Training the senses for success!

Thursday, September 09, 2010

Once again, one of my teachers, Eknath Easwaran, has captured an important truth that either propels me toward, or gets in my way of, success on the weight loss journey...and in LIFE in general! Cheesecakes in the bakery case or vegetarian sushi in the refrigerator case, movies instead of exercise, staring at a monitor or jumping on my bike...all great opportunities to train the senses!



Even as a tortoise draws in its limbs, the wise can draw in their senses at will.
– Bhagavad Gita

What a marvelous simile! Just imagine a tortoise being approached by a group of school children with sticks in their hands. He sees the children coming, and the command is given to the limbs, "Retire"” Immediately, the head, the tail, and the four legs withdraw into the shell. The children come; they tap on the shell with their sticks, trying to get the tortoise to come out. He is safe inside.

After the children leave and all is quiet, the tortoise ventures to stick his neck out, then his tail and legs. He continues his journey, unconcerned. He goes where he likes.

If we want to live in freedom, we must train our senses. We learn when to welcome an experience, and when to withdraw for our own safety. We become masters of our lives. Then we will be like the giant tortoise I saw at the zoo – wandering freely while all the other animals were in cages. A notice on his back read: "I am free. Don’t report me to the management."
-- Eknath Easwaran
www.easwaran.org/Thoughts

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Someone is looking to YOU for love.

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

I have, for as long as I can remember, had a resonance with and a primal attraction to hawks, particularly the red-tailed hawk. Though I'm not engaged in Native American spiritual practices, I have long considered the hawk to be my animal medicine, my spirit guide.

This beautiful creature does not neurotically worry about sufficient activity and proper weight, about isolation and loneliness, about appearances and purpose, but instead, in the hawk's own voice --
"my gold skull filled with nothing
but God's will
the whole day through, instead
of these glinting voices incessantly
unerringly guiding me
to pursue
what makes me sick, and not to
what makes me glad."

Franz Wright is an extraordinary man and poet, and has found redemption and hope after many years of mental illness and substance abuse. I love that Panhala presented "The Hawk" today, because it's exactly the right time and place for me to be with it...and to share it with you!



The Hawk

Maybe in a million years
a better form of human
being will come, happier
and more intelligent. A few already
have infiltrated this world and lived
to very much regret it,
I suppose.
Me,
I'd prefer to have come
in the form of that hawk, floating over
the mirroring fire
of Clearlake's
hill, my gold
skull filled with nothing
but God's will
the whole day through, instead
of these glinting voices incessantly
unerringly guiding me
to pursue
what makes me sick, and not to
what makes me glad. And yet
I am changing: this three-pound lump
of sentient meat electrified
by hope and terror has learned to hear
His silence like the sun,
and sought to change!
And friends
on earth at the same time
as me, listen: from the sound of those crickets
last night, Rene Char said
prenatal life
must have been sweet -
each voice perhaps also a star
in that night
from which
this time
we won't be
interrupted anymore - but
fellow monsters while we are still here, for one minute, think
about this: there is someone right now who is looking
to you, not Him, for whatever
love still exists.

~ Franz Wright ~
(God's Silence)
www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Hawk.htm
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Franz Wright is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1977. He was the Jacob Ziskind Visiting Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University until May 2009. He and his father James Wright are the only parent/child pair to have won the Pulitzer Prize in the same category.

Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1953, and during his youth, his family moved to the Northwest United States, the Midwest, and northern California. Wright believes that his birth overseas and early years of moving around with his parents never allowed him to put down roots in any one place. "That pattern was set very early," he says.

Not having roots has its benefits for Wright's chosen vocation. "I feel like I have many pasts and that helps my writing," he explains. "But, I also don't feel like I come from anywhere, and that's disturbing."

His parents divorced when he was 7 years old, and the young Wright went to live with his mother. While he would see his father periodically, it is a correspondence that he shared with his father for ten years that Wright speaks of with fondness. The two wrote letters back and forth while the younger Wright was between the ages of 15 and 25.

These letters were about life, but more importantly about poetry. As he started to publish at the age of 19, Wright found in his father's letters "great patience and honesty."

What the younger Wright also shared with his father, and his younger brother Marshall, was a proclivity for addiction and mental illness. Wright's journey as a poet has been extraordinary and yet riddled with the all too familiar cliches of the tortured artist. He is very open in talking about the length and arduous nature of his struggles with mental illness and addiction.

Wright speaks with stark clarity about his "manic depression, schizoid affective disorder coupled with delusions and paranoia." He has been hospitalized several times, although not in the last ten years, for these troubles, and for attempted suicides.

The mental illness was either the root of, or at least exacerbated by his addictions to alcohol and drugs. Wright tried "every single drug in existence," although his preferences were for opiates like heroin. "I never had a sober breath for thirty years," he says, quickly adding that today he has been in recovery for seven years.

As part of that recovery he attends daily AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings in Waltham, goes to Catholic mass in Boston each morning at 7 a.m. and works with others who are addicts and mentally ill. He considers that last the "best treatment because you realize you are not alone in the world and that these things are not a moral state of sin or crime."

Wright knows the depths of his own misery, feeling that he would never get well and that the end was always near. He once did not leave his apartment for two years. And yet, he has managed to continue writing and winning accolades. "I share myself as an example that severe mental illness and addiction is not the end of the road."

It is the hour
the moment
when it becomes possible
to distinguish a white
thread from a black,
so prayer begins.
-- from "Shaving in the Dark"

In 1999 he married the translator Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright. The two main sources of Wright's peace are his wife and his conversion to Catholicism at the age of 47 when he got baptized into the faith.

He wakes up at around 4:30 each morning, drives to St. Clement Catholic Church in Boston by 6 a.m. Before the daily mass at 7 a.m. he listens to a group that chants in Latin. He loves this routine. "I know that every 24 hours for one hour I will be completely happy," he says.

While Wright is grateful for the awards he has won because it helps him financially, accolades don't help with the struggles of trying to create consistently. However, one award does stand out because of its historical significance. The 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry that he won, coupled with the same prize his father won in 1972, make them the only father-son team to achieve that feat.

"It's fabulous," he says of this historical event. "It's an incredible honor, as my father was like a god to me. To be mentioned in the same breath as him still astounds me. I can't take it in."

Since his recovery he has been writing about his conversion, his addictions and about getting well. He is concerned with what happens to someone after this ecstatic conversion."t is strange to go to such heights and then return to reality," he says, speaking about the hard work and discipline it takes to continue writing in a meaningful way. Since he knows all too well about long periods of despair and doubt, he struggles even today because he doesn't "want to fade away."

Wright has translated poems by Rene Char, Erica Pedretti, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Wright has also received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, as well as grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Wright wrote the lyrics to and performs on the Clem Snide song "Encounter at 3AM" on the album Hungry Bird (released in February 2009). His latest book, Wheeling Motel, had selections put to music for the record 'Readings from Wheeling Motel' (2009)

Primary source of bio: www.shortnorth.com/FranzWright.html

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It's Labor Day: Cast All Your Votes for Dancing!

Monday, September 06, 2010

Happy Day! And what better way to enjoy the day than to DANCE!

FYI: When the Sufi poets, like Hafiz, Kabir, or Rumi, reference "the Friend" or "Beloved," it may (or may not) be clear to you that they are speaking of the Source, God, the Divine...whatever term for the Ground of Being that resonates with you.

This is a juicy and beautifully articulated piece. Ladinsky is a fabulous translator of Hafiz.

Enjoy the poem AND enjoy the day!



CAST ALL YOUR VOTES FOR DANCING

I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.

I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.

But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.

You can stay that way
And even bloom!

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter.

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.

You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.

Whenever you say God's name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter

And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!

~ Hafiz ~
(I Heard God Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

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Happy Labor Day (a la my hero Mary Oliver)!

Friday, September 03, 2010

SONG OF THE BUILDERS

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God -

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

~ Mary Oliver ~
(Why I Wake Early)
www.panhala.net/Archive/Song_of_the_
Builders.html

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Change from Within: New Orleans 5 Years Later

Friday, September 03, 2010

Karma Tube, a beacon of light in the media world, continues offering us gifts:

www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=2077



Hurricane Katrina changed New Orleans forever. For the past five years since, hurricane-force passion has been working to keep that change positive. "Change from Within" features the stories of three different people using three completely different paths to rebuild the city for the better...and keep it that way.

A community organizer who inspires people to "Talk LOVE in the community" through creative art and expression.

A public defender who wants to help the innocent by "shepherding them through their darkest moments".

A journalist in search of the voices of the "invisible men of the community".

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