SMELLS ‘N BELLS

I have always found that certain smells, aromas, and perfumes powerfully evoke memories and associations from my past.  The smell of freshly cut grass along with a gentle breeze can either transport me to an English coastline where as a small boy I would go kite flying,  or to a cricket pitch where as a young teen I would be the opening bowler in the school’s first eleven.  Even now, the smell of hot tar being laid on a road brings back wonderfully positive memories of me as a 3 year old playing with his trucks in the mud, as roads were constructed around the new sub-division where we used to live.

Today I am still enchanted by certain smells that tend to invoke feelings of peace and contentment whenever I am exposed to them. One of my co-workers who is an avid gardener, periodically brings in roses from his garden that give out a perfume that is nothing short of heavenly.  I usually encourage my colleagues to take a therapeutic whiff before going about the duties of the day. It  really does make a difference!  I am continually amazed that my sandlewood malas  (prayer beads used in Hinduism and Buddhism) are still as aromatic as the day that I purchased them.  Certain perfumes that are created naturally around us can function as a window or doorway into another level of perception.

As my wife and I were wandering around one of our favourite consignment stores the other day, I cast my eyes over the section where I’ve sometimes found really nice ornate brass bowls made in India, and could hardly contain my excitement when I saw a beautiful Tibetan prayer bell on display.  Having  seen these bells in specialty stores before, I realized that they do not come cheaply. I could not believe my good fortune when I looked at the price tag and discovered that it was on sale for $8!  I immediately purchased it and it has now become a companion bell to the one I already use for space clearing. The new bell is pictured on the right in the photo above.  I discovered that the bell also functions in the same way as a singing bowl when the outside of the bell is gently rubbed with a smooth wooden stick (puja) which produces a pure ringing  tone in much the same way that a wine glass does when the rim is rubbed with a finger. This bell is a welcome addition to my space clearing tools. The tones and vibrations produced by the bells  are used to purify negative influences, increase positive energy and restore harmony and balance, all of which I plan to do when my wife and I move into our new apartment this month.

Prem and Shanti!

IMPORTANT UPDATE REGARDING YOGA OF BREATH AND SOUND COURSE AT MONTEREY CENTRE

In the event that this course is filled I will be teaching it again privately.  If you are not able to register at the Monterey Centre, or if the dates are unsuitable for you, please feel free to e-mail me with your contact information through the contact page on this site and I will keep you updated on further developments.

Prem and Shanti!

COOL NEW SPIRITUAL STUFF

One of the privileges of being a manager at a large downtown bookstore is the ability to request the occasional desk copy of books I order for my departments. This is essentially a freebie from the publisher as a thank you for the order.  As the Eastern Religions, New Age and Alternative Spirituality sections fall under my jurisdiction I am able to request books that are especially useful to me for teaching and for private devotional practice.  I recently received two items that are a delight to use,  and I would like to share and recommend these products.

First of all, The Dharma Deck – Wisdom of the Vedas

This is a set of 52 beautiful cards housed in a firm cardboard box.  On one side are monochrome photographs of India and her people and on the other side are adages and quotes offering insight and inspiration from  India’s vedic tradition.  I have the box open with the card for the week propped up inside so I can see it before I leave home. This is a beautiful addition to my devotional collection.

I had forgotten that I had requested the item below and so it came as a pleasant surprise to find it waiting for me when I arrived at work after a couple of days off.

The cover describes it nicely.  ‘A Pop-Up Gallery of Traditional Art and Wisdom’.  It also serves a dual purpose as a portable travel altar for those who like to have a focal point for their practice, as hotel rooms are usually conspicuous for their absence of disposable altars for the spiritually minded.  It is a wonderful example of paper engineering.  The covers  serve as supporting  side walls that you open to reveal a choice of four Hindu deities that drop down in gorgeous 3d designs.

The photo below shows the altar for Durga, the feminine deity of protection.  The other three deities in this gallery are Lakshmi, the goddess of abundance,  Shiva the destroyer of illusions, and Ganesha the elephant headed god who removes obstacles.  Each comes with an appropriate mantra and yantra (a pictorial representation of the mantra).

Prem and Shanti!

BEAUTY AND THE BOX

When we feel that others perceptions of us are not based on who we think we actually are, we say that we have been ‘put in a box’.  Usually this implies that we see ourselves as more than what others perceive us to be.  Sometimes we live in a self-imposed box that others see as restricting and limiting when in fact, if the box is of our choosing it becomes a place of freedom, expression, and limitless possibilities.  The knack is to know who you really are, find out what you really want to do, and then pursue it passionately because ultimately that is what will bring happiness.  Like the woman in the wonderful Ruth Bernhard photograph above who is obviously languishing with some comfort in her box, we  can also be equally content and at ease in a box of our own making  whereas the young woman in the photo below unhappily inhabits a box probably not of her own making.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow is well known for having identified what he referred to as a ‘hierarchy of needs’ among which is the need for self-actualization.  Maslow describes self-actualization as a person’s need to be and do that which the person was “born to do”.  “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write”.  Maslow says that a self-actualized person is “completely independent of the good opinion of others”.  To be truly happy we must not conform to others expectations of us and allow ourselves to be put in a box that is not of our own choosing, but allow ourselves to be who we really are and not worry what others may think.

It’s impossible to be born into this world without someone somewhere having expectations of you. You are expected to talk at a certain age, walk at a certain age, and to measure up to various standards of normality that culture and society have decided is acceptable.  The son born to a professional soccer player will almost certainly be expected to exhibit at an early age the same natural giftings that his father possesses.  Will the son or daughter born to brilliant musicians inherit a natural musical gift?  Probably, because genes do factor strongly into the equation, but the point is this.  We all have a choice to do that which pleases us and we have the power and freedom to find happiness in those things that we have a passion for and not settle for anything less.

Prem and Shanti!

COFFEE, CAKE, AND CONSEQUENCES OF POSSIBILITY THINKING

One of the perks of my occasional trips to Vancouver to see my daughter Katie-Rose and her husband Christopher is the fact that they live on 14th Avenue just around the corner from Phoscao on South Granville. Phoscao is a fantastic little coffee shop that offers not only great coffee and a wonderful selection of goodies, but also a perfectly peaceful environment conducive to reading, writing, or just hanging around. A few of my blogs have been written here as indeed is the one you’re reading right now.

At the moment I am enjoying an americano that seems to be particularly hitting the spot. I also just single-handedly conquered a colossal sticky cinnamon bun (actually I shared it with my wife, but the former sounds more manly don’t you think?). An elderly man with an Irish lilt squeezed by my chair a moment ago and when I asked if he had room he replied, “I’m OK, I’m just one of the little people”.  Ah, the mythical (or maybe not) little people of the Emerald Isle who take their place alongside the other small folk of popular lore such as pixies, fairies and the like. As an aside, it may come as a surprise to many to learn that C. S. Lewis, renowned Oxford don, Christian writer and creator of The Narnia Chronicles,  believed in the probability of a sub-strata of creation inhabited by these creatures.

Like the White Queen of Alice in Wonderland who had no difficulty believing in as many as six impossible things before breakfast, I also have no difficulty believing that anything is possible. This is a quality (or handicap, depending on your worldview) that I have managed to hang onto since childhood.  In a nutshell, this is my take on it.  How can we say anything is impossible if it hasn’t happened yet?  Because once the ‘impossible’ happens, it becomes by definition ‘possible’. Or if something happens that popular opinion deems to be impossible, how can we be sure that it has been reported accurately, i.e. without the presupposition that ‘these kinds of things simply don’t happen.’ It has been shown that history is notorious for burying ‘inconvenient truths’ and sometimes reporting as fact events that are later revealed to be totally false. Science likewise is not exempt from the sin of omission when faced with certain phenomena that doesn’t fall within the carefully defined parameters of physics. Perhaps there are laws as yet undiscovered that allow for the seemingly impossible to happen. As someone has once said, “yesterday’s magic becomes tomorrows science”.

Like the lucid dreamer who awakes within the dream only to discover that he or she has total control over the dream, perhaps we have more power in this life than we are presently aware of.  I personally relish the idea of a world without boundaries where all things are possible.  Perhaps we already live in that world but just don’t know it yet.  It’s time to wake up – there’s work to do!

Prem and Shanti!

BILL THE CAT – A CASUALTY OF STRESS?

In my last blog I promised to discuss further the subject of stress management and mantra meditation. However on second thoughts it seemed to me important enough a subject to warrant its own page on this site, but before you visit the stress relief page,  please ponder with some sympathy the image of Bill the Cat above. For many years Bill was a much loved character on the long running ‘Bloom County’ comic strip. He is the only cat in the world (that I know of) that has actually died from acne! (I am not making this up. Read the comic strip). However, I personally believe the acne was in all probability stress induced.

Over 30 years ago there was a quintet consisting of four Indians and one Englishman who together produced the most sublime example of Indian/Western jazz-fusion the world had ever heard. This band was led by the incomparable guitar virtuoso John McLaughlin of Mahavishnu Orchestra fame, and the name of the quintet was SHAKTI.

This was the first time I had come across the word and I had no idea what it meant, but I knew I liked the music. Today I still listen to and enjoy the music of Shakti, but now I know the meaning of the word both intellectually and experientially as the power that reveals itself as essentially feminine. In Hindu mythology we often see gods and goddesses in the roles of husbands and wives and in each case the male represents consciousness and the female represents the power without which consciousness cannot manifest in any useful or meaningful way. For example Lakshmi is the wife and creative power of Narayana who is the personification of the source of all reality, including the creation of Brahma the Creator. Lakshmi is also the spouse of Vishnu in another context, and also the shakti of Shiva.

These fascinating and sometimes complex myths with various characters interacting with each other in different ways, are picturesque attempts to explain in story form the way in which the energy of the feminine acts in, and interpenetrates this world. For a more in depth explanation of the nature of Shakti visit the Shakti page on this site.

Prem and Shanti!

SOMETIMES I NEED TO BE REMINDED

 

I am really fortunate to be one of those people who doesn’t experience a great deal of stress in life. Sure, there are the normal kind of stressors that come with any kind of management position (I am a manager at a large bookstore in downtown Victoria BC), but it depends on how you deal with the stress as certain situations arise. I deal with them pretty well, due in no small part to my spiritual disciplines which you can read about on other pages.

Early Sunday morning I encountered for a short period of time the kind of debilitating mind-numbing stress that paralyses you into total inaction – at least temporarily. I had arrived an hour earlier than anyone else in order to get some work done. Shortly after I had arrived and was sitting in front of the computer,  the fire alarms went off.  In the seven odd years I had been with this company I had never been present at any of the fire drills and so I had no idea of how these alarms sounded. I had heard rumours but I dismissed them as exaggerations.  The rumours were true. These alarms were more suited to an incoming missile attack than a plain old fire. I was so disoriented that I first mistook them for the security alarms and assumed there had been a breach and therefore I was dealing with intruders. I ran to the front doors to dial 911 on my cellphone so I would at least have an easy exit if confronted, but then realised that all the doors were still unarmed and that there was no breach of security. Looking around I could see no smoke or fire but called 911 anyway. It turned out in the end to be nothing more than an insect in one of the smoke detectors who had given his life for the sole purpose of causing me maximum stress for 5 minutes or so.

So, this is stress. How would I rate it on a scale of 1 to 10?  I would have said about 8 or 9, and then my wife reminded me of the time I had a gun held to my back when I was in the wrong place at the wrong time during a bank robbery. I still say the fire alarms rate an 8 or 9 because I was in my happy place during the bank robbery and seemed not to experience any stress at all.  During the course of a day, I see all kinds of people experiencing multiple levels of stress and I know that this is not conducive to healthy or fulfilling living. In the next installment I’ll address the contemporary phenomenon of stress that pervades all facets of our present lives.

Prem and Shanti!

KEEP YOUR EYE ON MARS!

While I am not an astrologer, I do have an interest in the way that the movements of the planets can affect the way in which circumstances play out in our lives. It’s clear that the details of daily newspaper horoscopes cannot apply equally to millions of people all over the world, but the movements of the planets through the different astrological signs can genuinely impact our individual lives in many different ways.  Although we may not be aware of exactly how the details will play out, there is a way of softening the negative karmic effect of any planet which may be causing us difficulties, and that is through the application of Sanskrit mantra.

There are specific mantras for the sun, moon, and all of the planets, that have been chanted for thousands of years to great effect.  Presently, Mars is in Leo for an unusually long period of time (8 months), which hasn’t happened since 1962-63. This affects all signs at this time, and because Mars is the ruler of war, and as such, feeds ego, ambition and drive, we have to be very careful. These are all useful qualities in themselves, but I’m sure we’ve all had experiences where misplaced ego and ambition have worked against us.

Here is a mantra which will soften the effect of one’s planetary karma with regard to the planet Mars.

Om Angarakaya Namaha (phonetically, Om Aan-gaara-kai-yah-nah-mah-ha)

The ‘kaya’ and ‘namaha’ are said as one word,  ’kayanamaha’.  The stress is on ‘yah’.

Mantras are primarily energy-based first, and meaning-based second. The approximate meaning is ‘Om and salutations to the presiding spirit of the planet Mars’.

Prem!

A WORD ABOUT MANTRA MEDITATION

I have not yet talked about the discipline that occupies a fairly large chunk of my life, and that is the practice of Mantra Yoga.  The more technically correct term would be Shabda Yoga,  itself a division of  Nada Yoga, or the Yoga of Sound. This practice is an ancient form of meditation that is used by both Tibetan Buddhists and Hindus.

The word ‘mantra’ comes from the Sanskrit root ‘manas’ which relates to the linear thinking mind. ‘Tram’ means ‘to protect’, ‘to free’, ‘to go across’.  So the literal meaning of mantra is a tool to free the mind from the mind.  The language of mantra is Sanskrit, a language that is recognized to be firstly energy based, and secondly meaning based. This is why the chanting of various mantras is such a powerful tool for self-transformation.

I use mantras for both devotional and practical purposes.  Many people upon visiting India for the first time are surprised to find that mantras are dispensed for all manner of purposes.  There are hundreds of mantras, some for health, some for abundance, and some for protection.  It is not uncommon in India for business deals to be sealed along with the blessing of Lord Ganesha for the removal of any obstacles along the way.  Of course the ultimate objective of all mantras is to eventually achieve ‘moksha’ or enlightenment. However, the judicial use of mantras in certain situations can considerably alleviate the problems of everyday life on the path to enlightenment.

My own day starts with the chanting of a fairly lengthy hymn to Lakshmi the Vedic feminine principle of abundance and blessing (The Mahalakshmi Ashtakam), followed by another lengthy hymn, this time.to the primordial source of all being (The Purusha Suktum).  This is followed by the ‘queen of mantras’, the Gayatri. From that point on I use many different mantras throughout the day to assist me in the smooth running of my duties. Along with the practice of pranayama (breath) my days are almost without exception satisfying and fulfilling. For more on Sanskrit Mantra please visit the meditation page.

Prem!

A WORLD OF FAITH

The world we live in today functions by faith. By this I mean that everyone without exception has a philosophy of life that takes into account not only why we are here, but also how this world and universe came into being, and how it continues to exist. These life philosophies can be purely mechanistic and scientific or they can allow for some form of transcendent cosmic oversight, in other words a religious or spiritual worldview.

It is becoming increasingly more difficult to find followers of agnosticism, the once noble refuge of philosophical fence sitters.  The idea that it is not possible to definitively know the answers to life’s ultimate questions has become unfashionable in recent years. This could partly be due to the present day pressure to have an opinion on just about everything. Whether the issue is global warming or one’s own philosophical/spiritual worldview, it is no longer acceptable to simply have no opinion because it is considered synonymous with apathy.

However, there has recently been a resurgence of radical atheism epitomized by such books as ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins and ‘God is not Great’ by Christopher Hitchens. These books are just two examples of a new atheism that is prepared  not only to evangelize but also to vigorously defend its position (complete with doctrine and dogma) with the same agressive and sometimes unreasoning postures evident in the most extreme forms of religious fundamentalism. It is interesting that this new brand of atheism while mainly directed against Islam and the monotheistic God of Judeo-Christianity, appears at a time when millions of people worldwide are embracing a new form of spirituality that is inclusive and non-sectarian.

Contemporary spiritual teachers such as Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Caroline Myss are introducing to a new audience the timeless truths and ancient wisdom found within the writings of many of the world’s great traditions. Unifying universal principles of living can be found in the Vedas of India, the teachings of the Buddha, The Tao of lao Tzu, and in the mystical tradition of Christianity. In future installments I will examine some of these ancient wisdom principles and see how we can apply them in order to enrich and enhance our lives

Prem!