Tag: pain

The Yoga of Depression

Published on by Tilopa 2.02 Comments

Depression is something that I like many other people know too well. I have a story, my oldest son killed himself, also I am an experiencer of crimes against humanity.  If I wanted to tell you my story I could make you cry in a split second. However, I do not wish to be that man, one who tells a tale of heartbreak, despair, hopelessness and all the other responses that can manifest after trauma.
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The Room
Some years ago I found myself in a situation where I thought I had lost everything, circumstances were such that I woke up at 6 in the morning in a room  with the smell of other peoples smelly feet (definitely a serious problem) and body odour, rubbish everywhere.  I was in a backpackers because I had to relocate and it was the fastest solution I could find. That probably doesn’t sound bad but it was the circumstances that lead me there which were heartbreaking. We don’t need that story either, it’s the response we are interested in.  Life rolls along and STUFF HAPPENS.
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On that morning was a defining moment, we have all heard of the Dark Night of the Soul when even our god has betrayed us, this was my turn to wander through the Valley of Darkness but not like in the Psalm where there is a hope.  I wept, there was grief, it felt like the end of the world and there was no way out.
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Rethinking
I was very lucky as a child, my parents knew I was clever, brains and sensitivity, they said I was ‘deep’.  I was very religious and it isolated me, it was odd for a boy to pray for hours, I still think it’s a bit creepy at times.  But I loved the ‘space’, the silence in the church where I could escape and my thoughts were free.  The story I got from my parents of being ‘clever’ helped shape me.  I have always said I am a genius and I won’t back down on that one, I invite others to be brilliant if they can’t cope with being a genius.
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As I lay in my bed with the smell of bad odour around, the germaphobe within was on high alert, I was scared to breathe in case the particles of smelly socks made their way up my nostrils, the bed felt slightly greasy, it was cold, dark, I will add raining even if it wasn’t and I know there were ghosts in the room (another story).
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I See My Light Come Shining
In a moment from nowhere came my inner Batman, Superman or other superhero of choice, he began to push through the negative thoughts, my genius had arisen, the Avatar of  Vishnu incarnated, the Christ returned, Buddha awoke… there it was. I saw the doorway and went through, I conquered the Bardo.  What I did may not seem overly important, it could be perceived as trivial.
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I cannot remember a day in my life getting out of bed before 6 a.m without a serious reason.  I still didn’t get up.  I lay there and made a decision that changed my life forever, I decided to go forward and not to wallow in the past. I chose to create a new pathway into forever.  I made a conscious choice to do three things after I had jumped out of bed and had showered.  The first was I did an hours IT study of a programming language, secondly I did an hours music theory study and thirdly I played two hours of guitar.
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Understanding
What I have said above may not seem significant, however, I made a conscious decision to never go back to what hurt me, to rise above the circumstances that were going on around me which broke my heart (no it wasn’t romance). I planted seeds that would grow into trees in my garden that I knew would eventually outgrow the weeds and vines of entanglement in my life; I trusted in myself.  This was just over six years ago and although I like many others have had difficult days, the foundation I laid at the crossroads of my life where I was totally broken has lead me to a wondrous place.
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The Many Forms of Yoga
So why have I called this the Yoga of Depression?  To put it simply, everything is constantly unified, it all MOVES in GOD.  The word Yoga relates to unity; when we are out of the flow such as in a state of depression or despair we are fragmented, we don’t see the continuation of life, we see things in still frames, the unity is obscured.  The ART of life is about turning things that are discarded and broken into useful things.  Old branches of trees make it to the fireplace to warm us or even make beautiful furniture.  Food scraps become compost to feed the garden.  One mans trash is another mans treasure … may we always find the treasures.
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May all beings be happy 

Dissolving the World into Love

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The world moves, everything changing constantly… familiarity blinds people.  So few notice that each object in the field around them is reforming moment to moment, it disintegrates and re-emerges in space.  Humans ‘know’ too much, it’s not really knowing in a wisdom sense, it’s data-compiling, an assumption that because something is perceived by name and can be identified that it will be enough to close the book on it and recall it from memory when needed.
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The Unknown Future
It can be difficult to face things that were on our invisible bucket-list that sits in our subconscious.  We make assumptions about the future and stumble towards it oblivious to what is going on.  Suddenly another new possibility and direction appears from nowhere and our world wobbles like it’s been hit by a meteor.  What we expected to happen ‘invisible-izes’ itself and dissolves into the ethers.  If we are crazy, crazy, we chase that unborn experience, reach to grab it and although we see its misty form, it’s not really there, we are just dancing with ghosts, phantoms of the past and non-real futures. Wise men let them lie and create new potentials, briefly looking over their shoulder as the universe recedes in the rear-vision mirror of life.
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Micro Bliss
I spend my days seeking the perfect coffee, it’s a minor side show but as a serious thinker I do need simple things, delicacies, stuff that generates joy, these things that give us micro-bliss are like life-buoys in space, the journey through the corridors of the world can get a little tough and having things to snap us out of seriousness is critical. Seek joy, seek peace; I know that wisdom is not enough to wander planet Earth. Dinotopia speak says “Breath Deep Seek Peace”, their civilisation did not know of chocolate and coffee.
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Mad World
The noise, the bustle, the bling, the ads, the show, fast cars, credit cards, a super-imposed reality, over consumption, upgrading objects and throwing away what was quite okay… it did its job, the losing of sovereignty by distraction, the Rishis watch on in wonder at the play of mice and men … wine is wondrous, just a mouthful, not a bucket to drown in and hide ones feelings.
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In this chaos and busyness, people throw away people, sadly we’ve all done it … I’ve learned too well that it is what I have done to others that hurts me more than what they have done to me, as time passes this truth in some way haunts me, it always has; in the moment other peoples antics hurt but as we move along the arrow of time, it’s our STUFF that bites us on the bum.  Even the small moments of unkindness are things that I struggle with, I have all the techniques, the tools required to resolve many of the problems of the Universe but I know in truth in the end I must just sit and feel into the disappointments as they rise in my consciousness, wait until they pass, to find a way to be comfortable in my uncomfortableness, to float through the tsunami of experience in the lifeboat of understanding and accept change.  Humans throw away people as if they are disposable cups, had enough of that one, get me a new model.  I know there is a need to stop and breath, to seek kindness, to aim at healing, to resolve, to acquire peace, without resolve it is difficult to CREATE the future, emotions block the flow of energy through the pathways of the brain.
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The Field of Life
The field of life brings many experiences, often those we don’t want… quick I am outta here. We are selective, we choose the happy and run from the sad.  And yes that seems fair ‘n’ normal.  I am reminded that the great Sage the Buddha reminded us that “the First Truth is that all life is suffering, pain, and misery,” I will go out on and edge and say that is not what HE said. That is an enslavement program implemented by those who came later.  It is twisted, a great Sage would not say that and I am not in any way being disrespectful to my great hero Gautama Buddha. A Sage would see the beauty of the creation, the bliss of unfolding life in the field of space; he would understand ‘entanglement’ but NEVER say that life is suffering.
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NEW DAWN
The new day breaks, I rise to the challenge of it, the beauty and mystery of it is what I seek.  To heal my heart, to share love, to grow, to resolve what troubles me, to BE the man I have dreamed of being, to be kind enough to myself to know when I am wrong, when decisions are or were poor and to accept them. I seek tenderness in the world around me, to be an ally when needed and to accept change, to allow others to BE who they are regardless of my opinions which are often bold.  To be vulnerable and stand on the edge looking into space and say “I accept what is emerging” and to adapt my dream accordingly into something wondrous, delicate, artful … I wander through space, may integrity always find me and light my way.  And in the unknowingness I will seek and find love in all things.
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Tilopa 2.0

Embracing the Phantoms of Eternity

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We walk such a fine line in life, between the polarities of joy and suffering, success and failure, we stand on the edge of forever looking out to where we may one day be and at the same time we sometimes bow our heads and look down, as if into an abyss of darkness forgetting the rising sun, the stars, the new blooms, the spring, unborn love and the sweetness reflected in the bees.
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The Cosmic Gatekeeper
The shadow of death passes over every house, only the free men are in some way detached from it.  Not that they don’t feel, they do, they rain tears down their cheeks like all others, it’s just that they see the chapters in the book of life as part of the totality that changes shape and allow the phantoms to pass.  Wisdom is the fruit of experience, we are feeling beings firstly, and as my dearest wise friend once said to me. ‘the Sage will never tell you the price he paid for liberation,’ those words have allowed me to embrace change when my heart has been taken to the limits of despair, it has been a light to guide me beyond my known limitations.
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Knock Knock
The knock on the door that everyone lives in fear of comes once for each one of our beloveds.  Knowing this allows us to live every other day rejoicing their existence, to look for ways to to resolve our petty differences, to hold them more often, to look into their eyes and see the wonder of their being, to rejoice in the miracle of their existence and when they dissolve through the veil of infinity we honor them by living a glorious life, to make sure our days are not wasted in trivia, petty things.
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Foreverness
As each person leaves the stage of the world, may we bow in reverence.  They have left a piece of themselves in us that lives on and becomes a part of us, a mannerism, a snippet of wisdom, a gesture that defined them, they walk with us over the horizon into eternity.
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May we always find love and in a state of forgetfulness bypass the misgivings, see the splendor in the meetings of the spirits that we are, and be gentle with each other.
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May empathy, compassion and kindness always be restored and rise again quickly even when we lose our way.

God Doesn’t Have Problems

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We live in a world that seems to have an endless stream of  chaos, mad governments, injustices, violence, suicides, social imbalance, the rich get more toys, the poor crave basics, really bad coffee and many people see no end to the suffering.
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I live on a busy Melbourne street, the other morning a guy was doing somersaults on the road, oddly enough hardly anyone noticed.  I wasn’t sure whether to report the event to help keep the guy safe from himself but when I thought it through, logic told me the fellow survived this long without my intervention, so I just let it roll.  (‘Scuse the pun)
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The Wise Ones
We are very fortunate in our lives, wise people come and go.  Sometimes we miss them; if we are alert they become part of our transformation, they leave us gems to ponder, it may be years before their wisdom unpacks.  I had a very great teacher.  Some people want the sparkly-eyed guru or master in Indian or Japanese pyjamas or dressing gown, to each their own.  But I know from experience,  often the truly wise pass us by without a fuss, no exhibition of spirituality or devotion, they can touch our lives very deeply.  My greatest teacher acted and looked quite normal, it wasn’t obvious, he was understated … when I had a conversation with him about the Dharma or consciousness, I found the mat was pulled out from underneath me whenever I sat chatting with him.  Transformation is about our known world dissolving, it has an uncomfortableness about it.  Many of us eventually come to the conclusion that our story of the world is not exactly correct, this can be troublesome to say the least, we hold ourselves together because we assume coming apart is a problem. But coming apart is the doorway to transformation.
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Dialogue with the Wise
During a conversation with my dear friend he once said to me, “God doesn’t have problems.”  Oh okay, yeah right… Embedded in this simple one liner was a healing balm. Obviously if someone doesn’t have ANY concept of a God it won’t mean much and will be bypassed.  My childhood God died years ago, the bloke with the white beard and floating entourage keeping a sense of order and handing out door passes into heaven to the good guys and go straight to jail cards, do not collect a hundred dollars and get ready for an experience of hot coals for the others.  Fear of God or a negative outcome keeps a lot of people in check.   I guess even without a God watching out for any misdemeanours or serious breaches, people would probably still realise that being a dumb-ass wont get them too far in the long run and a sense of natural order will come about.   But my viewpoint of God is different, not better, I said different.
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My friend said, “God doesn’t have problems.”  So do I make him an authority on God?  We know from experience many Gods have come and gone, civilisations sunken under the oceans and they buried their deities with them, wars fought over different religious ideologies, crimes committed against humanity while forcing a religious elitist agenda.  So God doesn’t have problems?
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Religious – Maybe, Maybe Not
I guess I will have to step out of the land of the Gods and come back to myself and attempt to do the impossible, rethink what God might be, temporarily place the mystery into a box and deal with the ‘doesn’t have problems’.  We do know religions at times can be a problem and we also know there are many good kind happy religious people; and also there are people without religions who have problems and where as others live beautiful abundant lives as atheists.  A healthy minded atheist will ask the right questions, an annoying one has a cult mentality.
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I had always in the past referred to myself a religious man; and mind you one who is at odds with all religions, the arrogance of the clergy, their crimes against children, the exhibitions of devotion and flaws within their twisted-to-suit-them scriptures, the holy elitism and superiority complex they have in relation to non believers and outsiders.   I will maintain that loosely I am a religious man so I can sort the issue and explain why the gem of wisdom has been so critical in my life.
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Lighting up the Shadows
When we have a traumatic or negative experience we generally look at the shadow and this is a very reasonable normal human response.  Losing ones wallet, or breaking a leg is never really a fun experience, an emotional reaction is not unexpected.  As a rule we don’t question a normal emotional response to an experience unless we are one of those people working on ‘mindfulness’ or some other Buddhist technique.  There are people who have had the experience of missing their plane flight and later found out  the plane crashed. Or in other situations somebody’s new heart-throb date didn’t turn up but by coincidence they met there future partner instead.  There are numerous ‘follow on’ events that come out of what we may originally perceive as negative events.  I am not saying we do not need to feel the emotional response to experiences;  however, if we see them as transitional and things to ponder or doorways to other experiences we will have much happier lives. Developing a type of thinking that can maintain a sense of balance is definitely a worthwhile quest.
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My Response to Trauma
When my oldest boy died, like every loving parent and balanced human being I was broken, confused and also I felt betrayed by my God.  How could MY God do this to me? It was a moment when I totally forgot that there was a natural order to human existence and my sense of feeling safe with my imaginary or real God disintegrated.  But thinking more broadly life does its thing with or without me and it doesn’t take a University degree to know full well that people come and go from planet earth every minute.  If we look from above and I am not saying God is above, if we step away from the small window we look through, lift the whole roof off and see the open sky, our perspective changes.  When I look at the passing of a human being it is quite normal to see it as tragic, there is a sense of loss, we hurt, we bang walls, yell, feel abandoned, the ache in the chest is unbearable, we seem crazy, everything is fragile, we are vulnerable.  But then if I look through the other eyes from the totality of beings there is not such a problem, nature which we are part of has a way of regenerating, the seasons and people come and go.  Look at the pavements or between the stones and rocks, grass and weeds gradually start to appear after a while; when there is stagnant water the rains eventually come and a sense of harmony returns, the clouds pass at will and the beauty of their aloofness is natures poetry.
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The Way Out
We often get stuck in a world view that is bordering on self-obsession, attachment to the way we assume things should be, we push against the river of life and tread water.  The Tao Te Ching reminds us that the Tao (Way) is inexhaustible.  Our exhaustion comes from thinking, when we sort the thinking the actions will come into harmony.  We have removed ourselves so far from nature, there are layers protecting us from life; we require a constant body temperature, walls to shield us from the outside, many of us like a tepid world – not too hot not to cold, we quickly run to safe zones when we feel we are out of our depth.  And yes there are adventurers who push the boundaries.
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Those words “God doesn’t have problems” for me was an invitation to think outside the box that holds the human drama in place, a reminder that even in suffering there is more than that moment going on, the totality requires change for life to unfold, the rising and falling of events on the screen of life are the natural order; and I am not one of these people who believe that we are puppets on a string that some giant God manipulates for his pleasure, that is something I cannot subscribe to, I do not see ourselves as slaves, we are creators.  However, there is an underlying TOTALITY that does have a loose unfolding destiny that is not written but it feels its way into forever-ness; as constellations arise and dissolve over eons, the various species of beings adapt to the unending journey of love.
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Although my emotional responses are real, valid, very human, the wisdom of “God not have problems” allows me to relax a little, to trust in something that I cannot define but feel in the depth of Silence, and what I see in the stars that scatter the sky like drops of paint on a living canvas…I can step away from the ‘imaginary me’ with its story, its tragedies and feelings of lack and hard done by-ness and when I feel ready, jump out of the prison-house of the known.
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Other People’s Gods
And if I changed hats and said there was a God that many others have, one who shapes the destiny of people and engraves it into the palm of the hand and follow His Will, well then I would know still know that I was safe, there was a sense of order that I can’t quite understand or see yet and trust that time will reveal its wisdom.  However, I am not that person, that is not my worldview or vision, I will come back to myself and recognise I have choices, there are options in the way I live my life and respond to the passing fortunes and events that emerge out of Emptiness that sometimes surprise me and at other times leave me feeling fragile, inquisitive, joyous and curios.
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May all beings in all worlds be happy
May all people live in love
May all suffering fall away 
May all beings be free from the agendas of others who lack in compassion

Tilopa 2.0

 

Yoga and the Rawness of Being

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The World Goes Ouch
It’s a ‘normal’ to feel raw, a little closed in, as if the Universe is a size nine pushing against a size ten body; something isn’t quite right.  For me, it started yesterday, and has puzzled me, I do like puzzles.  Instead of becoming a slave to it, I decided to be on alert, I don’t mean the anxious state like someone crossing a busy road in Mumbai,  more like a cat watching a mouse trying to escape, although the sensation inside me, is closer to that of the mouse thinking “this aint lookin’ too good, Fluffy hasn’t had his breakfast tuna yet, and he isn’t going anywhere”.   From my life’s experiences, I know that being both the cat and the mouse is where the wisdom will lie.

The Stream Out of Contol
The crowning glory for me today, where my rawness peaked, was something that would lead most men to despair, it was when Facebook, the insensitive digital matrix, offered me the opportunity to share a photo of my long deceased beautiful son, send it out into the world of lunch photos, selfies, narcissistic home business posts, yoga-mamas in leotards, poor translations of scriptures, political hatred memes, Donald Trump’s hairpiece, glorious backyard wisdom, Leunig cartoons, tales of my dear friends lives, and other snippets of genius.  Fortunately I gave up long ago; it’s not the giving up of a broken man, more like seeing the absurdity of trying to say ‘no’ when there isn’t any way of stopping ‘yes’, or saying ‘yay’ when ‘no’ is going to unleash a tsunami of grief bigger than my ‘island of self’.

Doing Easy the Hard Way
There is a skill, and it looks like it comes easy to some people, I will assure you in most cases it doesn’t.  It’s the same as when you watch a master musician play his or her instrument, fingers effortlessly moving in the same way a bird slowly flaps its wings and makes almost invisible body adjustments to navigate the sky-scape, great musicians spend hundreds of hours trying to resolve the idiosyncrasies of all the elements of music in search of the perfect note or phrase, that’s what brought about ‘naturalness’, it is often just a seed given at birth which flowers in time when nurtured properly.  The skill that I learnt, is to ‘sit’, to allow things to rise and fall on the screen of life and not overstep its rhythm by one moment and be out of time. The journey to this state of ‘doing nothing’ is like that of the master musician who along the way dropped a lot of beats, missed the cues, some times early, others late.  Doing nothing sounds easy, it is and isn’t, this ability has a lot of flexibility and depends on our ever changing emotional state.

I mean Yes and No
I have always liked the ‘yes and no’ answers to things, not the indecisive version of ‘yes,no.’  When we answer a question with ‘yes and no’, the chances are we are thinking, digging in.  It’s easy to form a rigid opinion, lock it up safely like an ice-cube in a freezer and just leave it, this is a lazy mans way to resolve things. That type of mind will never find peace in relation to the spirit, it will always be at war because downstream, when the ice melts there will be trouble. Great pain will arise in recognising that everything we believed to be true is always in the process of crumbling, there is eternal transition, (fundamentalists will often roll out the ‘eternal truth’ story, it won’t help you here).  By having the ability to see two sides of everything and maybe temporarily accepting one as a truth is very freeing, this is at the heart of ‘sitting’ and ‘alertness’, being able to maneuver our way through what life throws onto our screen and says ‘deal with this, you can’t run, just stay here, it’s not going away, you must be here’.

Wisdom Tools
I had a wonderful teacher, he taught me something years ago at a time when I was struggling with the ‘shape’ of my universe.  If I had to list a handful of wisdom tools I use, this would be on my Nobel prize shortlist.  It is very simple, it’s in these handful of words, “Do you accept me as this?” That may not seem like much, so let’s go there and extract what’s in it.  If I take the Jnani perspective (simply put: Everything is part of the same Being),  I have no enemies, only allies; duality brings a double sided coin, it is binary, 1 or 0, true or false; although that type of thinking is the social-norm, it is not where I need to be, it’s dangerous territory.  When something happens, whether it be in the field of my life or arising in my ‘thought environment’, I see it as a ‘form’ of the Great Being that resonates in all life, call it whatever you like; this endless shape-shifting entity speaks to me, it says, “OK, this what you are experiencing is just a part of my form, you are always wanting beauty, without its opposite, that splendor you crave is not possible.  You are seeking rest, if there is no movement and chaos, how can there possibly be a peaceful state?  What’s this wisdom thing you speak of, without unknowing, how can deep understanding ever take its place?  Without the depth of emptiness, how is the world of movement, form and shadows ever going to be? Without suffering, do you think the emotions that lead to its fruit wisdom, can take shape?”……. So I sit and watch the show, if I enter it, I am doomed, suffering is overwhelming, if I run it will chase me,  but if I stay with it, and move myself to the side and watch it in a manner that doesn’t involve ‘me’ or my opinions, its life-cycle will follow its natural course and at the other side of it, will be a softer more flexible and understanding man.  If I go to war with it, I will lose.  So I rest in it as it transits through the viewing-screen of my consciousness.

To Suffer or Not to Suffer
We can be a slave to suffering, or we can extract what’s inside it.  Inside it is an endless well of untapped wisdom.  When I see the homeless, people that seem broken, it would be easy for me to look away, to have judgments or to feel sorry for them, this would be normal.  At the time of an ‘encounter’, there may be an opportunity for me to enter into their ‘field of experience’.  If I am cautious and sensitive, I can behave in a manner where it is clear to them that we are equal, there is no above or below in our encounter, it is important that they don’t seem more broken by meeting a person who from observation would seem to have a sense of balance.  There is a way I can ‘meet’ them because of the understanding of the journey through suffering that we all take; there is no real method, no system or technique to use; apart from being able to ‘sit’ through the experience, in the same way that we go through our own pain and suffering or whatever presents itself.

Compassion and empathy emerge from stillness, from our rawness, the part of us that hurts.  Turning suffering to wisdom is at the heart of all life. And this is Yoga without leotards.

Tilopa 2.0