Costco, Yom Kippur, Vijayadashami, and Snow White.

Alright, it feels good to be on schedule. Yesterday was Yom Kippur, and during my morning sit spot, I was absolutely inundated by birds. cardinals, red crested wood peckers, large pretty blue and white birds, small brown birds. It felt like a scene out of Snow White. It felt quite magical. They were getting closer than they normaly do, as well. I have no idea practically speaking, why this happened, but it felt like a little communication between God and me, letting me know today was special for me, perhaps for all Jews.

In addition, it was the tenth day of the Navaratri celebrations this year, which felt special as well. Since I consider myself a hinjew, those holidays falling on the same date made them extra special. I spend the day fasting, reflecting, meditating praying. I took care of some practical matters as well, but not too much, and I taught my spiritual class for children in the evening as always.

I used the day to reflect and repent, as is traditional. What are my personal faults that most need remedying? And then making the determination to change them (and praying for the "strength and courage" to do so, and stick with it.

I don't believe that you can magically make up for all your past misdeeds via one day of prayer and fasting. But perhaps it can help seal my personal commitment to remidy my faults.

Incidentally, part of the class I taught was about that. appropriate for the holiday. (though we also talked about strengths and spiritual goals.)

-whoop, gotta go! I'll tell you about it later. Costco trip! First I've got to extract myself though:

(so cozy)

I could tell you about the Costco trip, now that I'm back, but I think that is enough of a blog post. It wasn't particularly interesting to watch, I'd guess, but it was enjoyable to spend time with a dear friend on the ride up and back. Said friend is also teaching me his favorite easy and tasty recipes, and though I don't eat salmon, I'm learning how to cook it, since Suzannah may need the easily digestible protein, and making a fancy salmon dinner is major husband brownie points :-D

The sticky-note board as a low-tech productivity technique I'm test-running. Aesthetically and kinesthetically it's quite pleasing, but the main point is just to limit how many projects I'm working on at once (to, generally, 3 or less) so I don't feel overwhelmed, and stay focused on a those few tasks to completion. Though it is also pretty useful to have the list of stuff to do, what I am working on, and what I have completed, in front of me, as a reminder. In any case, it didn't require any extra money outlay, took about 20 minutes to set up, and seems to be helping a bit, while also making work a little more fun, so I'll call it a win. If you're interested, the idea is called "personal kanban."

Alright, goodbye for now, wishing you sucess in all your endeavours that bring joy peace and goodness to you and the world.

I out

Content warning: probably-boring-to-most-of-you musings on the spiritual path, devotion, and suffering.

Haha! I'm ahead of schedule now! Here is my heady second half of the post from my previous blog, about my thoughts on devotion, the quote about Krishna and calamities, the purpose of suffering, and one's spiritual path. If that doesn't sound interesting to you, now you know you can skip it!

Recap:

Kunti, the Queen of Kuru thanked Krishna for helping her and her
children in many calamities, and said may there be many more such
calamities if it means Krishna will keep coming to help them so they
can see Him.

I think this is a beautiful lesson for anyone who is going through a rough patch in their lives (and so many are these days.) Not the same but related, I subscribe to the belief that whatever happens is for my good. It's a belief in a benevolent God. But how do you reconcile that with painful and 'bad' things happening in your life?

Well, first off that's quite a big philosophical can of worms to get into, but as I understand the idea of karma, part of that is that you get the reflection reaction and resound of your own actions, though often not right away. But the other part is, using an analogy, a parent giving their child some bitter medicine to cure them of a dangerous disease. It may not be pleasant going down, but it is for the long-term good of the child. Often our greatest learnings and transformations have an element of discomfort, or sadness or loss involved in them. The whole Bhagavad-Gita came about out of the "yoga of despair" of Arjuna, overwhelmed with grief on the battlefield from the thought of having to kill his teachers and extended family, and thus finally surrendering to Krishna (God) completely, out of the despair of not seeing any good path forward. From that, all the great teachings of the Gita came.

I agree with my dad's sentiment that going out and looking for pain or suffering seems counterproductive to a good life. However, I also think avoiding things that matter to you because it involves some discomfort, or shunning it as bad or wrong if discomfort happens to you, is also counterproductive to a good life. In our fear of discomfort or loss we insulate ourselves not just from pain, but from life itself. In our resistance or labeling of pain as wrong, we resist it and thus empower it further.

And this idea that whatever happens is for my good alone, is a way of taking unpleasant events, and prompting oneself to find a way to reframe them in a positive light. It may be unpleasant, but what is it teaching me? By asking the question, the pain can be converted into growth towards something better.

The quote from the Bhagavatam is similar, though perhaps even more intense and profound. Not just a little pain, but even 'calamities.' And not just finding something to be learned from them, but, if they bring God close to you to rescue you, even welcoming them. 

I suppose one could argue that not everybody gets Krishna to come to them personally to help them with their problems. It was Kunti's intense devotion to Krishna, that caused him to intervene so dramatically, I'd say. And her sentiment is more an illustration of that state of mind and heart, rather than a pathway to it.

But it does stand in my mind as a role model to look up to. I aspire towards such a deep level of trust in God and yearning for Him (/Her/It). I mean, what I really want is closeness and experience of God, but I suppose my spiritual search indicates to me that the yearning itself for God, is part of what draws Him to us. 

Oh, one final note, that I was reminded of in the email (though it's not what was said, it just made me think of it) was the idea of 'which spiritual path is better?' between Bhakti and Jnana Yoga. I'm not really a fan of that debate. Everyone's path is unique and that is between you and your guru (if you're lucky enough to have a personal, enlightened guru) or else between you and your inner guru (that's most of us.) And in either case, your guidance is going to give you what you need, which may at one point be intensely doing stuff, at another focusing on love and God, and at another inquiring into the nature of Self, to name just a few possibilities. While there are certainly missteps one can make, I don't think they are so simple as to be condensed into 'this path is right and that is wrong.' I think of it more like a dark wood we're trying to get through with just a dim lantern, and there are various pathways through it to the other side. And all the paths have roots and holes and stuff that you need to watch out for.

But the 'my path is right, yours is wrong' debate seems basically the same as the 'my religion is right, yours is wrong' debate, which I think is responsible for a significant amount of people doing really crummy things to each other, and has produced no love, kindness, joy, or peace in the world. I'm having a hard time imagining a single good thing that could come from that viewpoint. I suppose I could go back to one of my initial points, and the suffering and/or pain caused by that belief could be used to teach me something and help me grow. But as with any pain or suffering, even though I can learn from it and grow from it as I accept it, I wouldn't wish it on anyone, or consciously decide to seek more of it out or promote it. Which I suppose was the point of my dad's email. On the other hand, in reference to Kunti's quote, if pain or suffering could somehow get me personal time with Krishna, I think I might enthusiastically say sign me up.

Funny thing is, it's easy to say that, but in practice, my actions indicate that I would in fact not choose that, and would instead choose comfort. And that's why they pay devotees like Kunti the big bucks, so to speak. True devotion is easier said than done.

OK! If you read this post, I hope you enjoyed it and I accurately described the content beforehand. And otherwise, I hope you read the 'content' warning at the beginning and skipped it, in which case, I'm quite confused how you are reading this, but love you just the same.

Love and peace to you,

Isaac

Krishna. New seeds. Devotion.

 I feel like I should include a picture to conclude the saga of the plant, though I think I already gave away the (unsurprising?) ending:

It DEAD.

However, I have a larger species of the plant that is growing right outside my window. Most of it has been weeded but one plant survives. I gently touched some of the flowers, looking to see if there were seeds inside and ripe, and they fell right off, so I caught some more in my hand and brought them back.

I'll try growing from seed this time, and hopefully won't have the aphid problem, or the transplant shock problem. Though I may have the wrong soil type, as mostly I see them growing between rocks and such. Maybe my soil is TOO good, and they won't like it. In any case, the experiment continues. Maybe I should actually do some research, but who writes about how to sprout weeds? 🤣

Answer: apparently, me.

I should probably also use my plant id app to figure out the name of the plant, to facilitate searching.

I had to pause for a while, because I wasn't sure what else to talk about, and there was something I had specifically wanted to talk about. I remembered:

The quote from last time, about suffering if it meant constantly remembering God. My father sent me an email about it (he's not fond of suffering as a spiritual practice) which made me try to find the original quote, and thanks to Devala's encyclopedic knowledge about all things Hindu, I was able to locate the actual source. Thanks Devala ^_^

It is something Kunti said (the mother of Arjuna, Yudhisthira, etc.), in the Bhagavata (Which I believe is a bunch of stories mostly focused on devotion to Krishna.) The actual sentiment is more this (just taking his words from the email): 

"She thanked Krishna for helping her and her children in many calamities, and said may there be many more such calamities if it means Krishna will keep coming to help them so they can see Him."

Which is a slightly different sentiment. It's not asking for suffering, or even calamities, but more saying, I'll accept anything gladly, even calamities, if it means getting to be in your presence (Krishna's presence.)

If you're interested in looking up the quote for yourself, Devala kindly provided that as well:

Shrimad Bhagavata Mahapurana,
skandha 1, chapter 8, shloka 25

I wrote a bunch more about this, but it was kind of heady, and I don't think all of you are here for that. Maybe I'll turn it into a seperate post with a informative heading so you can skip it easily.

Love and warmth to all of you,

Isaac

Fractal God Geometry, Childlike Awe.

 I started talking about this in a previous post: the return of childlike wonder. I was thinking about it, as I washed my hands the other day, and noticed the soap happened to be making particularly good, big bubbles. Maybe there was something about the light as well, but it was beautiful, and made me reflect on being a child, and playing with bubbles, with joy and awe and wonder. Soap bubbles are pretty amazing. this perfect, super thin sphere, swirling with iridescint colors. And if your hands are soapy enough, you can even hold them and move them around. And the way they interact with other bubbles, an organic, fractal kind of geometry.

I remember making wire-frame type structures to dunk in bubble solution, and making different shapes with it, like cube bubbles, and such. And I was just feeling grateful, that I could still wonder at and enjoy the beauty and order and mystery and depth of complexity, in the world. In fact, it doesn't feel like I can 'still' do it, but more like I had somewhat forgotten how to do it, and slowly, it is coming back to me.

It reminds me of some of my recent dreams. At least two, maybe three recent dreams, I've been bawling in them, deep heaving sobs crying. You might think that's a bad sign, but I really enjoy that kind of cathartic depth of feeling. My emotions are generally pretty even, and so something like deep, moving sadness, can have a refreshing quality. Like the tears are washing away some long caked on dirt. Sometimes, in my dreams, I'm sobbing for God. I'm feeling, deeply, the loss of God not being there, or at least, not feeling him there, in my heart, in my experience, and I wonder if that is a little taste of what some of the Indian scriptures talk about, with the Gopi's, the cowherd women devotees of Krishna. That deep heartfelt yearning for God draws God irresistibly to you, so say the scriptures. And so that kind of sadness, those tears, are precious.

Because I believe that journey to One requires incredible focus, dedication, intensity. And so a depth of feeling, yearning, is a great gift in that journey.

One phrase that has stuck with me, I think from the Bhagavatam, a series of stories about God in his/her/its various forms, I think in fact another Krishna story, one devotee (maybe even a gopi devotee) says something like 'may I always have pain, so that I never forget to think of you, oh my Krishna.'

Finally, the soap bubble motif made me think of another saying from my favorit spiritual teacher, that goes something like, 'the body is like a water bubble, the mind is like a mad monkey, so don't follow the body, don't follow the mind. Follow the conscience, which is the voice of God within you.' That part about the body being a water bubble, made me think of those bubbles. He's talking about our bodys impermanence. Not even a soap bubble, which can last a little longer. Just a water bubble. Appearing for a moment, only to pop and merge back in with the sea.

Cat family, Trust, The saga of the plant.

Alright, it's time for two posts. Last week was full steam ahead, as I had a paper and a presentation due the same week. But I focused and got it done, so all is well. Grateful that I'm not doing three classes at once, or that would be my everyday experience, and then some. This week I've got a more relaxed schedule, time for other work to get done.

Though I an running into the other issue. When you have free time, sometimes you use it to goof off. This is perhaps one of the main reasons I hesitated to go down to two classes. However, if history repeats itself, it will just take me a few weeks to readjust and tweak what I need to keep myself focused.

Update on the plant I adopted, it got aphids. I just sprayed it with insecticidal soap the other day, and wiped the aphids off leaf by leaf. As well as cutting off about half the plant, which had died, perhaps due to the transplanting shock. Now, after spraying it, it seems like another third of it or so is starting to wilt as well. I may have potted and cared for this plant, just to watch it slowly die. That's ok though. A little sad, but I will learn from it. And hopefully next time, I'll do a better job.

One cool thing though, I got one ripe seed, from one of the flowers, so I planted it back in the pot. Maybe I'll get a baby plant. Though if I don't, I'm not sure what that means. Did it not get fertilized because it was inside, or does it need a freeze to activate the seed? In any case, I'm having fun, I've re-sparked my sense of curiosity and childlike wonder and play. It feels good. maybe I'll talk more about that in my second post after this one.

What else... I'm not sure how much of this is TMI, talking about the journey with Suzannah towards making children. We've been trying for over a year (which I suppose is not that long, given we know a lot of people who've tried for multiple years before having success) but Suzannah is concerned about getting older, so we've been slowly going down the diagnostic ladder, looking to make sure everything is biologically ok. So far, so good. For myself, I've got an intrinsic trust in the universe that whatever happens, and with whatever timing, is for my good alone, and so I am not in a rush, or worried. But I think Suzannah is, and I think it's especially hard that many, maybe most, of her current friend group, has already had kids. Maybe she's feeling left behind.

Right now I'm typing this with a loving cat in my lap and another curled up on the couch next to me, and so I feel quite surrounded by loving family already ^_^ (though I'm happy to welcome more)

I also recently had a call with one of my oldest friends, who just had their second child, and was reflecting on what a huge transformation of your entire life having a kid is. I'm sure no imagination will prepare me for the actual experience.

OK, let's stop there and finish this in a second post.

Doing what matters to me. Being present. A special plant.

It's already Thursday! School is heating up. Three papers due in the next ten days, so this will likely be a short one. I've been wanting to transplant a weed into a pot to spend time with in my office. It's a particular plant that I've always had an attraction to, it's delicate, tiny pink flowers always struck me as beautiful, and how it managed to find life, even in the cracks of the pavement, gave me a deep respect for it's tenacity, palanced with it's grace. It's a little bit scragglily, from getting driven by and scorched by the sun, but I hope to keep it alive long enough to create some seeds, and see if I can get a plant to sprout from scratch. This is a plant I've had an attraction to since childhood. I never knew the name of it, and I'm not sure if this is the exact same plant, or just a cousin variety. But it feels nice to finally be taking the time to develop a closer relationship to it. I'll include a picture.

I just finished listening to a book called "Four Thousand Weeks" about time. It had a bit of a different message than my standard time management reading fare. The author's main point was that we have a limited amount of time, and it's not enough to get everything, or even most things, done, and it's healthier and happier to accept that fact and go about choosing the few things that really matter to you, to spend your time on. As well as being present to what is happening, right now, and living fulling in this moment.

It fits with my general thrust, to alter my paradigm around time rather than just trying to do more things, or faster or more efficient things, or organize my things better.

Alright, gotta go, Diagnosis and Treatment Planning class is coming up in three hours, and I'm gonna have to spend all of that interim time reading and preparing for it. Next week my first case conceptualization is due, as well as my big presentation on anxiety disorders, so I've got work to do!

Take care, be well, love deeply,

-Isaac

A story of Devala

Devala has a lot of really good stories that he has lived, so I couldn't call this Devala's story. But it's one of his, and I wanted to capture it somehow. I thought, rather than sealing it away in a note somewhere, I'd share it, because I think it has some good lessons to teach.

I talked about my dear friend and spiritual brother in my last post. He has a lot of interesting features, but the two I'll mention here for context is that he has a really strong emotional immune system, by which I mean, he is almost always in a generally good mood, and even when really bad things happen, he tends to get over them quickly. The second is, perhaps related, he doesn't seem to have much filter between knowing that something is probably a good idea to do, and doing it. If he thinks it's a good idea, he tends to just do the thing, and not ruminate, vacillate, or procrastinate. I would actually call this simple habit/way of being a simple but very useful superpower, and if everyone had it their lives would probably be way better.

Since this is a semi-public forum, I'm gonna leave out some of the more personal elements of this story, thought they would probably  make for an even more engaging one.

So, several years ago, One of Devala's closest friends suggested he take his love of researching and writing about Vedic and Hindu scriptures and such (also other things spiritual and esoteric, and even historical. Quite a wide range, but especially the Hindu realm), and start posting on Quora, using what had been dubbed by that friend "Deva-pedia" to answer people's obscure questions. He gave it a try, and really enjoyed doing this, and so it became one of his main pastimes. Researching and answering questions on these topics. He was prolific, and good at this. Over several years, he actually got a significant following. This was not a job, didn't pay anything, it was just what he loved to do. His day job was fine, content management, technical writing, at one point earlier on pizza delivery. Then he lost his job, right as the tech industry was utterly bombing, and found it near impossible to get another job that would pay enough. There were other elements of his life that went topsy-turvy around the same time, and he found himself living in his parents house, applying to (I think) literally hundreds of jobs, without success, over more than a year. He was looking for a job with a certain baseline level of pay, and then looking for a place he could live that had a high Hindu population, first on the list being Chicago, for that very reason.

One week, as we were chatting on the phone along with another friend, he mentioned that, at the suggestion of another friend who had done this, he was considering just moving to Chicago, without a job secured, and just making it work, going door to door looking for work and starting with a worse paying job and spartan living accommodations, that he would then work up from. We had often had conversations about his job search, sometimes we'd offered ideas and suggestions for finding work, and often Devala had already tried, or was doing, those suggestions. He was not resting on his laurels.

In any case, as he talked about this rather risky leap of faith, it reminded me of a quote I'd heard, that had stuck with me, though I had to look up the name of the source. It goes like this:

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

― William Hutchison Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

If memory serves, we talked about this twice, one week, he was considering it, and the next, he told us that he had decided to do it. That's when I shared the quote.

We don't have an exact timeline, but it was somewhere between later that day, and maybe 3 days later max, that a friend he had made, via his Quora presence, alerted him to a job opening they'd seen: the job was not website management or search optimization or technical writing, but literally researching and writing about Hindu stuff. Pretty much literally what he had been doing, unpaid, for years, on Quora, just because it was close to his favorite way to spend his time (at least when he wasn't playing with friends.) He applied. He got the interview. He got invited back for the second interview. He got invited back for the third interview. As one of his weekly (online) friend groups, we were on the edge of the seat, rooting for him each week, trying not to get our hopes up too much, but thinking, "I really hope he gets this, this is his dream job, he was made to do this job, this is better than anything he had been planning on doing or applying for previously." But we didn't want to expect anything, because it was so good, it would be such a let down if he didn't get it. And there had been previous times he'd gotten an interview or two, but eventually, it hadn't worked out.

He had even started thinking about going back to school. He had researched the best paying, most employable jobs that didn't require a long stretch of schooling, and picked from the top few the one that sounded like the best match for him. But, he admitted to us, perhaps during the same conversation, staying in Oregon felt kind of like he was stagnating, even doing the schooling, which would have kept him in Oregon for another 2 years, was starting to feel like he was wasting his time. Thus his impulse to just move to Chicago, trust the universe, and deal with the difficulties of a lower paying job and rudimentary housing, as he continued to network and search for a more sustainable job (meaning, something that actually met his minimum salary requirements he'd be happy with), while there.

By the 3rd interview, he had mentioned that, though he was going to move to Chicago regardless of whether he got the job or not, if he did get it, he was moving almost immediately. Well, he sent a message saying he would be in town next week, because he was moving to Chicago. And when games night came around, we all collectively cheered, when he confirmed it was because he had gotten the job. One of the interviewers had even met him previously for a short time, when they were both in Hawaii, and she admitted to binge-reading his Quora posts before the interview. Those posts clearly showed he was the perfect match we all knew he was, and he got offered the maximum from the salary range they had posted, right off the bat. NOW we could all throw our hats up and cheer.

I think this story is really dang moving for several reasons, one of which is perhaps personal to me and his other friend, who are all cheering for him. But additionally, he worked really hard. He did his thing where he didn't shy away from hard things (getting rejected over and over as he applied to job interviews), he kept learning and trying new things (rather than phoning it in) and going outside what would be most people's comfort zones, repeatedly (though I don't think it was actually outside his, but that's his emotional immune system I'd guess.)

And then, he did that William Hutchison Murray thing, he took that first step, he began something that certainly would have intimidated most people, when it felt right. He decided to move, without a job already set up. It would have been hard work and not comfortable living, for an indefinite period of time, without any certainty of success. He began it, certainly with boldness, and ultimately, it did seem to have magic within it.

As I talked with Devala about this, he added an important point, which was that in the end, it was his continual dedication to doing the thing he loved, researching and then sharing his knowledge with others, that ended up getting him the job. He had just been doing that, for years, because he loved it. That was where he met the person who mentioned the job to him (but he had been putting out that he was looking for a job, doing his own work) and it was pretty much certainly the vast volume of high-quality work that he had put out over the years, for the love if it, and as a service to others, that got him the job in the end.

I don't know about you, but I find that all pretty inspiring.

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now"

Indeed.