#stopsuicide

There are two wolves who are always fighting.One is darkness and despair.         The other is light and hope.The question is:  Which wolf wins?  . . .      The one you feed.”

and we have the amazing opportunity to choose, what we feed.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BLcueWgBMRe/?tagged=afsp

every day we have a choice, many choices; what to eat, who to associate with, how to spend our time, where to dedicate our precious faculty of attention.for those who practice mindful living, everyday is a day of reflection. every single morning a chance to begin with gratitude, and progress with deepening self-study, and improvement in our relationship to others, to ourselves and ultimately to God.
living mindfully includes awareness of our thoughts, our words, our actions, what we eat, and how our behaviors affect our inner and outer body/environment.
however, mindful living is not normal. in this speck in time it is quite extraordinary to have even an inkling of this attitude. depression, addiction, anxiety, these are quite more accepted and “normal”.today is Yom Kippur יוֹם כִּיפּוּר  known as the Day of Atonement. in Judaism it is considered the most solemn day of the year, essentially it is a day of forced mindfulness. you fast, you wear white, you avoid leather, you pull away from worldly distractions and focus on elevated intention setting for the year ahead. emphasis is placed on the themes of atonement and repentance. in-fact it is not just one day of mindfulness, it is a week, called the Days of Awe, a period of time set aside for serious introspection, a time to consider the wrongdoings of the previous year and ask for forgiveness, from yourself, from others, from God before the start of the new year.as i sat in Yom Kippur services this evening, reflecting on the year, hearing the wonderful, radical, female Rabbi discussing how difficult it is to look honestly at the mistakes we have made over the year, i felt a surge of joy, yes, of course it has been a hard year. of course there are things, many, many things, i would go back and change if i could. and yet, i feel i have been mindful in my practice, in the practice of living. not ignoring the shame or pain or guilt as it comes, but in each moment working consciously to, pause, breathe, and make an active choice in response, rather than in reaction.
the wonderful Buddhist nun and teacher Pema Chödrön teaches to look to the pain. she says suffering can be a great teacher for us because if we look at whatever is coming up for us; whatever hardship or confusion or misunderstanding we are having, we can often discover the source. what is lying underneath that pain, what is the underlying fear or doubt that we are having and just by concentrating on finding that, we can begin to resolve it.it’s like when the house starts to get a little messy, if you spend 5 minutes tidying it up everyday, the mess never gets so out of hand. but if  you leave it, and leave it, and leave it till another time, when you have the time, when you have the time.. suddenly the mess becomes so large it will take a crew hours to clean…. our internal clutter is the same. on this day, many moons ago, my brother fed the wolf of darkness and despair. the mess had been growing too long, become too large, and unfortunately the resources to clean it up were beyond his mindfulness capacity. suicide is an individual, family and community public health crisis with more than 40,000 people dying in America each year. and it IS preventable! the suicide prevention professionals recommend that we ACT:

1. acknowledge
2. care
3. treatment

i recommend that we dedicate our practice, we dedicate our life, every day. that we hold ourselves accountable and seek the association of others who will help us with this project. that we hold close in our hearts those who we have lost, and those who are losing the battle with darkness and despair. and do not wait for one week a year to reflect on our lives. every day show gratitude for even the smallest gestures. every day apologize to those we have hurt. every day remind ourselves to live gently in the softness of our own hearts.

Awakening Moon

wandering under the winter moon.

preparing for bed i was called, the sweet lullaby of the moon pulled me towards her. 

i slipped down the stairs and just before midnight went to wander under the Virgo full moon

the eve of Purim, and though i was not dressed as my favorite Purim deity the heroine Queen Esther, i felt as though it was a costume as i pulled on the snow-veralls my warmest coat, hat and scarf and smelling of hay and sheep i was,  perhaps dressed more like Esther than i truly realized.

though it was the middle of the night, i brought no flashlight, the moons glow guided me and i found myself following the tracks of the deer that pass by my home.

Jewish holidays generally land on the full moon, and Purim, the holiday where you are “supposed to get so drunk you don’t remember if you are the bad guy or the good guy.” this full moon provides enough light that you can stumble home drunk.

stumbling as i plodded through the iced-over pile-up of snow that remains grounded at the brink of spring, i chuckled to myself, is this the proper way to celebrate?

just as Kali is the fierce aspect of the goddess Parvati who is ever so tender, we too have many attributes and aspects.

our inner villain is simply another aspect of the hero.  maybe Haman is a misunderstood fierce aspect of Mordecai.

our personality is made up of many ingredients, the temperaments, the doshas, the gunas, mixed together and put in the oven. But as any good baker knows, it is all in the chemistry.

that temperament, the villainous side of ourselves arise when that aspect, lets call it baking soda, is not properly mixed in and a pocket of  it throws everything off. To get so drunk you can’t remember if you are the bad guy or the good guy. Really we are both, all striving to be our best, with a different scale to measure what that means. Yin and Yang, Shiva and Shakti, “Good” and “Evil”, all merely aspects of the Self combating one another, looking for the perfect chemistry, the balance.

the one who succeeds is the one who is given attention and energy.

it is a great fortune to be close to your teachers.

to see they too make mistakes. and to see that is okay. the moon does not care if you make a mistake, the moon will glow just as brightly.

living compassionately, we feed our compassionate side. live your love, and let love conquer all.

making your mind an offering

mayy eva mana adhatsva / mayi buddhim nivesaya /

nivasisyasi mayy eva / ata urdhvam na samsaya

keep your mind on me alone, your intellect on me, thus you shall dwell on me from on, there is no doubt of this.

Bhagavad Gita XII.8

whenever i first hear a verse of the Bhagavad Gita, i go through a 3 step process towards understanding it:

1. first there is confusion, the verse seems bigger than me and i don’t understand what it means
2. then, comprehension, i begin to understand philosophically what it means
3. finally application, something in my own life happens and suddenly the verse seems to be written just for me, in my own vernacular and as clear as the sky on a summers day.

the mind is active all the time. while brushing your teeth, sitting on the subway, even while engaged in conversation, there is (or at least for me there usually is) a little part of the mind that is not present. this part of the mind is busy making a to do list, or prepping an email, or thinking about that thing that guy said that really irritated you. really this is pretty amazing, we have an incredible capability to focus on more than one thing at a time. but we get in to trouble because usually, the mind slips in to patterns of stress and “monkey mind” wanderings.  often thinking negative thoughts, this could go wrong or i can’t believe i did THAT. . .. when searching for steadiness and joy in life, having jagged thoughts surely will not aide.

i know for myself TV shows are the alluring cure all.  i can zone out, without that pesky portion of my mind reminding me of what i have to do. this, unfortunately, does not lead very far on the path to enlightenment.
if instead of numbing out that little part of our mind that is always thinking about something else, we focus that towards the divine, presto! everything will shift in our lives.

in this verse of the Gita, Krishna says to Arjuna: keep your mind on me alone.

so we are to focus solely on Krishna, the flute playing, loveable blue guy, who represents the Supreme Being, the divine, the interconnectedness of being, love, joy, bliss, as YOU define it to be.

if we commit that busy little part of our brain, that is always thinking anyways, to focus solely on the highest elevated thoughts, rather than all the other neurotic stuff we tend to think about (i do at least, i don’t know about you guys) then it puts the mind in a very sweet place. and it actually shifts, everything. it shifts the outcome and possibilities in every situation.  it shifts weaving through a crowd of people, it shifts having a conversation with another, it shifts the food that we are preparing.  just to have that little bit of the mind (which is going to be busy one way or another) centered in a sweet and uplifted place makes everything in our lives just a bit more sweet and uplifted.

this makes me think of the sanskrit term chitta prasadanam.

chitta is your mind, mindstuff.  and prasadam, means sweetness or serenity or peace, like serenity of the mind, serene intellect. but there is the other meaning of prasad, an offering. like something that you might put on an altar. a little bit of food, or a flower or a bit of water, something you would offer to the divine. so in some ways, chitta prasadam is to make your mind a sweet offering to the divine.

in Jivamukti meditation, we also have a three step process.

1. find your seat
2. be still
3. focus

by keeping your mind on elevated thoughts, we can bring the meditation practice in to our daily lives. we can let go of steps 1 and 2, and bring meditation (as Seane Corn coined it) off the mat and in to the world. this reminds me of a joke Biff Mithoefer told me the other day.

there were two bhuddist monks and they both smoked ciggerattes. the first asked their master “can we smoke while we meditate” to which the master replied “no.” but the next day the second monk said they were allowed to meditate while smoking.  the first monk was baffled, “why did our master say no to me and yes to you.” the second monk said “i don’t know, i just asked if we could meditate while we are smoking”

just the slightest shifts in perception can lead to the biggest steps of growth!

as the days get colder, lets see if we can keep that little part of our mind that is going to be so tempted to wander about and think about how we would rather be holed up at home hibernating, what you have to do later today and think about what you did last night, and lets instead focus that little part of the mind towards Krishna. towards making even our thoughts a sweet offering, chitta prasadam. let me know what changes in  your life after making this change!
keep your mind on me alone, your intellect on me, thus you shall dwell on me from on, there is no doubt of this.

genetic identification

Chandogya Upanishad taught tat twam asi meaning, you are that.

you are what?

we are comprised of so many things:

• you are your thoughts.
• you are a result of your decisions.
• you are the summation of your actions.
• you are a mashup of all the souls you have ever encountered.

or

• you are what you eat.
  

and clearly from my last posts we eat so much more than just food!

in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson – i cannot remember the books i’ve read any more than the meals i have eaten; even so, they have made me.

but even with that in due consideration, why do we eat what we eat?

as a child correct answers at school were rewarded with tootsie pops and hard candies. birthdays and other milestone events go hand in hand with cake. holidays are associated with rich heavy meals as the cornerstone to creating a “special” occasion. in this way we reinforce the perceived value and comfort of these foods. we entertain ourselves with food when we’re bored, we compromise quality of our food sources, of our lives, to accommodate the clutter of overbooked events and overstimulating iScreens, losing track of the circadian rhythms to fall into the Standard American Diet (SAD) and lifestyle. sinve i’ve gone raw, i actually had someone beg me to eat a doughnut at their birthday celebration saying please, eat it for me, its my birthday. what has happened that food, deeply processed foods, are such an integral part of our cultural climate. i did a google search of comfort food . . . check out the results. how are these items contributing to obesity, pollution, global warming, deforestation etc etc comforting to us?

we have to consider what consumption we were raised with, tv shows, living environment, lifestyle and of course tv dinners and happy meals that actually reward you with a toy for the way you are eating.  and in looking at what consumption we grew up with, this begs the question, how much of it is genetics. we can work to resolve karma’s, and change our diet, our actions. but is there a certain amount that is hard wired in us?

 please take a minute to check this video out, it is heartwarming, and difficult, but such a great reminder of how this plagues our society. Standard American Diet.

my mother was just with me for a few days visiting. there is so much of myself that i see when i gaze upon her. so much of her voice that i hear in my own opinions and views. and beneath that, so much of her personality in how i organically react in different situations.

at around the same time, my mother and my second aunt (her cousin), were told they had all the pre-diabetic signs and needed to do a major overhaul regarding both food and exercise habits or they would be getting progressively more and more ill. my aunts reaction was oh, diet and exercise works for some people, but not me. my mother, with similar news reacted the opposite way; drastically changing what she ate, did, and how she lived.

my mother went on a sugar free, nearly grain free, heavy on the turmeric simple foods diet. her intake is quite different from my own choice of raw fruits and veggies. but holds many similar tenants and facets, and the similarity lies in our approach. yet despite the changes, there are things she is up against inherently, just from the pool gene she was given.  the same pool i was then born into. even after 16 months of nearly completely pure raw living, tendencies are slow to go.

i’ve found that patience and time are the key for any changes. as my guru Sharon Padmaji Gannon teaches, joyfully sit with something again and again. each time will bring fresh perspective, give in to the repetition and through this again and again, a gain is made. slowly, but inevitably, i am finding even the seemingly “hard wired” patterns in myself can change, be they sugar addictions, trigger responses or thought patters we change over time like the shape of an iceberg. for now, i work towards steadiness and joy for all sentient beings.

through repetition, magic is forced to arise.

– Sharon Gannon