Tag: karma

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Why me? Why not?

When cancer strikes – or strikes again – a most frequent question is “why me?”.  Almost universally, we believe that we live our lives well enough to stave off the tumours and lesions and lumps.  Perhaps a death-wish 60-a-day smoker might be secretly pleased when the CAT scans show a mass, but most of us just say “why me?”.
My mother had a book lying around the house called “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.”  I never read it.  But, I understood it to be an analysis of tragedy from a Jewish perspective.  I saw it mostly when she was dying of brain cancer, but I am sure that she bought it after her bitter divorce.  You know, why me?
A client of mine who has been fighting cancer in one form or another for thirteen years gave me a very good answer to this question.  I asked her if she asks why me and she said

“No, I usually say:  why not?”

Indeed.
Being face to face with the precarity of life, I ponder our relationship to the physical body.  When we ask why me?, we are not only asking whether our past actions have brought this suffering to bear upon us.  We are also asking why our life is to be snuffed out.
Did anyone give you a guarantee when you were born?  Did anyone promise you that you would live 80 healthy years then die peacefully in your sleep?  No?  I thought not.
But, there is a pervasive belief in our Christian societies that suffering and death are a punishment, yet another, for our sins.  I am not a Christian scholar, but was raised Christian and was quite insistent in my beliefs for some years.  Like many, I got angry at God.  Cruel and callous, presiding over all this suffering, how could this entity be the bringer of peace and the ultimate judge of humanity?  I stopped believing in the doctrine I had been taught.  I began to search.
My search eventually led me to yoga.  Via yoga, I have been able to re-evaluate the core values I was taught in childhood.  I do believe that the Kingdom of God is Within You.    I believe that yoga gives us the tools to find the Kingdom of God Within Us.  I believe that Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are like a spiritual how-to, laid out by a spiritual scientist, telling us to try it ourselves and live the results.
There is a strong thread of anarchy running through all this thought.  I have been an anarchist since I first learnt the word.  But, anarchy as a political system has to per forza de prefaced by the Human Revolution, in which each member of the collective (society) prepares mind and body for the honourable social responsibility that anarchy supposes.  We forgo policing and state-based control when we become fully functional and responsible.  Until then, we outsource our moral compass, putting it in the hands of politicians who, by their very nature, are both corrupt and power-hungry.
So, why me?  Well, why not?  The greatest obstacle to joy and peace is ignorance. Ignorance of our true nature.  Patanjali posits that there is an eternal soul within the human being.  The soul, Purusha, uses the physical apparatus of the human body in order to observe the world and continue learning.  Suffering arises when the Ego identifies with the physical body, imagining it to BE the soul.  But the body is not the soul.  It is the vehicle.  We must care for it because a long life allows us more time for learning. But, we must not identify with it.  When we are ignorant of our true nature, we are in a state called avidya.  Avidya leads to suffering, dukha.  Suffering leads to wrong action, trying to alleviate or escape suffering.  This wrong action is called karma.  The Law of Karma is avidya->dukha->karma.  Ignorance leads to suffering leads to wrong action which then reinforces our ignorance.  So repeats the cycle, the much quoted but little understood karma….
Why me?  Why not?  This body is only a temporary home.  It is not your last stop.  You will inhabit many more.  if it is riddled with cancer and pain, don’t ask why me.  Ask, why not.  Perhaps your mission in this incarnation is complete?  Perhaps your suffering is the teacher you need at this time.  Perhaps you will never know why and you must learn to be content in not knowing.
Why me? Why not.
persianflower
 

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Musings: The unsung note

I had the great pleasure of returning to the stage this Thursday past.  Yes, dear yogis, in my spare time I am a singer-songwriter.
I began this odyssey years ago. In fact, I could say that I have always been a musician.  As  child I played the oboe, and the recorder.  I used to sit there with my tape recorder, registering a harmony to then play the melody on top.  Too bad I only had one track!  I gave up classical music, as most teens do, only to then buy a red Yamaha bass at the age of 18.  I played in a band, and enjoyed mild local success, before shyness and nerves forced me off the stage.  Life continued apace.  I began writing more and more, diaries, poetry, laments, and soon, songs.  It took me 10 years to buy a guitar  and another four before I could tune by ear and play with some fluency. At this point, I bought my lovely Taylor 414CE cutaway and began composing the songs that I still play today.

How does this relate to yoga?

Vishuddah chakra and overcoming fear.

Singing is related to the throat (vishuddha) chakra.  Mine was most definitely blocked.  I used to speak in  a whisper and was plagued by the sensation of something in my throat.  (In TCM, this is called plum-pit throat and is related to the Liver Qi).  I bought a couple of books (Finding Your Voice, Zen Guitar), took a workshop (The Healing Voice with Jill Purce), but, mostly, I just sang.  Over and over, through smiles and tears.  Overcoming my incredible fear, I took to stage in open mic nights and small gigs in and around London.  It was terrifying but I knew it did me good.  Still, the fear was being pushed down, not truly overcome.  But, I think that in yoga we have to push past our fear, be brave and have great faith, in order to grow.  So, that was one phase of my growth.

Control of the diaphragm

Another phase of my work was taking control of my diaphragm muscle.  The diaphragm is fundamental to the singer.  My yoga teacher gave me a short personalized practice in which I did krama in the exhale.  This means, the exhale was broken up into two or more parts, and then the breath retained with the lungs empty.  For the first time in my life, I could actually locate my own diaphragm.  My colleague Santi, a fantastic osteopath, adjusted my diaphragm and pericardium, loosening the tendons and leaving my breath much freer.

Control of the perineum 

By now, my voice was vibrating nicely in my chest and abdomen.   It was mellower and sweeter and easier to control.  But, still, on the high notes, something was missing.  In my ongoing reading – I am voracious, and practically only read on theme – I came across a few lines in The Anatomy of Hatha Yoga by H. David Coulter. 

  A famous conductor…once shouted…”No! No! Squeeze it in – push it up!”  He may not have known it, but he was telling them to seal off and control the anatomical perineum – the base of the pelvis -and thereby cultivate what we have been calling abdominopelvic energy.  All trained singers have learned that the purest and richest sound originates from this region.  In the language of singers, the base of the body “supports” the voice.

Wa-hey!  that’s the secret.  On the high notes, all that perineum work I’d been doing in yoga would pay in by holding my voice up in a clean, sweet note.  Hallelujah!

Believing in myself

Yoga teaches us that within each and every human being there is a tiny spark of Divinity.  We don’t need any mediators when we talk to God because God is within.  When we first learn, then internalize this, our faith in ourselves grows and grows and we begin to value ourselves for who we are instead of what we do.  Through yoga, I realized that my music, my words, my beliefs and my message are not only valid but beautiful and even Divine.  And having that behind me, I take the stage with courage and honesty, and never try to emulate the music or sound of anyone else.  This is freedom.  And now, the fear is not being suppressed. It is no longer there.  I offer it all to God with the simple mantra, Ishvara Pranidanah.
There is karmic cleansing here.  My grandfather went down to London in the 1920’s and played his clarinet in the earliest SoHo jazz clubs.  From my limited research, there was only a handful of jazz clubs in the UK at that time, so both he and my grandmother – they met on the jazz scene – were well ahead of their time.  They married, and moved up to Yorkshire where dreams of jazz music were replaced by granite houses and the family woolens mill.  A frustrated musician to the end of his days, Grandsir, as well called him, would get drunk on G&Ts and pull out the clarinet at Christmas, even as his dentures popped from his gums.  My mum sang.  In the choir, in Gilbert and Sullivan productions, in the singalong Messiah every Ottawa Christmas.  My father was the greatest music fan.  He wept and danced and collected music.  His LP collection filled the basement of a huge Saskatchewan house by the time he died.  I come by it in honestly.  Music is in my blood.  But yoga helped – and helps – me realise it in a sane and safe way.
When our karma (work) and our dharma (lifepath) unite, we find liberation (Kaivalya).  Let yoga guide you towards Self-realization.  And don’t think for a moment that Self-realization means isolation in an ashram.  For some, maybe, but not for everyone.  Sri Aurobindo’s contribution to modern yogic thought was the idea that liberation can be found here and now, in daily life, not only when the soul leaves the body.  Be happy here and now. Bless y’all.