Practical Arrangement, written by Sting and Rob Mathes, rendition by Dan...

Arrival

A moment observing your breath provides a window to the way life works.  We expand, then contract.  The breath is both expansion and contraction, inhale and exhale.  It is clear one cannot be without the other.  The same is true of the beat of all beating hearts, the changing of all seasons, night and day, birth and death.

The window we observe anything from is the level of magnification through which we perceive.  Sitting beside a grieving friend, we feel some of their anguish.  Hearing that a thousand strangers have died horribly on another continent may not produce the same emotional resonance.  We can’t focus our eyes on close detail and distant landscape at the same time.  It is not within the capacity of our vision to do so, no matter how much we practice.  Our cognitive and emotional lives seem to follow the same principle.

Seeking happiness, or an enlightened state, we assume that in the finding of it there will be a steady permanence.  Like no other natural process, we imagine upon arrival an end to the ups and downs - or rather, happiness would include only the up - forgetting down is necessary to experience up.

Accelerating in a car from 30kph to 100kph, you feel the thrill of being pushed back into your seat.  Now you are really going somewhere.  When you arrive at 100kph and cruise at that speed, the quality of acceleration is absent, the same way it is absent in a jet plane traveling at several hundred kph.  Several hours at the same speed, no matter how fast, feels less than thrilling.  The only way to experience acceleration once you’ve reached top speed is to put on the brakes and accelerate again.  You can choose to put on the brakes, you can run out of gas, or you can crash.

After the crash, or the walk to the gas station with gas can in hand, our perception is tuned not to the macroscopic but to the small.  A friendly wave from a stranger or a smile from a grocery clerk is significant in a way it would not have been had we been in the process of steep and thrilling acceleration.  It is not so much the event, it is the contrast between the event and the content of perception surrounding it.  The mountains are steeper when standing in the valley beside them.

There is a grace to the pause between the inhale and exhale.  There is a sense of peace and reflection that appears to rely on the contrast to immersion in strong experience.  To some degree, we get to make up our own minds what is of value to us.  To me, the evidence of an underlying vibratory quality to all features of the universe is strong, and can be illustrated both by the rigor of scientific inquiry and by common experience.  Assuming an ultimate and unchanging state exists seems more like wishful thinking not thought through.

Keen human minds focused on the verifiable, and willing to be proven wrong, consistently agree the universe has been changing for billions of  years.  Expansion, differentiation, evolution.  Our shared and reproducible experiments so far indicate we are mammals born from all of this, not visitors, witnesses or spiritual beings having a temporary physical experience.  This distancing language of transcendence may be the very thing that prohibits the appreciation of what actually is.  The seat in the jet plane is not more comfortable than the ride to the airport, and if we are honest we’d admit we wouldn’t want either of those experiences to last forever.  What I really want, and what I sometimes get for a period of time, is a sense of appreciation of what is.  This feeling does not stick around.  It has to fade, so that when it comes back its presence is of consequence.  Just like the beat of my heart or the flow of my breath.

The aim of this article is not to solve a problem.  I’m not offering any help, or suggesting a form of self-help.  Notice the feeling when the new diet, or the new cleanse, or the new teacher, book, practice, meditation, exercise machine, cosmology, philosophy, location or intimate... moves from the “new” category to the category where all the others are found.  When it moves from the lobby to the attic.  Notice the compartmentalization and lack of intellectual honesty when a friend asks how that new thing you were so excited about is going.  It is possible to allow the sense of deceleration to be there, and to say “It’s not going”.  And I’d suggest that is a very good thing.  There is a word for “no longer going to a new destination”.

 Arrival.

Act as if it's rigged in your favour

I love this quote from one of Rumi's poems - paraphrased - "Act as if it's all rigged in your favour".

This to me is a very clever sentence, and an affirmation that is real and actionable.  When one acts "as if" things are rigged in their favour, then every event is cast in a different light.  The seemingly unfortunate events can be appreciated, for this too is part of the "rigging".  For instance, ageing and death are life's way of rigging in your favour.  Imagine not dying and having the world so full of people we'd be like sardines in a can - death is rigged in your favour.  Imagine not ageing.  Not having the opportunity to let go of youthful narcissism - not losing the "war" on getting wrinkly.  Things are rigged in your favour.

Acting "as if" is playing.  It is not imagining or believing there is a supernatural power that is bestowing miracles and curses.  In that model, prayer and surrender are the tools.  Acting "as if" is acting, and it is taking action.  It is playing with the idea that everything is rigged in your favour.  It does not suggest things are actually rigged.  For if they were really rigged in your favour, that implies someone else's life is rigged against them.  If a playing field is tipped in a fortunate direction for you, it means it is tipped in an unfortunate position for the other team.  If god is on your side he's not on the other side.  The way we usually feel successful is by "winning" something - in other words, comparing ourselves in some way to others, or to former versions of ourselves.  Winning and losing mutually arise, like up and down.

Children know how to act "as if".  They can slip into imaginative roles easily, maintaining the perspective that it is all in fun.  The game is not ultimately serious.  But you can for a time act "as if" it is.  When you act "as if", your innate intuition, playfulness and joy are available, potentially allowing more skill in action.  Acting "as if" actually works, because it recognizes and works with what is actually happening.

Northern Japan yoga students, and Chinese amusement parks.

We just got back from the island of Hokkaido from a week-end workshop for yoga teachers - "teachers tune-up".

Prior to coming, we asked the Sapporo students to give us a question each about what they most wanted to learn over the weekend.  I'd planned to narrow the focus to just one pose - side angle, or parsvakonasana, using that postural geography to explore simple and more complex muscular actions that create beneficial results, encouraging relaxed observation and clear cueing.

Many of the student questions centered on how to teach beginners.  Through talking with them (translated by Kumi, of course) I realized that they, like most yoga teachers, had been exposed to a great number of touring teachers.  Though these teachers each offered something valuable, there was little or no through-line to the education.  Postural focus was different teacher to teacher, sequencing guidelines

changed, and sometimes conflicting postural alignment philosophy.

Our host put it well.  She said she felt as if she were teaching yoga like a Chinese amusement park, and through the week-end with us she began to feel that she could teach yoga like a small cabin in the woods, furnished simply.

This was really my goal for the week-end and the reason I narrowed the focus so much.  I wanted to offer not another technique or flashy pose, but to develop critical reasoning faculties in each student so they'd be able to prune their teaching and offer good, simple and effective instruction to their students while relaxing into competency in teaching postural yoga.

Essentially my point was this:  Let's remove the less essential from the teaching and increase the essential.  Find the "niche" in yoga where the student really is, and can benefit.

Hatha Yoga is the process of understanding and performing balanced muscular action over a  pose duration long enough to create a beneficial re-patterning within the tissues of the body.  I left everything else off the table this week-end, and I'm happy with the results.

We yoga teachers have a responsibility, I feel, to not export more confusion.  We have an opportunity to empower people both physically and mentally to take responsibility for their health via a practice they can do on their own if they like, and to think through their decisions and beliefs.

Cranes, Planes and failing.

The linear mind thinks one thing after another.  Our eyes, when relaxed, allow all things to appear in vision.  A crane waits with a soft gaze until a yang element of water movement appears and then the crane acts spontaneously, catching the surfacing fish.  If the crane strained to see, one after another, each place where a fish might appear and then think how to catch it, the crane would starve to death.  Only when relaxed and allowing an involuntary reaction does the crane thrive.  The crane is in a state of Zen.

We’ve been straining to use the linear mind to solve a non-linear problem.  How to save the environment.  We’ve defined our outer body (the world) as something separate from us by agreeing to use the word “environment” - that which surrounds.  Then we run with a mistaken idea and don’t feel ourselves as a feature of a larger pattern of life.  We strain our gaze on one thing after another in an attempt to solve non-linear problems with a linear approach.

I wonder what might happen if we gave up.  If each of us at some point just dropped trying to save the world, ourselves, or anything.  If we didn’t get on a plane or in a car to attend a rally on how to reduce carbon emissions.

I think at first there would be an overwhelming sense that we have utterly failed.  There’s no point in trying to achieve anything then, if in our trying we lose the ability to see the big picture - to only focus on a tiny patch water where there is no fish.  This depression might last for a while, and then we’d get fidgety.  We’d want to do something.  But when there is no point in writing a blog or updating a social media page to tell other people what they should be doing or feeling, our hands would drop to our laps.  We’d be sitting with nothing to do and no motivation to try to do it.  Our gaze would then soften, and with no-where to go, we’d rest, perhaps allow spontaneity to move us.  Like the crane, we would become again a feature of life, and being entirely ourselves, as pleasant to be around as the other animals.

Is your yoga teacher your friend?

This question has been asked a bunch recently.  I teach yoga and my answer is that this is the wrong question.  It is wrong in the same way this question is misleading:

• Is your carpenter your friend?

First let’s understand what I mean by friend.  A friend is someone who you like to be around, and they like to be around you.  There is no other reason for this hanging out with one another other than you like it.  You don’t spend time together because you are always “learning” from them, or you think they can be depended upon if your car breaks down and you need a ride.  Friends offer rides, but that isn’t the reason you have them as a friend.  If it were, you’d make sure your “friends” all had dependable cars.  They’d see through that, they’d see that you were using them as a resource.  That is not friendship, in the same way becoming friendly with someone at work who might be able to help promote you is not friendship.  

Your carpenter might end up being your friend, but not because she is a good carpenter or a bad carpenter.  You might be friends because you just...like her.  There is no “reason” someone becomes your friend - it is not for some perceived benefit.  There is a mutual respect and love, without any power differential, and a fair degree of honesty.  You can say to your friend “Quit being an ass!”  Your friend might be offended, they might laugh, but they’ll still be your friend.

So the question “Is your yoga teacher your friend” or “Can or should your yoga teacher become your friend” can be answered in the same way as “Should your carpenter become your friend”? 

The answer is: you don’t decide that.  Friendship happens to you, in the same way your eyes dilate when you walk into a dark room, in the same way you enjoy certain kinds of food, in the same way you find particular things funny and others not.

So your yoga teacher might become your friend, or might not.  It depends on a lot of things you don’t control.  If you want your yoga teacher to be your friend because you’d like to be illuminated by the reflected light of their celebrity, then you are not really their friend.

However, the question “Should they be your friend” implies there is some ethical issue here that needs dealing with.  

There has been an enormous amount of predatory behaviour from yoga gurus directed towards their students.  This is pretty well documented and I won’t go into it here.  These gurus were not friends with their students - a friend would not take advantage of a friend in this way, to my way of thinking.  In other words, this predatory behaviour was possible at least in part because of a perceived power differential between the guru and the student.  Because of a lack of friendship.

The next argument that comes up in favour of maintaining a distance between teacher and student is the issue of discipline.  How can a teacher maintain discipline in a classroom where the students are their friends?  Again - good friends don’t require discipline in order to listen to what you have to say, if it is valuable.  They like you and they want to hear you.  If one thinks that student/friends will brush off what they have to say while teaching a class, that may be because the teacher’s current friends brush off what they have to say.  The students don’t need more discipline in this case, the teacher needs nicer friends, and maybe needs to be a nicer friend...or say things that people want to listen to.

Finally (as far as this post goes) the issue of the teaching of yoga as different than something like carpentry.  Hatha yoga is a wonderful practice that has the ability to encourage overall health, flexibility, calmness of mind (at least temporarily) and has many other benefits.  Technique helps, and if hatha yoga is taught well, the student is empowered to learn in a way that creates independence in practice.  But implying that the yoga teacher is in possession of some kind of mystical knowledge or awareness that can be, in some entirely unmeasurable and unaccountable way be transmitted to the student, is hucksterism.  Friends don’t bullshit their friends.  One can learn a great deal from watching anyone, be they a yoga teacher, a carpenter, or an older gentleman feeding the birds every morning.  If any of these folks have words of wisdom, we can learn from them.  And that is done well when we respect them, love them, and are able to tell them when they are out of line.  When they are our friends.

Santa Claus - a myth we understand inside one we don't

Why do we tell our children the gifts we give them for Christmas come from a man with a beard in the sky?  For two reasons.  One, the myth of Santa Claus creates mystery around the gifts, like another layer of wrapping paper.  Not only is the gift concealed, it comes from someone the child has never met - someone with strange powers of transportation and intuition into choosing (and making) the right gift.

Inevitably, the child finds out Santa Claus does not exist.  Are we just being cruel - delighting in the disillusionment of childhood?  I don't think so.  We recognize on a deeper level that finding out a man in the sky with a beard who does nice things for us (or gives us coal if we are bad) does not actually exist is a good thing -  to discover that the gifts we receive are generated from the raw materials around us, and given to us by people who know us and love us.

But we have to remember one more thing as adults.  Santa Claus is a facsimile of another myth - a larger man in the sky who dispenses blessings or can curse us.  And like a child, the discovery that this is just a story both dispels an illusion and is empowering.  We grow up again.

The larger myth of the man in the sky was told and retold for similar reasons we tell a child Santa Claus exists.  It helps to create a reward/punishment model to keep us in line, and creates a sense of wonder.  However, the sense of wonder at the gifts dispensed from above has had some rather negative side effects.  Primarily, we don't recognize the gifts actually come from the raw materials and people around us.

The raw materials that the gifts are made from include...us.  We too are resources for others, gifts for others.  And when we dissolve, we dissolve back into the elements the gifts of nature are composed of.  We don't go back to the north pole on a flying sled.  This is the bigger reveal that the myth of Santa Claus is meant to prepare us for.

I am a recreational vehicle

Vehicles we make use of can be categorized in this way:

- Daily transportation
- Recreational vehicles.

Daily transportation should fulfill certain needs like dependability, efficiency, comfort and safety.  Because these vehicles are designed for the above, they often are not as fun as a recreational vehicle, but more comfortable to use regularly.

Recreational vehicles are fun, designed often for a specific purpose (like a camper) and do not fulfill the needs of a daily driver.  Because of their design (low fuel efficiency, large and hard to park) they are not comfortable to use long-term.

Frustration can occur when one forget forgets the design limitations of each category.

I own two recreational vehicles - a camper van, and a motorcycle.  I do not own daily transportation.  For that, I rely on walking on my own two feet.

I prefer walking for daily transportation for several reasons.

It is the most dependable form of transportation, and the most adaptable (I can enter a new form of transportation without leaving behind my legs).
I know how to maintain it, cost free.  I do alignment based hatha yoga daily to tune up my body, and I eat pretty well.
It's a very quiet and pleasant way to travel, and others can join me and peel of in their own direction when it suits.

I enjoy my camper and motorcycle because they are unique and fun.  I accept they have limitations and I use them in a way that reflects my acceptance.

When one makes use of a recreational vehicle, there are a few things to keep in mind.

The vehicle should be left in as good or better condition than it came to you in, so others can enjoy it in the same way
Recreational vehicles are not very dependable.  Make sure you have roadside assistance in case of a breakdown, and please do not abandon the vehicle on the road - bring it back to a safe place.

The Burden of Proof

Our beliefs collect around the things we do not know for sure.  I know my hand is on the end of my arm, and I can verify that by asking you if you can see or feel my hand.  This, I will call knowledge.  Belief is what you’d have if I asked you if my hand was on the end of my arm without showing you my arm, and you said yes or no.

I don’t know what I’ll have for breakfast tomorrow, and I have no belief system around my lack of knowledge.  Why not? 1) I don’t always want to know exactly what I’ll have for breakfast - I often enjoy a surprise. 2) I’ve had many breakfasts before, and I can relax into my knowledge of breakfast in some form, based on experience.  I don’t need to believe in breakfast.

Many people would like to know what is going to happen to them after they die, for it is clear death happens to others.  No-one alive can say for sure what will happen to them after they die, because it hasn’t happened yet to them.  They may claim knowledge of a past life, they may believe in reincarnation (some essential energy again taking form, with an imprint or residue of a previous life), they may belief in heaven.  But when asked to prove this knowledge, it turns out to be a belief.  There may be claims to a tradition of belief, and there are billions of people who believe different things about that which they have no knowledge of, or partial knowledge.  If you are not sure about something but are motivated to believe, it is psychologically pacifying to successfully convince others of your view.  

The motivation for belief

What is the motivation to know what happens after we die?  When I look at an apple tree, it has a life and eventually dies.  Seeds are spread and there are more apple trees, but this particular version of an apple tree turns slowly into compost after growth and maturity, then soil, and back to the nurturing aspect of the earth.  I don’t know what the consciousness of the tree is - all I have is my human sensory apparatus, limited as it is in seeing only a certain spectrum of color, only a certain range of sound, only a certain subtlety of touch, taste and smell.  So I don’t know what the tree is perceiving, feeling or thinking.  Does the tree reincarnate?  What difference does it make to me?  None, because I’m not concerned about this particular version of life reincarnating or going to tree heaven.  I’m worried about my version.

Why am I worried

Why am I worried/concerned/curious about what happens to me after I die? Among many reasons,  I may be afraid “I” will cease to exist.  Why is this a problem?  It wasn’t a problem for me that the tree dies.  When one has a full experience - a great meal, great sex, a good nights sleep - satisfaction is present.  We don’t immediately start thinking about the next meal, the next intimacy, the next nap, because we truly enjoyed and were present for what did happen.  I would be motivated to look for a belief about some sort of continuation of “me” after death if I didn’t have a full experience of life, just as you would be concerned about the next meal if you were still hungry after eating too quickly without tasting.

More that this

Mindfulness traditions generally advocate periods of stillness and silence.  One reason for this is to create an environment where the more subtle aspects of our experience can rise out of the noise.  Our senses have evolved to perceive a certain range of experience.  Other animals have senses that are much more keen that ours.  An eagle’s mind may be naturally more still than a humans’ might ever be, his senses more acute and mind more able to perceive than ours. North American indigenous peoples saw the eagle as a brother, and a force of wisdom and balance. Yet, other traditions postulate enlightenment  is possible only for humans; a state of ultimacy which when attained allows the felt interconnection to all of life.  These are a beliefs as well.  Perhaps the reason our felt connection to life is absent to begin with is the particularly human motivation to continue in some form after death - in other words, the inability to surrender to and enjoy life as it is, which includes its dissolution.

Honesty

In honesty, I do not

know what will happen to me after death.  And that is all anyone can say, honestly.  Claims of past lives do not stand up to the kind of proof we would deem necessary to convict someone of a crime.  The traditions that suggest transmigration or rebirth could be correct, or they they could be wrong.  The traditions that suggest our behavior - or the karma we generate in this life - will affect the next life as some sort of postmortem retribution might also be right or wrong.  In any case, without and experience of this I’d be adopting a belief.  To live closer to the felt reality of life, personally I’ve found the less I invest in beliefs about life, the more time I have for real experience - experiences that include introspection, inquiry, silence and meditation.

The burden of proof about any matter lies with those that suggest it is true.  Our legal system in Canada was designed to recognize the folly of human belief, and presumes innocence unless the accused is proven guilty.

The burden of proof about that which we do not presently apprehend lies with those that claim it to be true.  Life is innocent of heaven, hell, transmigration or any other concept, unless proven otherwise.

Three rights make a left, three yes’s make one know

My Japanese friend explained to me that when she was young, her family would, on a Sunday, visit a Christian church, a Buddhist temple and a Shinto shrine.  The visit to each was sincere in its way, but not obsessive or exclusive, clearly.

She understood that it was polite to accept the viewpoint of each philosophy, religion or practice, but that the Sunday visit was more recreational than dogmatic.  No-one became upset if one viewpoint disagreed with another.  No-one got angry, and no-one got killed.

By saying a polite yes to the viewpoints of the Christian, the Buddhist and the Shinto representatives, it was possible to see something from three sides.  If you want to paint a picture of a box, you’ll paint it from the perspective your easel sits at, in relation to the subject you are painting.  If you get up and move to a second and third location, the next two paintings will look different - but they are of the same subject.

The Christian, the Buddhist and the Shinto priest may have preferred she exclude the other two visits.  But by saying a polite “yes” to all three, she not only expanded her perspective, she also said a polite “no” to the blindness of a singular perspective.

The absence of romance

Romance means a narrative - a story.  Instead of “I ate a tuna sandwich”, we might say, “I savored a delicious layered lunchtime retreat from hunger”.  Romance allows us to savor, to create meaning, to make sense and beauty from direct experience.

In relationship, romance is also a story.  It is our projection, our hopes and expectations of another.  It is not direct experience.  Because it is a story, experience eventually dissolves the story; sometimes into something very beautiful and real, sometimes into the knowledge that the story was more fun than the reality.

Practices that increase awareness, or life experience itself, begin to dissolve even the beginning of romance.  Like any projection of the mind or desire of the body, it is possible to become aware of the creation of a narrative right away.

When this awareness begins to arise as a stable state, it becomes very difficult to sustain a story instead of direct experience.  The movie becomes less and less believable.  Then what may happen in the future, how much the other holds you in high regard, and promises made begin to lose the power of truth.  What is left is direct experience of the other.

Often, the other is seen as the source of love, which is why they seem so attractive.  Love though, is not the emotional response to desire or the need to make permanent a state of temporary happiness.  Love is the field of awareness in which the story of romance is created.  When this recognition happens, romance loses its power like the craving for sugar does when we are truly nourished.

Waking into the field of awareness that is absolutely supportive of your life and has no need for meaning or story to be attached dissolves the addictive need for romance, for romance was the proxy for the field of loving awareness itself.

Hatha yoga is the process of squeezing out the dissonance from the body

You are at a party and make a statement.  Someone disagrees with you and you feel small.  There is no time to get to the bottom of why you feel small - the chain of symptoms is to long, so you have another drink and “forget about it” until later.  Later, with your sweetie, you mention what happened at the party and the emotion percolates  again to the surface.  Your sweetie says something like “Well, you are awesome and so and so is an idiot anyway...." and you feel better.  For now.

What has happened is a chain of suppression.  You would have liked to have been valued and agreed with but instead the opposite happened.  The energy from that experience was then stored in the tissues of the body via a process of first thought - light and changeable - becoming emotion - more physical and felt for longer - and finally the body - some perhaps almost invisible, contraction. 

Then you practice hatha yoga and all parts of the body - at ease and contracted bits - are pulling and pushing together, and the contracted bits that holds the energy of your exchange at the party are now supported - really supported- by all your other bits and the emotion is released.  You laugh at yourself, or cry.  Either way, the contraction is squeezed out and you rest after your practice.

It is a simple and amazing process.  When you go to a party next time and someone disagrees with you, you can watch the process happen.  No need to change it.

Is it possible to create an objective standard of competency for yoga teachers?

The term yoga is extremely broad and contains many disciplines, philosophies and practices.  Here are just a few:

Yoga:

• Meditation
• Pranayama
• Mindfulness
• Chanting
• Self-inquiry
• Renouncing the distractions of life
• Engaging with life with awareness

Many of these subcategories cannot be viewed objectively; one cannot watch someone meditate and decide if it is working for them, for instance.  So the answer to the question “Can you create objective standards for observing effective meditation?” would be no.

However

Some things in life can be viewed in a relatively objective way.  For instance:

Is this shape round?

The answer is Yes

How is it that we can all agree the shape above is round?  Is it because we have all been indoctrinated with a standardized, hierarchal way of thinking and really, there is no one “round”?

No.

We agree the shape is round because the definition of a circle is that it is a round plane figure whose boundary (the circumference) consists of points equidistant from a fixed point (the center).

So

We can determine the shape is round by measuring it with instruments, or less formally by looking at it and saying: “That’s pretty round” or “That’s pretty round, man”.

So then

If we reduce our question about yoga to “Can a posture be observed for its effectiveness?”  Then we might be able to apply objective standards.

First

We would need to agree that doing a pose has some benefits, and that those benefits are increased as the form of the pose moves toward its definition.

For instance

If we define the posture Tadasana (Mountain pose) as a standing pose in which the legs are straight, the spine is erect and the arms are alongside the body, then the further away from that definition the pose is, the less effective it will be as Tadasana

For example, if you are sitting in a chair with a round spine and your feet are not bearing any weight, we could say that this is not an effective form of Tadasana.

If you agree with this so far, then you agree that objective standards for postures can be created.

If you agree with the last statement, then you may agree that there is a way to teach someone how to observe, refine and assist a pose to increase its effectiveness, and therefore, it is possible to create objective standards of competency for teachers of asana - postures.

If you do agree, and you are interested in becoming a yoga teacher and meeting objective standards of competency, please contact me.

Moving on

The abandoned bulldozer from the 1930's sits near the water by the crumbling lime kiln.  Its paint is flaking, but the tracks have not entirely corroded even after all this time.  The 'dozer is one of dozens of machines left behind when the industry here dried up.  When it was in use, the bulldozer was regularly maintained, lubricated and even washed.  Now it has become part of the landscape, visible from a distance as a silhouette on this misty day.

I walk past this machine every day.  Today, without really thinking why, I approached the 'dozer and put my hands on the large steel blade that had moved so much earth.  It felt cold, and steady.  I am not a tree-hugger, but I have hugged trees.  It occurred to me that possibly no-one had touched this machine with this seemingly unwarranted attempt at empathy before, and I could feel that recognition move through my skin.

When its utility was at an end, this machine was left behind.  To many, it is a symbol of our recklessness and greed - a machine designed to level the earth and remove whatever is in its way.  But this machine was built, one bolt at a time.  Human ingenuity created it, and it is not the bulldozer's fault we like to think we have risen above our past.

We do walk away from people and things that don't serve any longer.  People have walked away from me and you when our utility diminished in their eyes.  Onward and upward we have moved, sometimes looking back with embarrassment at the things that brought us to the next place.  But it was never the next place that encouraged retrospection.  Here today, with my hands on this machine that is not ever going to go anywhere again I begin to feel...an integration.  The sickening feeling of having looked within myself for resources I can exploit, that others may find useful...to quantify my qualities.  It is not something I can do with the same enthusiasm any longer.

I won't try to argue for the sentience of a machine.  But I do feel something in the armour of its blade, and a sense of nostalgia sitting in its seat, looking at the old dials and gauges.  This machine is useless now.  So I just sat with it for no reason, as I did as kid with the old truck in our yard, looking at the dials, pressing the pedals, on a misty day by the water in an abandoned lime quarry.

YogaGlo patent - how far is too far?

The recent granting of a patent to Yogaglo - a business that offers online yoga classes - has created some controversy.  To yoga folk, it seems that protecting a certain way of offering yoga is at odds with the general idea of yoga - union, not separation.  Some critics of the patent state that this time it has “gone too far” - that although they see value in intellectual property rights, Yogaglo has overstepped, in some way.

The core issue to me not whether Yogaglo has gone too far, because the answer to that  question simply depends on where your interests lie.  The core issue to me is not whether  intellectual property is a good idea, but whether the idea of property at all is a good idea.  

We can trace the idea of property back to the agricultural revolution approximately 10,000 years ago.  Prior to this, humans were mostly nomadic hunters and gatherers.  Tribal societies did not have an idea of property in the sense of owning land.  Rather, as was explained to me by a historian friend of mine, many of the nomadic peoples of what we now call Canada had an idea of - “centers of gravity” - that hunting grounds extended out from oneself in a diminishing gravitational field, so that the land was not owned in perpetuity by anyone, but that individual requirements for nourishment were respected.  This wonderful idea of course was no longer possible to implement after my ancestors in Canada appropriated the land from the indigenous peoples.

It is not clear whether humans went from hunting and collecting to farming in one great movement, or whether it was a slow process.  When you walk through the forest collecting food, there I feel  an innate sense of gratitude and wonder at the abundance given us.  Industrial farming now tries to harvest as much as possible from land that has fences around it to protect it, and even the seeds - life itself - are often owned.  There seems to be no recognition of the gift of life here - only expectation.  That is one result of property and ownership.

It might help to pause ask the question “In what ways has ownership been a benefit to mankind?”  Has it been a benefit to:

• Women?
• Slaves?
• The earth?
• Animals?
• Creativity?
• Freedom?

How many lives have been lost through the final step of nationalistic expansion?  Is war not a tool to gain more property?

The wonderful technology of yoga was created before the idea of formal intellectual property rights existed.  Yoga cross-fertilized itself through the free sharing of ideas, and philosophies became stronger for it.  We still have the names and works of the sages responsible for some of the articulations of yoga, and we can thank them in our hearts.   I wonder where we’d be today if Shankara was not able to borrow and re-organize ideas from earlier sages for fear of being sued?  Copyright - literally the right to copy - only came into being after the invention of the printing press, and copyright was limited then to just a few years.  That has changed radically now.  You can make a good living as a lawyer today buying the rights to patents and then suing those who might infringe on those patents in their creation of something new.

So, many of us are infuriated at this next step into ownership Yogaglo has taken.  But it is just another step in a long journey into separation.  As the author and  speaker Charles Eisenstein has pointed out -When you no longer look around you and can say “This is me!” - you are motivated to say “This is mine”.

Life feeds on life

You eat breakfast, and breakfast becomes you - the food turns into tissue.  Your breakfast fed on something too, before you ate it and it became you.  Life feeds on life.  Vegetarians may want to reduce the harm they cause sentient beings by not eating animals - a noble desire. Vegans take it further.  But plants too, are sentient.  Some would suggest not eating plants either, or only eating the food that drops from a living plant. We could follow this non - harming scheme to a logical conclusion, in which we stop eating anything or doing any harm.  We would then die ourselves.  Starvation is a form of suffering too, so by not wanting to cause any harm we still cause harm.  Even turning on a light is adversely affecting the planet and the things living on it.  As is updating your status on Facebook.

Every living thing is eventual compost for something new, and that eventual compost is inherent in the thing that is new.  This is true of things that live and grow, and it seems true of more subtle things, like a way of living, thinking or acting.  New ideas move through phases of germination, immaturity, maturity and eventually they become fodder for yet another idea.  

The desire to reduce harm by not eating farmed animals is wonderful.  We could look at alternative farmed foods, or turn to foraging instead of farmed foods.  But we too, are farmed animals.  We are raised in a controlled environment, only able to live and move in certain areas.  We have also been corralled into certain ways of thinking, that once accepted by most seem to be truth.  Ideas like “Marriage is natural”, “There is an afterlife”, “There are universal moral truths”.  So to a certain degree, many can only conceptualize within the confines of accepted truths.  If those truths are incorrect, or if there are no universal truths, it seems the first order of business would be to find out why we think the way we think rather than acting on thinking that may be incorrect.

It is difficult to think objectively when vested interest is present.  If I identify myself as a yoga teacher, I will probably advocate yoga.  I make my living teaching yoga, so this seems natural.  But there are times when my vested interests influence my objectivity.  It may be true that another form of exercise or mindful work would be better for a potential student, but not having much familiarity with other disciplines, I advocate yoga instead.  I am not being entirely objective, in that case. 

If I identify as a vegetarian, I will tend to defend vegetarianism.  When I look through articles on diet, I may unconsciously gravitate to those articles that support my beliefs about diet.  I may even argue against another point of view before understanding that point of view, or its benefits, or the vested interest that point of view may be coming from.

Perhaps a more objective and more helpful approach would be to admit:

1. We have vested interests
2. What those interests are
3. How those interests might affect our objectivity
4. That we really don’t know it all and we may very well change our minds, ‘cause it has happened before.  

Our current currency crisis

We may be nearing the end of cycle of a set of values and expectations that have created the world we inhabit.  There is a lot of talk about what money is, what value it is based on, and the relevance of alternative currencies as an option to the debt-based money system that has created the necessity to see everything as a potential resource to be exploited.

Many of us understand gold to have “intrinsic” value.  Hence the gold standard as a touchstone of value.  Gold is a precious metal, it can be used to make beautiful jewelry, it is portable and relatively scarce.  These attributes place it well as a metal of high value.  The economist and gold trader Peter Schiff would agree.  But before we go too far in this direction, it might help to ask the question “what is value?”.  

Value creates a graph of desirability. Things of high value would cost more than things of low value.  But we mean value to a human being.  A new Ipad is valuable to most human beings, but not to dogs, and not to humans too old to understand how to use one.

There are collectors of rare things like ancient books who find great value in something others may overlook.  So when we assign value, we must look at what most people (not dogs or cats) find most valuable most of the time.  So value is a best guess, an average.

What is most valuable to most humans most of the time?  I would say things that promote survival and happiness.  Most humans want to live, and to live we all have a shared need in certain essentials.  This also depends on the circumstances of each human.  Someone addicted to cigarettes might value a pack over human contact.  Someone suffering from a painful and incurable disease might value a painless death over all else.  There are many variables, but in general, value is found in:

• Air
• Water
• Sleep
• Food
• Warmth
• Human contact
• Love
• A sense of being valuable

If you put 100 people in a large locked warehouse for the rest of their lives with only these things or the possible means to attain them scattered around, as well as a pile of gold, the people would not gravitate to the gold.  In fact, the gold facilitates none of what is essential to life.  So gold is not intrinsically valuable like water or air.  It is an agreement of value - an agreement that has persisted for a very long time to be sure, but a symbol of value nonetheless.

After some time, years perhaps, these 100 people might seek out raw materials to make art from, and at that point the gold would become more interesting and beautiful things made from gold  - things that could adorn someone to make them more beautiful - might attain value.  Things like water, food and a bed to sleep in might be occasionally traded for gold.  But gold is not intrinsically valuable - it is only valuable in a certain context - that of a society that has enough of the essentials necessary to live comfortably and has extra to allot to something of beauty.  But even then value must be added to the gold in the form of artistry - no one would just carry a gold brick around to look more beautiful.

Intrinsic means to “belong naturally”.  So when we speak of intrinsic value, we mean value that belongs naturally - not value that is added to or created.  Intrinsic value depends on the relationship between that which is valued, and the valuer in order to assign a specific value.  So “intrinsic” requires relationship as well as the qualities of the thing of value.

We are getting down to the true meaning of intrinsic.  Gold, money, jewelry or even the next breath would not have any value if it were not an event held in our awareness.  If I were in a coma, my last breath would not be an event I was aware of.  The Mona Lisa would have no value in the land of the blind.  Bach’s work holds not beauty to the deaf.  Gold is only valuable if others hold the agreement - the awareness - that has a certain value.

So it is awareness itself that holds the highest value, and it is an intrinsic value because awareness is aware - that is its fundamental attribute, one that cannot be removed and does not rely on opinion or agreement.  Even death may not affect awareness itself.  This puts us in an interesting position when offering one’s gift, because your gift, as a form of awareness, is more valuable than money or gold. However, others may not see the value of your gift even when it is ready to be shared, for value to them may still mean only money, gold or things that facilitate survival.

The quip “Do what you love and the money will follow” assumes money is inherently valuable, and the term “love” implies “do that which is full of awareness”.  While it is true there has historically been a correlation between how beautiful (full of awareness) something is and how much it costs, this correlation is becoming more and more tenuous as we move toward the end of our collective agreement that money has value.  Currencies have lost all of their value before, and it will very likely happen again - this time to the currency we are using.

Your gift has inherent value.  Your ability to see the beauty in another and explain what you see to them in terms they understand and can accept is valuable.  Your capacity to listen to someone work through a painful or joyful event and through this process become more aware and mature in their understanding is valuable.  The ability to sit with yourself comfortably without becoming so uneasy with arising memories and emotions you are driven to distract yourself by shopping for things you don’t need, made by someone who does not want to be making what your are buying, brought to you by someone who doesn’t want to drive the truck that brought it there,  sold to you by a cashier who doesn’t want to be there but must, to pay for the things she bought that she doesn’t need....is valuable.  The gifts of awareness lie outside the bounds of what our ancestors may have agreed is valuable.

Resolutions

I am a planner.  I like to know what is going to happen, and I think I’ve got a pretty strong “work ethic”.  But something has changed, and it has been an incremental change, and an invisible one.  I’m probably more adept at what I do to “make a living” than ever before, and at a stage in my life where our culture tells me I should be making preparations for eventual retirement.  Storing away things like money, not taking too many chances.  This is starting to feel more and more wrong.  Even though I’m healthy and strong, my eventual dissolution is on the horizon, and there is nothing I can do about that.  So it seems strange to pretend I should be accumulating when I’m actually dissolving.  This is all conceptual stuff, but what’s happening in me is more than thoughts.

When I allow nothing to happen - no planning, no attempts to coerce the world around me to bend to my desires, no persuading people to do what I think is good for them and also good for me, I experience spaciousness.  It is as if the organs in my body relax.  When I begin to do what I’ve done pretty much my whole life - organize my reality to my own benefit - I experience an uncomfortable tension.  I realize now this tension was always there, and only because of its absence have I recognized it was there.  

I’ve used the same approach to people I’m attracted to.  To see them as some kind of resource that will add to my life.  Of course there are many layers of relationship and there have been many moments of spaciousness even within this way of relating, but it has been in spite of rather than because of it.  The model I have unconsciously been following has never really worked, probably attracted those that were motivated in the same way, and has always ended.

There is something more spacious, more comfortable and real than what I’ve been doing.  I know this in my heart, and I know I’m not the only one to yearn for something more expansive, a life that follows the rhythms of nature rather than a cultivation and control of my nature.  I don’t have an answer, or a philosophy, or a path for this, because all those things imply a final destination that just doesn’t seem to be there.

So for now I’ll try to stay in the spaciousness.  Not because it will get me what I want, not because others should do it to.  Just because it feels pretty good.

Counting things

How to count trees?  What is a tree?  If the definition of tree includes not just what we can see above ground but the soil, roots, relationships both linear and subtle, communication between one tree and another, then when we add another tree, it shares the sun, the water in the soil, the relationships - it does not exist separately.  The trees don’t have an external environment.  Even humans are part of the trees interconnectivity.  

We humans don’t generally feel this.  The source, unity, or heaven we are looking for and have placed in the heavens or somewhere geographically or theoretically away from us is in fact what we refer to as our environment.  However, very literally the earth I walk on is the earth you walk on.  The sun that shines on me shines on you.  Because of our procreative nature we would not exist without each other.  So, referring to what surrounds us as our “environment” says two things.  “My environment”. “My” - that which is not me, that I own or control.  “Environment” - That which surrounds me.  An abstraction.

So when we “count things”, when we quantify, we must first assume the things to be counted are fundamentally separate from one another, or counting would be impossible.    This assumes a separate environment from the counter, as well.  The counter is counting, the counter is not the counted.  In an abstraction like mathematics with clear logical boundaries, 1+1= 2.  In relationships between living beings, as Dr. Douglas Brooks so wonderfully points out, 1+1= 3 - the third element being the relationship between the two things counted. 

If a thing is separate from you, you can choose to relate or not to relate to it.  It is an external.  Relating to it may or may not be in your interest.  Your primary interest, the one that is unspoken and assumed, is in general, you want to continue to live.  So, a sandwich is seen as part of your environment, and so you eat it because it is in your interest.  If you buy the sandwich with money, it is “your” sandwich.  If you make the sandwich from the raw ingredients that surround you - wheat, cheese, tomatoes, possibly a pig -  then it too becomes “your” sandwich.  When you digest the sandwich completely and excrete the “waste” - it is also your waste.  Where is all your poo now?  It is back in "your environment".  It is in the oceans, it is in the soil.  It is becoming a tomato you might again call “yours”.  Is there then an external environment, or just an mental abstraction we agree on?

If a tiger eats you, he must see you as not him.  You also must do this to that which you’d like to eat.  You’d eat a sandwich and even salivate at the thought of eating a BLT, but you could not eat your own living hand, even if you tried to.  Your hand is different than your arm and far from your mouth, but the felt fundamental connection to the rest of you is undeniable.  Your feeling motivates your action, both in the eating of the BLT and in not eating your own hand.  Aron Ralston, the hiker who’s story of being trapped in a canyon, his arm pinned by a boulder, eventually freed himself by breaking off his own hand.  It took him 5 days to realize he could do this.  In his telling of the event, Ralston says that eventually he came to see his trapped hand as an impediment to his survival, something dying and “other” than him.  He was able then to summon the courage to break the radius and ulna bones of his arm and escape.  Ralston saw his trapped hand as separate, and that allowed him to continue to live.

We quantify and separate for good reasons.  This article is not a moral objection to this, simply an illustration of it.  But we often forget that quantification is just an abstraction -  just a tool to allow us to behave in ways that can be beneficial to our interests.  Now that there is almost nothing left of “environment” to make use of, and there are billions and billions of “me”, we may be forced to see the unity underlying the differences.

Keep the cow and add the cat.

When I warm up on the mat

I do the cow, and then the cat.

My spine gets curved and then goes flat.

How to keep the cow, and add the cat?

Cow, you sacred beast with eyes

Large and lumbering, and yes, the flies.

Opportunistic is the cat

Who’s just around for treats and pats

Cow so giving, cat so rude

One give milk, one just eats food.

To find a balance, tit for tat.

How to keep the cow, and add the cat?

One or the other’s not the way

A bit of both, but not a grey

Black and white contrasting...how?

Flowing, like the symbol of the Tao.

So when I warm up on the mat

I do the cow, and then the cat

A little this, then more of that

I keep the cow and add the cat.