SEPTEMBER 29,  2009

To fulfill my promise to myself to write a minimum of three blog entries a month, I have at least begun the third one before the month is over. I may not complete it this month, but a beginning is made and I am content with myself. It is a fine line I must tread between fulfilling my promise to myself and you without flagellating myself over a few lapses here and there. About treading fine lines . . . I am impressed by high wire acts. Who was that famous artist who not only walked on a wire above the Niagra falls but stopped in the middle to cook himself an omelet and eat it, too? (Please fill in if you remember and know). To get into another digression, I think psychically at least, living well, consciously, with joy, is a high wire act between two abysses. The wonderful thing about metaphors is that though they are indispensable for excavating and conveying truth, they can be abandoned when they no longer serve: unlike the physical feat, here we can and do fall off and away, but can get back on without too much damage if we realize it in time and remember to get back on.

Remember. Re member. Ah, what a marvelous and essential digression this would be! But that is another blog. I’ll wind up this digression with just a brief clip: Memory is the key to wisdom. In Norse mythology, Memir (from whom the word ‘memory comes’), is the giant who guards the well of wisdom. Wotan, or Odin, the primary Norse god, has to give up one eye in order to drink from it. It is a great myth and metaphor which I will pick up again. In Hindu philosophy, “smriti, simran,” words meaning ‘to remember,’ are also synonyms for prayer; when we fall off the wire we have to remember to get back on; when we are mired in despair and darkness, we need to remember light, and presto, it is present. Memory evokes, conjures, recreates, creates. Remember the famous ring of a Chinese emperor (who was it? Please fill in if you know and remember) who told his advisor: give me something that will make me happy when I’m sad, and sad when I am happy. And the advisor gave him a jade ring with the following words inscribed on it to aid his memory: This, too, shall pass. Memory, then, is the key to wisdom. Remember that. It is the only thing that can span the abyss of duality.

But I must explain why I have not written here for so long. The first reason was a slight sense of discouragement – Nobody is reading my blog! What’s the point? I have constantly to fight this monster, Discouragement. It saps my courage to continue. But as soon as I call ‘discouragement’ a ‘monster,’ mythologize it, I can deal with it. It becomes tangible and elicits my hero self. I am reminded that it must be fought. And there are several weapons in my psychic arsenal to aid me in this battle. The very first is the thought: I cannot, will not, absolutely refuse to, think in terms of failure or success till a year has passed. And even after that deadline I hope I will be able to extend the pact with myself for another year, not in the hope of gathering an audience (though that hope is always there,) but because, honestly, I enjoy writing here. It’s like chewing the fat with myself (for those who don’t know the expression, it means talking, generally with a friend, about this and that). My social energy is limited but I do have the human need to get nourishment from this fat. I chew the fat of words with myself.

No, this bog is not complete. There is so much I want to say, to myself, to you, but it will have to wait. Maybe not for long, I hope, but for now. Part of the pleasure of writing here is that other than a self imposed discipline, I don’t have to conform to any rules. I tend to be so very organized and anal about things that I have resolved, here at least, to free myself a bit from well-made writing. Just a little wave, a drift, a meander, will do.

No Comments »

I’m going to do another post because this is a very busy month for me and I want to make sure I fulfill my promise to you and above all, to myself. As I write this I wonder, as a footnote to my last entry, whether this — making a promise to oneself and keeping it – isn’t another technique to deal with procrastination. Loyalty to oneself must precede loyalty to another, or rather, loyalty to oneself is a prerequisite for loyalty to another. It sounds true to me. I know from my own experience that every time I have sacrificed my loyalty to myself I have suffered. I suppose another way to say this is that one’s primary imperative is to stay centered in oneself, to know what your own truth is, and radiate out from it.

Some might call me, mistakenly, I believe, ‘selfish.’ I have known many people who make others their center and find themselves becoming unhappy and lost. Don’t get me wrong. There are many areas and many situations when you have to make another more important than yourself, when you have to put your own needs in abeyance and focus on another. I think we all know what these situations are. And we all know when this is called for, when our humanness demands it. But I know people who place their centers in others and I know this doesn’t work because they are not happy people. They complain a lot, call others ungrateful, even become bitter and withdrawn. If you are being kept from something you want to do, must do, by others, then you have no one to blame but yourself. Taking the blame, recognizing the situation, and changing it, is one step in the right direction.

This is a busy month for me because on the fifteenth of this month is the launch of my new book, PILGIMAGE TO PARADISE. This wouldn’t be a big deal if New Delhi wasn’t a two day journey by car from where Payson (my husband; meet him. I will be speaking of him, too!) and I live in a very remote region of the Himalayas in India. Even that wouldn’t be a big deal if we weren’t battening down the hatches of our home here to leave for the USA, where we live for six months out of every year. There is a lot to do before we leave, packing and planning, and more. Yesterday, for example, I organized the cleaning of the entire pantry, including emptying and washing and drying the storage jars, something that hasn’t been done in over six years, when we finished making this house and moving into it. We have to store stuff because we pack it in from the city (Chandigarh, 8 hours away by car; or Kullu, two hours away, but not everything is available here). We are also busy because Payson’s exhibition of his latest artwork, called Dark Forest, is going to be happening concurrently in Delhi at the American Center. Check out his work at www.energylandscapes.com.

So you see, this is no time to procrastinate (though one can do it all in an easy tempo). The sword of time hangs over our heads. Perhaps this image could serve as another technique to get going!

HAVE YOU OBSERVED TODAY?

No Comments »

One thing that’s happened to me due to falling into a habit of resting whenever I need to – this is harder to do than speak of – is that tasks take longer to complete. The follow up is a little slow. Instead of doing it yesterday – as I was won’t to do – I do it the day, day after tomorrow. Yes, procrastination is, I have come to realize, not the enemy I had always thought it was, but a friend. Okay, I know, I know, everything is relative, relevant only from the perspective and the angle that you are coming from. For those whose bane is procrastination, this idea won’t do (See blow).  It would be too large a shoe for the foot that needs to get off its ass and begin its journey with vigor and vim. But for me procrastination is a boon. I was too much in control, too on top of things. And whenever I lapsed, I felt out of control and chastised myself for it. Deviations were rare and I had become a machine that thought it was in control. Or rather, wanted to be entirely in control, at least as far as time was concerned. Thank the universe that things we want are not always given to us, for in that lacuna between wanting and not getting lies our salvation.

For me procrastinating has become the space/ time in which God works. Jallaludin Rumi, whose stories I have recreated in my new book, PILGRIMAGE TO PARADISE, SUFI TALES FROM RUMI (actually this is the Penguin India title; The Mandala, USA, one is RUMI’S TALES FROM THE SILK ROAD, A PILGRIMAGE TO PARADSIE) says:

Believers are the laziest folk

in the two worlds,

because they get their harvest

without plowing

since god is working for them.

• • • MATHNAWI, VI, 4886

I have often found that by procrastinating, things I thought I needed to do didn’t need to get done, anyway. This has happened often enough for me to take is as evidence that I am on the right track. If your soul is rebelling against doing something, trust it. But if you feel that procrastinating is something your soul is rebelling against – you always know when you are feeling all clogged up and self-flagellatory (there’s no such word) at the thought of something not done, then I have a wonderful technique to help you out.

Judy Bernstein wrote in response to my previous blog: “I’m a big failure at rest, and I’m eager for your one on procrastination, wondering if you’ll find me a cure or validate it. I’m wondering how I can fail at rest and succeed with procrastination at the same time, they seem in opposition to each other!”

First it is important to know why YOU procrastinate. I know why I do it: I have exaggerated ideas of how much I should get done ALL AT ONCE, how PERFECT it should be when I begin, HOW LONG I should

work on it, etc, that I intimidate myself into inaction. But I have found that when I am procrastinating (beyond fulfilling a need to rest), a simple thought gets me going. I tell myself, I will only work on it for five or ten minutes, max. I won’t expect myself to get it done all at once, or expect that it will be brilliant, I will simply do it, doodle and scribble and get started with some incoherent statements. This resolution to underachieve always puts me in a spirit of relaxation and play. Instead of thinking of it as work, I think of it as play. And over and over again, this technique has worked for me.

I think, also, that several other factors are at play with procrastination, the primary one being lack of trust in oneself and in the universe. Perhaps my next entry shall be on that.

When we trust, things happen magically. This does not at all mean that we don’t work for them in whatever way we can, but that our work becomes something we do not for our self-aggrandizement, but worship. One has to do one’s due diligence, of course. It’s not what one does but HOW one does it that becomes the key here. Guru Nanak , the first Guru of the Sikhs, is big on ‘Sehaj.’ Easy. I like easy. Things are hard only when

• we are supposed to quit doing it (like me and my teaching job)
• we are doing it with the wrong attitude
• we are striving too hard
• the ego is at the helm, steering the course into ways we WANT to go, instead of the way we need to go.

To get at the truth of yourself, you have to know yourself. And you can know yourself (if that is ever entirely possible – it has been the endeavor of yogis and philosophers of all ages) if you look at yourself honestly. Ask yourself: how important is it for me to do this thing that I am not doing? Am I meant to do this? Can I live with myself without doing it? Can I live without doing it? Can I live happily without doing it? Am I really and truly meant to be doing something else? Do I think I should be doing it because that is what others do? Because that is what others want me to do? Why should I be doing it? How miserable do I want to be? How happy do I want to be? Where does my bliss lie?

HAVE YOU OBSERVED TODAY?

No Comments »