Morning Chai

I have a simple ritual every morning of making a pot of Kashmiri chai. I love this tea ritual, the fragrance of the cardamom and cinnamon, the comforting warmth of the mug in my hand. This is especially welcome today as it is cold and damp outside, so I am appreciating the penetrating effects of this simple act. 

I mention this because this innocent past time started out more or less as a comforting habit, something I would do every morning without really thinking about it. But it has evolved to become a cherished moment of equanimity and gentle focus on the present--a habit that grounds and sustains me as I start my day. 

Habits mould and shape us, so it is important to consider what effect they may be having. The discovery of my habit-turned-ritual was the result of happy accident, but I believe it may be better to be a little more deliberate, as a ritual is, essentially, a particular kind of habit, one that should be specially designed to nourish and sustain us. So, what makes a good ritual? 

A ritual should have the effect of rooting us in the present moment, of eliciting a state of psychological warmth, and peacefulness. It should be simple. It can be long or short, but whatever the length, that should be a time of focused attention and awareness on whatever we are doing in the moment we are in. 

Rituals help keep us centered and on track. They embody our core values, and aid in restoring our natural vitality. They are a sort of silent prayer, a time to commune with the universe and acknowledge the mystery that life is. 

I have a simple ritual...what is yours?

Anger Burns It All Clean

"Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean." -- Maya Angelou

I think anyone who has ever been disappointed by life, traumatized or otherwise mistreated, will have felt their anger rise, and, particularly if she is a woman, may have experienced the additional injury of having been condemned for any expression of that anger. 

Maya Angelou makes an apt point, however, in clarifying that the energy that anger is, serves a necessary and useful purpose.

The beauty of anger is that it alerts us to the fact that a violation of some kind has taken place, whether that violation is physical, verbal, mental or emotional is hardly the point. The salient point is that a boundary has been crossed, a sacred boundary, if you will, that has aided in the creation of a challenging situation that requires our attention and care.

If the content of anger is denied, suppressed, ignored, infantilized or the significance and legitimacy of it otherwise diminished and minimized, we run the risk of having it morph into its nemesis--bitterness. That is where all the trouble lies, when we fail to acknowledge, address the circumstances that lead to the presence of anger in the first place.

Managing angry feelings is a tricky business though. We don't want to use the presence of angry feelings to justify lashing out at people in reaction to our injury. We must hold those feelings, feel those feelings, to see what they may reveal about both ourselves and the situation at hand, in order that we might respond with intelligence and heart, to help heal the effects of the breach. 

This may mean confronting someone or it may require withdrawal, every situation is unique in this regard. I only mean to point out that angry feelings need to be carefully tended to and not opportunistically used as justification for continuing the legacy of mistreatment by which the injury took place to begin with.

The idea is more to be empowered by the energy of anger, funnelling it in directions that foster love and care and attention, that aid in the healing of our own heart and soul, so that we might be stronger, more courageous and loving in future--that we might learn something from the experience that renders us wiser and that elevates our actions.

I like the idea of our anger burning us all clean, anger as a purifier of the heart. Anger is misunderstood in our society and so I am glad that Maya Angelou has presented it in such a way as to make us aware of its virtue. 

Anger isn't the problem, therefore, bitterness is--the willful cultivation of one's anger such that it presents false images which provide further fuel resulting in the warping, twisting and fixating that characterize it. Clearly, that is not where we want to head.

Opening our hearts and minds, having the courage to face inwardly the dark places in our own being, will go far in helping us to understand the nature of the phenomena in others that sometimes leads people to violate sacred boundaries that result in such injury. 

There is hope, if we allow anger to do its work on us, to temper us in the same way that a metal blade is tempered and made stronger through immersion in fire. We merely need to respect the power of anger, to handle it with care.

Look Around - It's All Sacred

"The Universe is sacred. You cannot improve it. If you try to change it, you will ruin it. If you try to hold it, you will lose it."

--Lao-tzu

I like this quote because it reminds me that all life is sacred. As part of the universe this means our lives are sacred and I think sometimes that we forget this, or live in such a way that this dimension of our lives is all but invisible.

But what would our lives look like if we lived with a conscious awareness of this sacredness? 

The Oxford English Dictionary links the word sacred with 'holy'. My thesaurus goes further to make connections with words such as 'revered', 'inviolable' and 'sacrosanct'. My own sense of sacred relates directly to the word 'respect' which I think all the above words imply in one way or another.

If we were to treat our lives, and by extension the lives of others, as though they were sacred and worthy of our respect and reverence, perhaps (as an example) the anxious scripts encouraging us to alter the colour of our hair or the shape of our bodies in the name of beauty and acceptability would be re-examined.

Beauty is understood and expressed in very diverse ways in cultures around the world revealing our perceptions of beauty to be very malleable. Having the option, why not become curious about the possibility that beauty is inherent, not something that we have to turn ourselves inside out to achieve?

Playing with colour, shape and design is one thing, enslaving ourselves to rigid definitions of beauty that fail to respect its diversity is another.

We could suspend our judgments of others and become a little more curious and, perhaps, even inspired instead.

If we honour the sacredness of our lives, this may mean a gentler, less abusive approach to dressing and making ourselves up in the morning. It may entail a re-examination of the values driving current behaviour that are making us sick with stress. It may also mean treading a little more lightly on the earth.

I think we need to loosen our grip on life a little. I think we need to let it move and flow, and try to move and flow with it.

Isn't it a sacred dance really?

When we try to control things, we reveal that we think we have a better idea about how the universe should be and isn't. Lao-tzu seems to say this is a mistaken notion, one that creates as many problems as it hopes to solve.

All life is sacred. Yours, mine, the bum on the street, the drunk on the corner, the trees on the mountainside.

The compartmentalization of sacredness only succeeds in creating an artificial division that robs us, of the reverence and respect that every life requires and is inherently worthy of.

Live like the goddess you are!

It's all sacred.

Doing No Harm

'Do no harm' is a well-known tenant of Eastern philosophy, but I hadn't thought about the deeper implications of this piece of advice till I came across this thought provoking quote by Thomas Merton:

"To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times."

A powerful statement if there ever was one! I never really considered the pressure to 'be all things to all people' a sort of violence, but it makes sense. I suppose we get so used to assuming these burdens that we stop questioning whether and to what degree they are really ours to assume.

 Do we not also have a responsibility to ourselves, to create a sane existence for ourselves which would negate the surrender to excessive commitments and projects? 

I don't think it is a coincidence that we find ourselves relating to others, with a certain degree of pride, how very busy we are, which, by extension, we may believe is evidence of how important we are as well. 

But whose values are at work here? Who in their right mind would sanction a world in which the dominant ideology forced the bulk of the populace to threaten their own health and well-being in the name of the so-called greater good? 

What sort of values place the work ethic above all other ethical concerns, like genuine concern for the well-being of all?

I like to be engaged in meaningful endeavours that remunerate me, that allow me to live a reasonably comfortable existence, but I also value down-time. I make sure that there are large, unstructured gaps in my life where there is no agenda, where whatever needs to happen happens. This may be a time to read, or write, or meditate, go for a walk...anything really, but it is free-form, spontaneous. 

Doing nothing, being lazy in the best sense, is as necessary for a sane and healthy life as engagement in meaningful forms of work.

If we are truly to do no harm we need to look deeply and sincerely into what it means to take real care, to treat our lives as though our optimal functioning and happiness were not a luxury, but a necessity. 

When we don't say no, when we fail to draw appropriate boundaries for fear of disappointing or incurring the resentment and anger of others, we run the risk of opening the door to all kinds of mental and emotional violations with pernicious physical ramifications.

Taking responsibility for our lives is important, reaching out to be of service to others is also important, but this must not turn into 'being all things to all people.' 

If we believe in being good custodians of body mind and soul, we will need to practice saying 'no'. 

Remember, always move in directions that radiate psychological warmth and a sense of ease. 

Do no harm.