Global Connections

I’m a scientist by temperament and by training. For many years, I worked as a biologist in a pharmaceutical company. Our research department had a sister department located in Japan. Because of this partnership, our lab had a series of visiting scientists from Japan. They were always young people, with a spouse and perhaps with a fledgling family, trying to fit into this foreign place. Since science is internationally interwoven, we had visiting scientists from other countries as well: Australia, Brazil, England, France, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden. They would stay here for perhaps two years, and then return to their own labs in their own countries.

Halloween is a traditional American holiday. It can easily appear silly to people from other cultures. They just don’t quite get it. So every Halloween, my housemate and I would invite the visiting scientists and their families to our home to carve pumpkins. We’d also invite a couple of Americans and their children, to create a balance of experience and bafflement. We’d all sit on the floor throughout the house, newspapers spread in front of us, fresh pumpkins at hand with more on the lawn outside, and tea candles ready next to the front door. We’d start to carve our first pumpkin.

You know, if you’ve ever carved a pumpkin, that it can be a gooey mess. If you’re from another culture, like Japan’s, where food and body are kept very clean and very separate from each other, pumpkin carving could appear completely puzzling, intimidating even. But all of our guests politely started, regardless of inner turmoil, watching nearby friends for clues. The experienced carvers would offer witty advice wherever necessary, and generous encouragement to cautious skeptics.

Imagine the surprise and dismay of opening your first pumpkin and looking down into all that pale orange mess, the strings, the seeds, the oddity of it, the slippery randomness of it. Imagine reaching your hand in and feeling the slime and the endlessness of those inner curves. But looking around, others are doing the same thing, talking and laughing, so you bravely move forward, scooping out the seeds, scraping out the strings, cleaning out your hollow. Okay, now what?  Draw a face??  A scary face???

The first set of jack o’ lanterns are simple and a bit awkward. Two eyes, a mouth, sometimes with teeth, maybe a nose. As each person finishes his pumpkin, he stands up, carries it to the front door, inserts a tea candle, sets the pumpkin in the garden outside, and lights the candle.

Night is falling, and slowly the garden fills with jack o’ lanterns. The candles softly glow, brightly, then even more brightly against the darkening backdrop. The Japanese eyes fill with delight.  The French man grins and scurries off to get his next pumpkin. The Australian scrutinizes the others’ handiwork and tackles his next globe with blooming creativity. The carved faces become haunted, or lecherous, or jeering. Carved flames leap from mouth corners; carved eyes glower. The jack o’ lanterns are no longer consigned to the lawn; now they’re lurking behind rocks, gaping up from under a bush, cackling down from a tree branch.

The transformation is complete, for pumpkins and humans alike. We gather with hot apple cider and wander around the garden, delighted. My Finnish friend puts her arm around my shoulder and says delightedly, “Now I understand Halloween. Now I get it.”

So here I am on the spiritual path.  I have arrived at the party and understand portions of what I’m encouraged to do.  I look around at people I trust and admire, and pay attention to the example they set.  I’m learning that the way to learn is to do.  I’m delving into my pumpkins, each and every one of them, creating the most magnificent jack o’ lanterns that I can.  And I trust that by the time I’m standing in the garden, sipping hot apple cider, watching the glowing faces around me, I will understand why God is expending so much energy to create us, waiting for us to search for Him, and then helping us to find Him.

Seasons

It's mid-October and the world is changing. Greens are blending to golds on the trees outside my window. The sun is lower in the sky, sending softer light onto our hillside. The days are shorter, the nights longer. Rain falls regularly on our summer-parched pastures, soaking the llamas backs, and sending the chickens to hunker closely under their overarching tree. The season is changing.

I spend most of my days outside, working on this project or that, and I find that I'm more aware of the season's change than ever before. For one, it's more pronounced than in the Bay Area, so there's more difference to note. But more, I'm blending with my surroundings now, watching the sky and birds, the trees and wind. I'm learning about our hillside, the pond, the new orchard, our llamas and chickens.

The fruit trees are bringing life, an energy of their own to the pasture above our house. I'm taller than them still, but their aura is bigger, richer, softer. They've learned the sun's pattern, and have built their leaves to match, drinking in sunlight to fuel their hard work of growing up. Their roots have taken hold and explored their underground neighborhood. They've discovered water pockets and mineral caches, sending massive supplies of materials upward to the leaf factories breathing in and out, in and out. I spread wood chips and llama droppings in a lake at their feet, gifts to help them thrive.

The chickens murmur softly as they wander about their chores, checking this, pecking that. They scurry to meet me, as I open the gate, running, flying, calling out; I'm an exciting event in their day. I might bring treats or fresh water or mounds of grain. They follow along around me, remarking busily, ready to be a part of whatever I might have in mind.

The llamas watch intently and gather close in, sizing me up, looking for apples or pears. After a leisurely greeting, they turn to graze alongside while I dig or lop or rake. They clomp gracefully along, with an occasional cavort, gleefully snorting.

The pastures are turning green after the summer drought while the trees are turning golden in preparation for the cold; a changing of the guard, trading dormancy for robust vitality and vice versa, a biannual handoff amongst hillside companions.

I wade through this rich tapestry, watching the sky, the clouds, the sunset, and I say to myself, what a wonderful world.

Karma Ends

Dambara and I spent the morning chipping away at our brush pile. It's huge. It's taller than me, maybe 7 feet high, about 20 feet deep and, I don't know, 40 feet long? Last spring, we hired a young man to take out some hazelnut trees that stood in the path of our planned deer fence, and he got pulled into another job before he was able to chip the wood for us. So it's waited all these weeks, patiently drying out, growing larger and larger, as we added a hefty dead tree and many, many pruned branches.

It's hard to hire help out here in the country. People are either overwhelmed keeping on top of their own to-do lists, or in great demand, or feel it's not worth their time to drive out this far in order to do the work. So, we end up doing a lot of things ourselves that would be much better undertaken by people who knew what they were doing, who had the right tools, and who had the time, which we do not.

We finally surrendered to the inevitability of Plan B (Looks Like We're Going To Do It Ourselves) for tackling the brush pile, and bought a chipper and a small, electric chain saw that was light enough for me to wield. We gathered safety glasses and protective headphones, thick gloves and water bottles, and trod up the hill where the brush pile loomed.

We've whittled away at the pile, every morning, until the heat drives us indoors. The chipper, which looked so huge when it arrived, seemed dainty when initially stationed next to the brush pile. Now, it's regaining some of its heft, as the neighboring pile diminishes, bit by bit.

We're at the icky part, where it feels like we've been doing this forever, and there's still a LONG way to go. We can see our progress, not only by our ever more dominant chipper, but by the expanse of long, green grass uncovered each day, which is happily chomped down by the llamas each evening, giving us an ever widening wedge of flat hillside on which to lop, saw, and chip.

We've already changed out a dulled blade and a damaged drive belt, so we're getting to know our friendly chipper pretty well. We remain on good terms, us and the chipper, mutually respectful. We admire the chipper's strength and endurance; the chipper responds greedily to our hands with their opposable thumbs, repeatedly cramming branches down its feed tube. It's consuming an impressive amount of branches, and producing an impressive volume of wood chips, which we're spreading around our young orchard trees to nurture and encourage all those tentative root systems.

But, as I said, we're still in the icky middle, where we cannot yet see the end of the tunnel, much less the light that must be shining somewhere up ahead. And I'm reminded of some advice that a friend gave me years ago, when I was swimming in a vast sea of dismay over a seemingly endless challenge that was simply not improving or shifting: "Karma ends."

If we keep working at the task at hand, no matter how seemingly endless, we will come to its end. If we gather the right tools, be it meditation, living in community, or a lightweight chain saw; if we summon the right attitude, be it gratitude, power, or joy; if we persevere at a pace that we can sustain over the long term, in the company of an enthusiastic partner, like-minded souls, or even in seclusion; we'll consistently make progress. We can overcome a destructive habit or an immense brush pile, learning useful strategies along the way, and finally, finally, arrive at the point where we can easily handle the next pile of pruned branches, or, the next refrain of an old habit.

Because, karma ends.

Efficiency Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be

My husband and I ordered a chipper, to aid us in managing our aging trees, as well as looking forward to our youthful orchard growing up and needing sculpting along the way. Also, our soil has a lot of clay, so the wood chips will be a welcome ingredient in our cycle of farm life.

Dambara is a gifted internet researcher, so he found the perfect chipper for us, affordable, powerful, and move-aroundable. The adventure began upon the arrival of our friendly delivery truck driver. We live out in the country, surrounded by peaceful hillsides, with a fairly narrow highway out front. Our friendly driver parked his 36-foot delivery truck on half of the highway, hiked up our somewhat steep gravel driveway, and kindly announced that he could leave the boxed chipper at the entrance of the driveway. His truck could not make the turn into the driveway, and since it was now at the end of his day, his next-to-empty truck would probably not make the climb up the driveway.

He was so friendly. Upon finding out that my husband was out of town for several more days, he gamely tackled the possibility of using his walk-alongside forklift to bring the heavy box up the driveway. We made it half-way up, then he set the box down at the edge, leaving enough room for cars to sneak by, in the interest of saving his friendly forklift from permanent meltdown.


I waved him on his way and called for help.

My friendly neighbor chugged his bright orange tractor, complete with front loader, along the narrow highway, up the gravel driveway, churning here and there, and was able to hoist the boxed chipper the rest of the way up the driveway, and oh joy of joy, up into the pasture where our enormous brush pile lurked.

I waved him on his way and turned to examine the boxed monster, which stood almost as tall as me, and much, much wider and heavier. Luckily, my variegated background includes paper art, so, Exacto knife in hand, I attacked the admirably stalwart packaging. Cardboard corners, and plastic wrapping, and mysterious parts were strewn around the hillside, but there it stood, in all it's black and orange glory, like an ungainly Halloween costume, ready to chew and chomp anything I might decide to feed it.

The packaging included a wrench for tightening bolts and very clear instructions on how to attach handles, feeding chutes, and trailer hitch. Luckily, I wasn't expected to build the engine. I can put together any Ikea product imagined, but I draw the line at metal objects that whirl around at a scrillion revs per second.

There were perhaps two dozen bolts that needed tightening, and most were only moderately accessible, necessitating a repositioning of the wrench at every half turn. As I sat next to my new workmate on the sunny slope of our upper pasture, working each nut slowly, steadily to a firm fit, I thought, "I should go get Dambara's socket wrench. That would be much more efficient." And then I realized that I had no intention of upgrading tools. I was looking out over our beautiful valley, hearing the birds, watching the chickens explore their new excavation, with the llamas migrating serenely past on their way to check the apple trees. . . . why would I want to hurry through this task? I was bonding with my chipper, getting familiar with her heft and strength, immersed in joy. The longer I could be here, doing this, the longer I could experience joy.


About 24 hours elapsed between the arrival of the chipper and the driver clumping up the driveway to strategize delivery schemes with me, to the coaxing of my neighbor's tractor past our carport and through the pasture gate, to me sitting in the sun putting the finishing twists to an array of well-designed bolts. Nothing had been hurried. Kindness and generosity flowed happily through every twist and turn. Joy burbled and spread and lingered.

My days are gentle and peaceful, filled with a joy that shepherds me along from task to task. Efficiency has taken its proper place, far down the list of priorities. It has taken me 60 years to get here, but for this moment was I born.

It's a girl! No. . . it's a boy. So is she.

We finally received the papers on 3 out of 4 of our llamas a couple of weeks ago. The previous owner had promised the papers to us, and had some trouble locating them, but then here they are! Hurray!

It was sort of a mishmash of papers, so it was an interesting read going through them and figuring out which papers belonged to which llama. We knew the birth name for one of them, but not the other three. Luckily, one paper for each llama included a description. . . "white with black tail" . . . "King Louie". . . "gelded male". . . . check! That's the one name we knew. He's now Ahimsa. Then there's "deep brown". . . . "female". . . . there's only one with that color fur, so check! That's Prani. . . . "White with grey body". . . that must be Santosha, so che. . . wait. . . "gelded male". That's weird. We have 3 girls and 1 boy. Ahimsa's the boy.

Great. We have papers on 2 of the llamas, and the other 2 are still a mystery. Plus there's this set of papers on an unknown gelded male. That's not so useful.

As the days went by, I kept thinking about the papers. White with grey body; gelded male. That really does describe Santosha. The color part, not the anatomy part. I wonder whose papers those are. . . .

You might think that it's easy to tell the gender of a llama. Not ours. They're wary of people, and keep their noses pointed straight at us; all the better to see you, my dear. And their fur is long and thick, reaching far lower than is easily convenient for peering at their nether regions. But, IF they do happen to have their backs to you, and IF they swish their tails at just the right moment, it is possible to glimpse what might be there.

Dambara saw it first. "Definitely a boy." Then we paid attention to their peeing habits. Prani, the confirmed girl, sent it behind her. Ahimsa, the confirmed boy, sent it forward, to land under his bellybutton. Santosha, caught in the act, peed forward, giving another convincing gender clue. She's a boy. A gelded boy.

Then all eyes turned toward Satya. No papers, no descriptions, no nothing. The previous owner had told us that we were buying 1 boy and 3 girls. Since he was wrong about one of the girls, might he be wrong about another one, too?

She's so timid. She and Prani hang out together all the time. The girls hang out together and the boys hang out together. It all makes sense when you assume that she's a girl. Then again, a glimpse. Another glimpse. Sure looks like a boy. Or is that a mammary gland?

It's surprisingly hard to find out boy/girl llama clues on the internet. You have to be careful of your search words, or you can end up on some very odd sites. The FBI probably monitors those sites. At least I hope they do.

Pee watch was surprisingly hit and miss. We're not out there all the time, and they pee at any time of the day or night. Who knows when? Plus, it makes a lot more sense if Satya is a girl. She acts like a girl.

A video went around Facebook a couple of weeks ago, asking young women to  pantomime throwing like a girl. It's a very moving, insightful video about stereotyping and how we diminish people when we indulge in those thoughts and sneers. My stubborn insistence that Satya acts like a girl was simply stereotyping her into a body of false information, demeaning for all species.

So, moving past my stubbornness, we're now accepting the fact that Satya is a boy. He's timid, and he panics easily. He likes hanging out with Prani. Maybe Prani is his mom. Maybe her smallness reassures him. Maybe they like the same music or share a delightful enjoyment of puns. Whatever the case, we have, not 3 girls and 1 boy, but 3 boys and 1 girl. And they're perfect, every single one of them. Our friends, the llama troupe.

Food tastes funny today

I awoke this morning feeling a bit odd. Not a scratchy throat; not nausea; something more subtle. Something was on its way, and I wanted to nip it in the bud.

I dosed myself with grapefruit seed extract. Now GSE is tricky, because it's a viscous liquid that has The Worst Taste I have ever experienced. But I've learned that if I dilute it into a protein drink, the viscosity of both liquids blend nicely, and the flavor of the protein drink masks the bitterness of the GSE. The other trick about GSE is that it can really upset your stomach. So as soon as I dosed myself, I felt the first niggly nausea starting to coalesce. I grabbed something out of the fridge, protein rich, and ate a few bites and got ahead of the nausea. Whew. You'd think I'd remember from GSE regimen to GSE regimen that I need something in my stomach first.

ANYway. . . . 'round about 11:00 I started to feel a bit odd again. Time for more GSE. FIRST, I was going to eat lunch, and a SALT sandwich sounded really good. So I got out the stripples, avocado, lettuce, but not the tomato, and made a yummy SALT-minus-the-T sandwich. It wasn't very good. It looked great, it smelled great, I usually LOVE them, but my taste is off, because of whatever this thing is that's being subdued by the GSE in my bloodstream. Currently the GSE is winning the battle, and here I am, happily typing away.

I expect some day to have complete control over that secret yogic power that allows us to heal ourselves. For now, I need a sidekick, and oftentimes my sidekick is GSE. Colds and flu, all those insidious little pranksters that can lay us low, GSE helps me triumph every time. It takes 2 or 3 days for the prankster to go away completely, but during those days, I keep up my usual routine, pausing every 3 or 4 hours, when I start to feel a bit icky, to take another dose of GSE, and I'm up and running again. For me, it works. When I use it.

Now, I've told LOTS of other people about this method, and I know of only 1 other person that has the same empowering results that I experience, and she's the person that told ME about GSE. That gives me pause. Are other people not doing it right? Does GSE help only a small group of people? Or is it perhaps that I believe it's going to help, and so it does help?

I'm all for the placebo effect. Give me the placebo and let my optimistic attitude carry the day. That's fine with me. I get well, plus I don't have to deal with side effects. But what is the placebo effect? Does it depend on right attitude?

We're moving into a higher age, where we're becoming more aware of subtle energies. Body work, energy work, hands-on healers, all kinds of techniques are being discovered, taught, and learned by more and more people. Subtle health techniques are healing more and more people. The subtly of healing energy is exquisite and captivating. It's a wondrous time to be living on this planet, watching this subtle wisdom emerge from the shadows.

I drip essential oils onto my forearms every morning. They enhance my metabolism and soothe my arthritis. When I don't use them for 3 or 4 days, my energy dips and my old running injury grinds away at the tenderized edges of my hip, and I start limping. When I go back to the oils, my energy returns and my hip sighs happily into quiet warmth. The oils work. When I use them.

If we meditate every day; if we energize and listen for aum, if we pray, or chant, whatever combination of techniques we've pieced together that connect us to the inner peace of the divine, we move through our days more centered, more intuitive, more ready for whatever our day brings to us.

These are subtle energies, but the techniques to connect with them work. The techniques work, if you use them. Our only job is to remember to use them.

Rise to the occasion

Back when I still worked an 8 to 5 job, I'd lie in bed every morning after the alarm went off, and wish that I could just stay in bed. Please, please, please. I'd think of time-saving tips that would let me lie there a few more minutes, snoozing. I would decide what I was going to wear that day; I could do that laying there, rather than waiting until I was showered and standing in front of the closet door; which shoes, which dress. . .

Oftentimes I would trick myself. I don't have to get up for work; I only have to get up and take a shower. Somehow that seemed less onerous, and it would usually get me out of bed and into the shower. Once in the shower, I could summon the energy to plan the day, go get dressed, breakfast, and out to the car. By then I was okay. I rose to the occasion a step at a time.

Oftentimes, after a particularly fatiguing day, I would go to yoga class and move through the asanas, regaining my center and smoothing away the hecticness of the day. And then we would move into relaxation, finally laying flat on our backs in savasana, with soft music wafting through the room, deeply contented and whole.

Then the instructor would start talking, softly, softly, and I would think, "Oh no. . . I cannot move. I cannot get up off of this floor." And the instructor would wisely say, "Wiggle your toes. Gently rotate your ankles. . ." and she would coax us out of corpse pose. And every time, class after class, by simply wiggling my toes, the energy would stir again, and I could imagine the possibility of moving my ankles and bending my knees, roll over onto my side, and gradually climb up onto my feet, regaining functionality. Victory.

Those toe wiggles taught me that moving energy produces more energy. By moving our bodies, by at least starting the overwhelming task, by simply getting the energy moving, everything changes. By taking a little step forward, energetic momentum kicks in and takes us even further forward. Sometimes we have to trick ourselves into moving that first bit of energy, but that's a much easier task than contemplating the enormity of everything that's in front of us.

Little by little we can rise to each occasion, until we learn to trust that it really will happen. Then we can rise a little more promptly, a little more steadily, a little more consciously. No matter the size of the task, if we start where we are and begin moving forward, we focus our energy and it carves out room in front of us so we can keep taking steps forward, until, wow, we've done it.

Busy busy busy

The pace of life quickens around us, relentlessly. A friend was reminiscing about her childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area, and described how her mom would pack dinner into the car along with all the kids, and they'd drive to a park across town and have dinner at a picnic bench overlooking the lake. Her dad would start the barbeque coals, her mom would unpack the potato salad and celery sticks, the kids would all run around playing tag or kickball, and they'd have a great time together.

The amazing thing about her story was that her family used to do this once or twice every week, during the week, and both of the parents worked full time. She couldn't reconcile that reality to her current reality where she works late, every day, runs errands on the way home, catches up on emails and bills when she gets home, does the laundry while she scarfs down some take out, and usually doesn't finish everything that needs doing before it's way past time to go to bed.

How did her parents manage that? Why is the possibility of dinner in the park with the family an impossibility in her current life?

The pace of life quickens around us, relentlessly. Someone mentioned just last week that she realized that it was in her nature to keep herself crazy busy no matter what she's doing, so she might as well keep herself busy doing something meaningful. She could choose to keep herself crazy busy at work, so the company would prosper from her busy-ness, or she could choose to keep herself crazy busy at home, so her family would benefit, or she could choose to keep herself crazy busy doing something that filled her heart with joy, so that her soul would benefit. Her job was to find the balance between those three arenas, to keep them all alive and vital.

I traveled with a friend to visit his family in St. Louis, quite a few years ago now. He had arranged for his brother to pick us up at the airport, and when we met him in the parking lot, he had a friend with him. He had stopped by on his way to the airport and the friend said he'd come along, too. We decided to go to a small local pub for lunch, and gradually more and more friends arrived, and we spent the entire afternoon at this pub, about 40 or 50 of us, laughing and telling stories.

They had all heard, one after the other, that my friend was in town, and they had all walked away from whatever they had been doing and wandered over to say hi. Now, my friend visited St. Louis several times a year, so his arrival wasn't a rare event. This group of people merely had been friends since kindergarten, and they liked getting together.

Why hadn't their pace of life quickened to the point that we would have had to take a taxi home from the airport and maybe found time to have dinner with another couple while we were in town? How was it that 40 people were able to walk away from their Saturday plans, at a moment's notice, and spend the afternoon talking and laughing with friends?

I've pondered these questions for years, and I have no ready answer, except that we do choose how to fill our time. We choose what we're going to be busy with. We choose where we're going to be busy. We can be busy anywhere.

As the pace of life quickens around you, where, and how, would you like to be busy? That simple question will shape your tomorrow.

Self reliance

I learned self reliance early in life. I moved into my own apartment and started my first full-time job the day after I graduated from high school. I paid all of my bills on time, and managed to have enough money left over to keep myself fed, although my cat did eat better than I did. My friends all went on to college, and I became a little bit isolated, which was fine, because I was working so hard at taking care of everything myself.

I started college when I was 27 and studied science while supporting myself, which now included maintaining a house mortgage. The cats still ate better than I did, but I graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in biology. I had become increasingly isolated, but that was still fine, because I was still working SO hard.

When I began my professional career, the feeling of isolation diminished, because now I was part of a team. We each did our own part, and depended on the others to do their part. I learned the power of teamwork and focusing relentlessly on what needed to be done next. We excelled.

Meanwhile, my private life was still fairly isolated. I was responsible for everything, shopping, cooking, cleaning, repairing, paying, I was it. But that was fine, because I could do it. I was self-reliant.

Around that time, I discovered Ananda and began exploring a spiritual life. I found people who held the same values that I had been hoping to find all of my adult life, people who answered questions that I hadn't even been able to articulate, questions that were the basis of all my confusion about what the heck is the meaning of life anyway.

So I paid attention and tried new ways of approaching life. My old habits started to shift and slip away. The habits that clung the longest were the ones that had served me so well up to that point. Self reliance was one of the tenacious habits, one that I'm still working at bit by bit.

Because the thing about self reliance is that it's good up to a point, but after that, it becomes isolating. Not only do you become isolated from other people, but you become isolated from the divine flow. The tendency to respond to offers of help, "Oh, that's okay, I've got it," squashes the energy flow between you and another person. People love to help. People love to open the door, or carry one of the bags, or move a box out of your way. It's simple, and it feels good.

Things that we encounter in everyday life are mirrors of what's happening on a more subtle, energetic level. I've found that if I say "Yes, thank you!" to every offer of help, then not only does it create a stronger connection to the person offering the help, it also makes me more receptive to divine help.

I LOVE receiving divine help, because it's always perfect, and beautiful, and timely, and inspiring. It lifts your heart with joy when you recognize it. It stays with you and lightens your burden. It creates a stronger connection between you and the divine.

Isn't it fun that a little thing like accepting help with carrying the groceries can shift something inside of you that then opens your receptivity to the blessing of answered prayers? Isn't life fun?

Energy has its own intelligence

One of my favorite phrases is “energy has its own intelligence.”

What the heck does that mean?

Maybe it’s one of my favorite phrases because it was an example of divine truths that came to me early in my exploration of Ananda, yoga, and meditation.

We were in the midst of remodeling our temple in Palo Alto, and so every Saturday was a bit chaotic, transforming our rough construction site into a peaceful oasis of inspirational beauty. One Saturday afternoon, Biraj set me to the task of fluffing up the curtains that masked storage cubbies at the back of the sanctuary, stacked with tools and construction material. I worked carefully across one side of the room, fluffing, fluffing, and then moved my ladder over to the other side of the room to begin the second half of the curtained expanse.

A few minutes later, Biraj clumped by, carrying something big and awkward, and took the time to encourage me. “Looks great! When you finish this side, go ahead and fix the other side.” I twirled around and said, “Oh! I’ve already finished the other side!” Biraj laughed and said, “Oh. Okay. Hhhmmm. Maybe Sandy can do the curtains.”

In other words, I wasn’t doing a very good job, because I had no idea how to do what I was supposed to be doing. Biraj wisely swapped me out for more creative hands, and all was well.

A few months later, I found myself in charge of the altar cloths. “Uh oh,” I thought. “Now we’re in trouble.”

And I started working with cloth.

I paid attention to how the cloth draped as it swept across the front of the altar. If I secured it there, it would add another swoop. If I pinned it up here, the gathers would fall gracefully there. If I taped it down here, it could cling solidly yet softly here and flow seamlessly there. I stepped into the energy and paid attention.

I started creating beautiful altars.

And then there were the flowers.

My lifelong strategy for flower arranging was to plunk them in a vase and hope they nestled gracefully along the edge, filling the space with beauty and color. It rarely worked, but it was all I knew. That strategy wasn’t going to work for the Palo Alto altar, which was massive, requiring behemoth arrangements that would radiate beauty all the way to the back of that cavernous room.

My one clue was oasis foam, the magical securer of flower stems. After that, it all came from something outside of me.

My first glimpse of the intelligence of energy was walking into the flower market and finding myself surrounded by buckets and buckets of blossoms. I walked through all of that beauty, and amazingly, some blooms popped out from amongst their neighbors. Sometimes it was the size of the bloom, or the shape of the petals, but usually it was the color that spoke to me. I would pick up this bundle and that, nestling them against each other on my cart, and then look for another color that wanted to be on that cart, too.

I’d talk to the flowers on the drive to the temple and tell them how beautiful they were. “You get to stand in front of dozens and dozens of people tomorrow, and they are going to love how beautiful you are! They are going to feel God’s presence when they look at you. You are going to open their hearts.” They would jostle along next to me, beaming happily.

I’d lay all the flowers out on the workbench, choose some vases, soak the oasis, walk out to the altar, and feel the energy in the room around me. Going back to the flowers, I’d pick up one stem and hold it next to the vase. “You want to be this tall.” Snip. “And you want to stand right there, at that angle.” Squish, into the oasis. “You want to be this tall.” Snip. And so on, and so on. I stepped into the energy and paid attention.

I didn’t know any rules. I had no techniques up my sleeve. I wandered amongst the flowers and they told me to put them on the cart. Each stem told me where it should go, where its face should be. The creative energy flowed through me and out my hands. It was blissful.

Those flower arrangements did inspire people with their beauty. Those softly draped cloths lifted people’s hearts. Those altars brought light into people’s eyes.

The flowers taught me. The cloth taught me. Energy has its own intelligence. All we need to do is step into the energy flow and pay attention.

Guilt doesn't serve us

Has guilt ever been a guiding force in your life? I sort of laugh, even as I write out the question, because, in our culture, of course guilt plays a role, at least from time to time.

Our parents used it; our teachers used it; our best friends used it; we use it. Guilt can be a strong motivator. It can keep us on the straight and narrow, which used to be a description of the preferred mode of conduct.

But it’s rooted in controlling others. Our mothers and teachers were hoping to control some behavior of ours that they felt was undesirable. Same with our best friends. And the same with us. If we use guilt against other people, we’re trying to control their behavior.

Guilt can also be a very subtle thing. As we grow and mature, we can become more refined in our use of guilt. No one would hardly even notice that it’s there, except that something doesn’t feel quite right; something’s not quite happy.

So we can watch ourselves; we can pay attention to the instances that trigger our use of guilt. We can step back from those instances that trigger our use of guilt, detach ourselves somewhat, and observe. What triggered it? What were we trying to accomplish? Why did we feel hindered so that we couldn’t be open and honest?

Then we can change.

So it is possible to practice self-awareness and shift that habit of using guilt in order to control someone else’s behavior. That one’s not quite so hard to detect and correct.

But then there’s the other side of the coin. What do we do when we feel guilty? It might be that someone is using guilt against us, but that’s oftentimes easier to detect. When something is detectable, it is changeable. We can come up with action plans to counteract someone laying a guilt trip on us. Avoid that person. Laugh it off. Bring the underlying issues out into the open. Trial and error. What works with that particular person, to change the interaction into something more positive? It can be a slow process, but if the relationship is worth it, we can shift things for the better.

But the more insidious strain of guilt is the kind that exists only in our own head. It’s the guilt that we set down upon ourselves and carry around with us. Oftentimes, we carry it around continuously, and add stuff to it as we move through our day. It can get pretty big and unwieldy, like a big gunny sack of squash, clumbering around, using up lots of our energy, encumbering even the smallest aspiration. We probably don’t know that we’re doing it or how to stop.

But here’s the clue that can help us dump out all those squash and either make something delicious out of them or put them on the compost heap: guilt is not one of the eight manifestations of God.
I love the eight manifestations of God. They offer a powerful guideline of how to live a life that is pleasing to God. When we are working with love or joy, calmness or wisdom, we are moving toward God. When we are working with anger or hate, regret or guilt, we are moving away from God. Said another way, guilt won’t take us anywhere that we want to be.

When I feel guilty, I see if I can shift the thought, slightly, to something more comfortable, something that gives me a sense of relief.

“I can’t believe that I ate another peanut butter cookie! Well, I ate fewer today than I ate yesterday. It’s hard for me to resist them, once they’re in the house. But it’s not hard to resist them on the grocer’s shelf. That’s where I’ll focus my self-control next time; I just won’t bring them home next time.”

I’ve shifted the energy from guilt toward power, with a bit of wisdom thrown in. I’ve come up with an action plan that is realistic and gives me confidence, because I know that it’s true: I really can resist them on the grocer’s shelf, so this really will work. My heart has a little hum of joy, and I’m standing on solid ground.

When I’m faced with a stronger guilt, I sometimes use Scarlett O’Hara’s wisdom.

“I shouldn’t have said that to my mother 47 years ago, because now I can’t take it back.” Well, for this one, I guide my thoughts away from what I said and how she reacted. Because nothing can be done to correct it, and more importantly, every time I think about it, adding specific details and memorable nuances to make the guilt even more exquisite, I give it energy and keep it vibrant in my memory banks.

So “I won’t think about that now; I’ll think about that tomorrow” becomes wisdom from the most unlikely source. Cutting the energy threads between myself and the thing that I wish I had not done allows it to float away and moves a particularly rotten squash out of my gunny sack and onto the compost heap, where it can go on to a more productive phase, a learning phase.

Has guilt ever been a guiding force in your life?

Has guilt ever been useful to you?

Has guilt ever taken you where you want to be?