I want to be as comfortable as possible. Give me air-conditioning and memory-foam mattress toppers and fast internet. I want my surroundings to be as cushy as I can make them. After I’ve worked so hard to make my life comfortable, at the very end of the day, if I have any energy left over, then I might think about other people. This is not good.
At some point in your life, you will pause, and question how you’re spending your time serves your higher purpose. Sure, education, relationship, family, friends, career, house, money, traveling etc. are desirable aspects of our life, but what truly defines us? Is there something else in us still waiting to be manifested? Something that we are supposed to do, express or stand for other than just surviving life and fighting our way through circumstances?
The most fascinating truth I learned while at yoga school in India was that we westerners had it all wrong. More than postures, breath and mantra, beyond meditation and devotion, the epiphany hit me one sweltering afternoon walking back to the dorms from seva. So many of us had come from countries where our yoga classes centered around holding postures and breathing deeply or powering through the heat and sweat as we sat deep into chair pose and drank in the ujjai. But yoga was not these things at all, or not mainly these things.
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I pulled up beside a man in a brown coat. He was holding a sign that said, “Even a smile helps.” I looked him in the eye and smiled a big smile, pulled over and asked him how he was doing. He looked at me and said, “It could be better and it could be worse.” I reached into my pocket and grabbed the money I had and handed it to him. As I did, another man drove by and in disgust told me I was wrong for helping the man in the brown coat, that he would likely buy drugs or alcohol.
Sound has the profound ability to affect and alter our disposition, our perspective and how we carry ourselves. We have all experienced that mood-altering moment when our favorite song comes on and we cannot help but bop our head and sing along. It lifts us up and we feel the positive, oftentimes euphoric, effect of the music. “It’s a beautiful day”, or “I have so much to look forward to” are thoughts that may rise in our consciousness. In contrast, perhaps another song comes on next; a song that brings up heavy feelings of sadness and we feel the immediate shift move through our bodies.
“...in a friendship you get to know the spirit of another person; and your values coincide. Friends may disagree, but not about serious matters. A friend will stand for you when you are no longer able. A woman can say to herself, If I die, I know that my friend, my sister friend will be here to hold up the banner. Now that's very profound.”
In a world in which fear reigns (at least they want to make us believe that), it is not a solution to fight this fear - fighting generates more struggle and fear.
I do not mean that we should close our eyes, although with the current propaganda in the media this is often a good solution (the actual destruction/death by terrorism in Europe is very insignificant compared to other causes of death).
I remember the first time we drove down the long gravel road and into the driveway of my Aunt Shirley's farm. It was night then, so I barely caught a glimpse of the brick red barn and the matching colored house. I was just a little girl then, maybe 4 or 5, but I remember it all as if it were yesterday. The crickets chirped long and loud and the frog’s croak could be heard for miles, it seemed.
Have you ever been going through something in your life and you felt you were the only one? Have you ever thought to yourself that no one else thinks this way, feels this way or does these things?
Well, I have. Most of us have, actually; we just rarely realize we are doing it.
At these moments we can turn on a movie and try to find a kindred spirit in this perceived aloneness. Movies can take you anywhere from anger to hope to inspiration and sometimes mild grief.