What’s my dosha?

Ayurveda Conference at UBC

Ayurveda scholars and practitioners, naturopathic and allopathic doctors, yogis and interested new-agey types all gathered at UBC last weekend for a varied and fascinating program of talks, papers, demos and experiential activities. I was happy to attend, and help out Neelam Toprani, the conference coordinator, who is also the owner of Sewanti Ayurvedic Series and one of my web clients.

It was lovely to discover more about deep complexities of this ancient 5000 year old system of healing and internal harmony with nature, the seasons. Different doshas are active at different times of the day, and the balancing of your own human ecology can be done with the help of natural herbs (and I also believe minerals but these weren’t discussed at the event.) The people were warm and congenial, and there was beautiful Indian food served for both lunch and dinner as part of the event.

My own interest in the elements was actively piqued, and the whole idea of more fire in the system to get metabolism going really appealed to me. Topics ranged from autism and ayurveda, yoga kriya practice, very scientific scholarly papers and hands on yoga practice. California energetic yoga power blasts, persuasive professional presenters shared the space with detailed scholarly delivery of high level information. Three cheers for AAPNA (the Association of Ayurvedic Professionals in North America) and a truly cross cultural event.

Quantum Turtle

Struggling upward through the back storage!

After more than 20 years of basically sitting in the tank, the big turtle has made a dramatic move! Clunking repeatedly to get our attention, he’s been granted freedom to wander about the place, exploring the edges of the apartment and getting into nooks and crannies. What is he searching for? A mate, at this late date? Or is he a she, looking for an egg laying space? I made a small sandbox, he could care less. And so his days are spent exploring. Why quantum? Because slow as he seems there is something unusual about his movements – I see him at the far end of the place, then moments later he appears at the other end, nesting around the stereo cords. How did he get there? And without my seeing him? Quantum.

Back again

Its been a long hiatus – I’ve been doing tons of client work and had little time for my own blogging – all shifted over to facebook and other social media. Well once again I’m back. I’ll be redoing my theme and getting back to this over the summer. Blog posts that have been forming in my mind will now have a place to be.

Healing the Feminine Heart Women’s Workshop

Taking another GIANT STEP!

I’m looking forward to participating and assisting again at another Women’s Mindfulness and Intimacy workshop with Nancy Mortifee.

This one will be held on the first weekend in March at Cascadia Retreats in Roberts Creek – on BC’s Sunshine Coast. A wonderful way to welcome the coming of spring in 2012!

Info on registration is here at Nancy’s site, info on the event is here at the Cascadia site.

And the news gets even better!

For this event Nancy is waiving her usual fee and so there is just the cost of accommodation and food, a meta-reasonable $150 for the 2 nights (Yes vegetarian option of course).
If you, or someone you know, would like to come, this is the best arrangement you could ever imagine! Especially since the next one will be at Hollyhock, and a far more expensive 5 day intensive.

If you’ve never attended one of these workshops before, don’t worry. Nancy’s approach makes it easy to engage right away. And we promise delicious food, comfortable sleeping arrangements, and great company.

I’ve found these workshops to be so incredibly satisfying and revealing, with deep understandings just naturally emerging from the depths. It is really great to share these experiences in a group of women, too. Something very good happens from it all, which is why I so enthusiastically endorse this process.

See more at Nancy’s newsletter

Urs – Inayat Khan

My first encounter with Inayat Khan’s teachings

I was living in Calgary, it was the early 70′s, and I’d joined a mail-order book lending service called the Lucis Trust Library. They sent out lists of available esoteric books and you could borrow them for free. Slow process in comparison with today’s world of too much information, but the library is still functioning. In the list, along with all the Alice Bailey and other esoteric books, was a title that looked interesting with an author whose name looked “sufi” to me. In an Eastern Rose Garden by Inayat Khan. I was interested in the sufis, so took a chance.

A very worn and thick red book eventually arrived in the mail from New York. It had a beautiful prologue about the garden and the gardener, then selections of lectures. I was totally astonished at the depth of thought and simplicity of explanation. It was as if I recognized it all from before. I read and reread that book as if my life depended on it! The book had a photo in it, which I also studied each time I opened it. When the month was up and the time came to return it, I recorded some of the book so I could keep it – yes, reel to reel – I read it into the microphone.

For a moment I toyed with the idea of not returning the book. It was already very very old and had been read many times. The worn cover was falling apart, I knew it wouldn’t last. But how could I steal from an esoteric library? Bad idea. I packaged it up and mailed it back.

Then a friend found that there were more of the books, 12 of them! We set about ordering them one at a time, the hard cover Orange Volumes. How was I to know then that this would become a lifelong study, that I was to meet one of the students of Inayat Khan, Shamcher Beorse, and be initiated by him, or that I would come to meet both his sons, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan and PiroMurshid Hidayat Inayat Khan? And of course, early in the process, learning that his name “Inayat” was not pronounced INayat (like “idiot”) but inAYat. Through this contact I’ve also met and learned from so many many remarkable people. All this contact emerged from the magical weaving of circumstances and events that is the sufi culture – a remarkable reality that infuses this so-called reality with the presence of divine guidance. From that time on, my life was carried along on the current of my soul’s true destiny. My story is not unusual. Anyone looking into these teachings finds life treasures and potentials to be unfolded through time.

Puttin’ on the Marketing Hat – does it look silly?

It seems I’m coming late to the new year, and we are already half-past January. The wave-shift from publishing the book of letters is still in process, as I’ve had to change from editing and preparing the book itself, and put on a marketing hat. I just hope this marketing hat isn’t too silly-looking.

It goes against everything my mother ever taught me about good manners, but these times are very different. What used to be called “boasting” and was frowned upon, is now “self-promotion”. What used to be called “name-dropping” is now “networking”. The game has always been the same, actually. I’m learning to overcome the barrier inside myself that says “don’t call attention to yourself” “don’t outstay your welcome” and other such adages that were drilled into me at a very early age. Now some people hire others to boast for them – the PR people or the advertisers who do this for a living. Without embarrassment. I’m not able to afford that.

I realize I need to do it for the sake of the book, nothing to do with me at all. I can get my mind around that. I certainly feel no qualms about promoting, recommending, and lavishing praise on the work of others. I genuinely want people to see and know about all the books, movies, sites, objects, etc. that are wonderful to me, and I just naturally want to enthusiastically share them. But when it comes to my own work, I feel the block, and have to use inner force to move past it.

One way I’ve done it is by telling myself that this is for Shamcher and his work (which it is) and I’m just a messenger of that (and not the only messenger either.) This works for me. Another help is to realize, as I have, that I actually didn’t even write this book, it wasn’t written with an audience in mind, but was always an intimate correspondence. Even though Shamcher asked me to publish the letters someday, and he always saw the book somewhere in his mind’s eye, it didn’t make any difference to what we wrote to each other at all. We never wrote for the public. So with that in mind, I can promote the documentation of this relationship – not as a book about MY relationship but about the inner impulse and resonance of the abstract message behind and within the letters.

So maybe the marketing hat isn’t so silly after all. I’m just helping the book reach the people that would like to know about it and to read it….

And for me to think that my little feelings and awkwardness are more important than the message within this book – now THAT attitude is foolish – I’m the one that’s silly! The marketing hat can be graceful and beautiful – and for the next little while it is the required dress code for the day.

Twas the Night Before Christmas

With my mum gone for a couple of years now, it’s especially poignant for me to hear that old saw, “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse!”

Here’s why:

When I was just a baby, my mother taught me to recite “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Word has it that I could recite it all until I got to “The moon on the crest of the new fallen snow gave a lustre of midday to objects below.” But here’s the thing: I was only a baby. I wasn’t even 2 years old – I was one and a half. She read it to me every night getting ready for Christmas and then I recited it with her, so she knew I had learned it. Then I just said it without the book. (Have I mentioned to you that I have ALWAYS been verbal?) So now when I think of the lovely rhythms and rhymes in the poem, how I learned the words in sequence, the patterns of the word rhythms, the meanings such as I could gather – not much at first but reinforced as the years went on, I am just so grateful that my mum took all that time to love me in that way.

Now when I use words, appreciate words, think or write, I have such gratitude to my dear and loving young mother who gave me that great gift. She was just 30 years old or so, and delighted in life. She really listened to what I said, and it brought out in me the ability to speak. She didn’t necessarily correct me but allowed me to discover what I was saying, what I was expressing, and affirmed it at source. It was a way for her to love me and for me to love her back.

Later, when I became older, adolescent and more secretive, thinking that I was so very different from her and her expectations of me,  I held back my words from her. I didn’t tell her what I was thinking or doing. But by then I could write, and think, and read, for myself, or so I thought. Yet when I wrote in my diary, or had my private worded experiences I was actually building on the foundation that she had begun for me so many years before, singsong reading The Night Before Christmas, or encouraging a little baby to speak, and tell, and share. Not information, but rhythm, sounds, and love, in the beauties of the English language, with all its quirks and playful twirls and swirls. At the time I took it all for granted. All those words, flying through our hearts on the wings of love!

 

 

Five Elements And The Feminine Divine Meditation – Video

My friend Jim recorded a conversation we had a few weeks ago about the elements and the divine feminine.

It’s now posted at the Meditation Techniques website, along with some commentary and context.

I really like the site, which has a variety of quick and easy techniques that anyone can do to find their way into meditation. We all know that changing your mind and heart and body happens at deep levels. These can best be accessed through inner concentration and meditative techniques that have been known down through the centuries by the sages and wise of all the religions and traditions. It’s great to see it becoming so accessible!

I thought I’d post the video here, too.

 

Old Friend

I’m sad today knowing that an old friend is close to his final passage, and that there is nothing I can do but send loving thoughts from a distance. I’m also sensing the collapse of my own history as it reconfigures to continue without his presence, feeling these shifts and changes. Memories of course come rushing in, along with understanding that as he lets go more and more of the life in the seen universe, he becomes a pinpoint in preparation to pass through the narrow gate. Dissolution or reunion? Natural reality reveals itself no matter what you may believe. This is the greatest human journey.

“I was a young man, back in nineteen sixties. You made your own amusements then, going to the pictures….” Incredible String Band.

Wonderful Wedding on the Sunshine Coast

It was an honor to perform the wedding ceremony for Deanne and Geordie this August, adapting the standard Sufi Universal Worship service to include their love of nature. We were on the gorgeous deck overlooking the ocean, with eagles in the evergreen treetops. Along with their wonderful family and friends, the ceremony was witnessed by all the beings of earth sky and sea who happened to be nearby.
I love being able to do this ceremony, and the others that are part of the Universal Worship work, first established by Inayat Khan in the 1920′s. Shamcher ordained me way back in the 70s in Edmonton, and since then I’ve officiated at weddings, baby blessings, house blessings, and memorial services, whenever asked.