We are not separate from the environment. What happens on the outside is also resonating within us.

May you also receive such a spring cleaning, especially at this time of the full moon and the equinox!

spring is in the air

16/03/2011

This morning the birds are declaring that spring has arrived. They are chirping merrily to each other with a new-found energy for life. Not only the birds feel it, I feel it too. There is something almost tangible in the air; an aliveness, signalling a period of fresh growth, of creation renewing itself. A mystic like myself thrives on such energies. 

Everyone can feel it, the coming of spring. And yet it defies a scientific definition. Any technical definition of spring has to be rigid. For example, we might decide that spring starts on the spring equinox and lasts until the summer solstice. But the equinox is not for a few days yet. Or we might decide that spring starts when the daily temperature exceeds some defined threshold. Yet the last few days have been hotter than today. No, in trying to define spring, we miss its essence.

This goes for everything in life: if we try to define it, we arrive at a rigid classification, and we miss the essence. We can feel the essence. We can know it directly, in the moment. But we cannot pin it down with words or definitions.

If you are in the northern hemisphere, I hope you feel it too, the coming of spring. It is in the air!