In Yoke

Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? I am a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of my head are easier by far to count than my feelings, the movements of my heart. -Saint Augustine Most of us never really see the people we live with. Our boyfriend may be right before our eyes, but we do not see him. We see our idea of him, a little model we have made in our mind, and on that we pronounce our judgments.  That is why, when we quarrel with someone, the worst thing we can do is to avoid him or her. We are trying to avoid an image in our own mind, which cannot be done. The mind takes some exaggerated impressions, memories, hopes, and insecurities, draws a quick caricature like one of those sidewalk cartoonists, and then turns up its nose. The person in question should retort, "That's not me; that's your caricature of me. If you don't like it, you don't like your own mind."  To heal our relationships, we have to move closer to people ...

TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013 “Are you an Atheist?” I’m often asked this question during lectures despite the fact that I use the word “God” regularly. My usual response is to take cover in cleverness: “My atheism depends on your theism. If you believe in Zeus or Apollo, then, yes, I’m an atheist. If you believe in a god who chooses one people over another and privileges one strip of real estate over another, then, yes I’m an atheist. If you believe in a god who has children, or who dictates books on mountaintops or in caves, or who saves some and damns others, then, yes, I’m an atheist. But if you believe in the God of Einstein and Spinoza, the God who is Reality itself—the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown, then I’m not an atheist.” Most of the time this works, but sometimes being clever just falls on deaf ears: “But, are you an atheist? Do you believe in a God we can pray to? YHVH, Allah, the First Person of the Trinity, or even Krishna? Yes or no?” No. But…. “There is no ‘...

A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine.   – Meher Baba ….from Sri Easwaran ~ “Somehow, in our modern civilization, we have acquired the idea that the mind is working best when it runs at top speed. Yet a racing mind lacks time even to finish a thought, let alone to check on its quality. When we slow down the mind, we work better at everything we do. Not only is the quality of our work better, we are actually able to get more done. A calm, smooth-running flow of thought saves a lot of wear and tear on the nervous system, which means we have more vitality and resilience in the face of stress.” Multi tasking is really, then, not such a great thing. Being able to focus and to give one’s attention fully to a subject matter, better still, to a person, is what is most divine of all the mind’s capabilities. We are drawn to those who are intent on what we are telling them. Likewise, others are drawn to us when we give them our full at...

And then there crept a little noiseless noise among the leaves, Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.-John KeatsEaswaran's recollections: "Today I was walking with some friends in Armstrong Redwoods Park and I was astonished at those trees. The more I looked at them, the more I came to appreciate them. It was completely still, unlike our tropical forests in India, where elephants trumpet, tigers roar, and there is a constant symphony of sound.Here everything was still, and I enjoyed the silence so much that I remembered these lines of John Keats. It is a perfect simile for the silence of the mind, when all personal conflicts are resolved, when all selfish desires come to rest. All of us are looking for this absolute peace, this inward, healing silence in the redwood forest of the mind. When we find it, we will become small forces for peace wherever we go.I'm interested in experiencing this more & more.Being, meditating, contemplating, musing, gleanings morsels for...

Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say more of life? -Henry Havelock Ellis  When we wake up from a dream into waking consciousness, we do not pass from unreality to reality; we pass from a lower level of reality to a higher level. And, the mystics of all religions say, there is a higher level still, compared with which this waking life of ours is as insubstantial as a dream. Yet until we do wake up, nothing sounds more absurd than the assertion that we are dreaming, and nothing seems more solid than this world of the senses. Why should this be so? If original goodness is our real nature, why are we unable to see it? The answer is simple: because we see life not as it is but as we are. We see "through a glass darkly," through the distorting lenses of the mind - all the layers of feeling, habit, instinct, and memory that cover the pure core of goodness deep within. ~Easwaran

Is that I am being led, being guided, being loved, being used, being prayed through --I am not in the drivers seat. Gal.2:20

Envy and wrath shorten the life.    – Ecclesiasticus All of us have a need to forgive, whether in large or small matters. All of us suffer little irritating pinpricks every day. It is not very effective to analyze these small wrongs and then forgive them one by one. Much more effective is not to dwell on them at all. Whenever a stray bit of wrath arises and wants to talk over some incident from the past, don’t invite that thought in. When we can withdraw our attention completely from the past, it is not possible to get resentful; it is not possible to be oppressed by mistakes in our past, no matter who made them. All our attention is in the present, which makes every moment fresh, every relationship fresh. Staleness and boredom vanish from our life. I love this insight from the teacher, Easwaran. He is reaffirming that we do not have any need of the resentments and slights that we may perceive have been directed towards us. Little things can accumulate into outbursts of ...