Sukoshi Rice

108

8/17/2023

This morning I was email moaning to a friend that today the high here in my new home in Marana, Arizona was supposed to be 108. She answered back, "108! There's nothing holy about that!" I don't know if she was kidding or not, but it hit me like a bolt of lightening, a Cosmic wake-up: there's everything holy about that!
I knew a little about it, that there are 108 beads on a prayer mala, and 108 stitches in a baseball, which I learned from the movie "Bull Durham." But I didn't know why, so I turned to Google, where really you can find just about anything.
In Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, 108 is considered a sacred number. The Vedic explanation is that, broken down to its three numbers, it represents creation, the power of the Universe, and our own human existence. The numbers also represent new beginnings and paths and attaining long-desired goals. In Sanscrit it is called a "harshad" number, divisible by the sum of its digits and meaning "great joy" or "joy giver," depending on the source.
The weather here was already looking better! But wait, there's so much more!
From Sadhguru on his Youtube videos, I learned that the diameter of the Sun X 108 = the distance from the Sun to the Earth. Then I read on the Himalayan Yoga Institute site that since the path of the Earth around the sun is elliptical, this is only 100% true on September 18 & 19. Since September 19 just happens to be my birthday (every year) I am now super stoked, especially wanting to make this day count, since it's forecast as our last 108 of the year, Gracias a Dios.
Ditto for the Moon, that her diameter X 108 = the distance from the Earth to the Moon, but only once a month, since that path, too, is elliptical.
And the diameter of the Earth X 108 = the diameter of the Sun. It can't be a coincidence.

Galileo said the Universe is written in "mathematical language," which takes us into the realm of sacred geometry and Fibonacci sequences, of which 108, or maybe 1.08, is an integral aspect of the pattern. If you already know about Fibonacci patterns, like the whorl of the nautilus and the seeds of a sunflower, you know how precise and perfect they are. Sacred geometry represents perfectly symmetrical proportions and the number 108 is geometrically elegant and highly divisible.
Why do yogis revere 108? There are 108 chakras in the human body, according to my sources, and 108 beads on a prayer mala, which represent the 108 mortal desires to overcome. The 109th bead, which I always thought of as the turnaround bead, represents the one supreme desire to transcend all these mortal desires. Like the One Ring. And when offering Sun Salutations, in Suryanamaskar, traditionally 9 rounds of the 12 positions are performed. 9 X 12 = 108.
Numbers are messengers. 108 connects the physical to the metaphysical, the outer to the inner. It is a number sacred in mathematics, geometry, astrology and numerology along with all these spiritual connections. And in modern Gnosticism, it is believed 108 previous incarnations can be remembered, which should keep me busy until the weather turns and I can go outside again!

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FAT

12/7/2021

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Throughout history, one of the dietary differences between the rich and the poor came down to one simple ingredient: fat. The rich cooked their food in oils and animal fats, the poor cooked theirs in water. Oil from olives and soy beans has been produced for thousands of years, but until modern extraction methods were invented, oil production was costly and labor intensive. Oil was precious, and the poor got precious little of it.
I started thinking about this because I was reading about diets in Victorian England, in London specifically. It's amazing anyone lived through it. Not only was there no fat, there were no vegetables, not much meat, just not enough calories. This was for the working poor, mind. The rich had plenty of calories, and fat, and meat. Thank God for cabbage. It's always been the saving grace for the very poor. Even boiled, it at least offered something GREEN and potatoes, when they had them, filled hungry bellies. I read that in a very poor family, if there was any meat, it went to the father. The mother and children lived mainly on bread and water. Mothers lost their teeth at an early age and children developed rickets and scurvy.
The desire for fat is a desire for taste and richness. Fat free food requires more sweetener, or more saltiness, something to give it a richer taste. Fats from meats have been around since people started cooking; olive oil and soy oil have been used since at least 3000 BC. Until 1856, all vegetable oil was naturally produced, either by simple pressing or by heating and pressing, but that was the year solvents were introduced as a more economical means of procuring more and cheaper oils. In this country (USA) and Mexico, we used peanut and sunflower oils along with lard from pigs.
When I was in Mexico last, I shared a taxi with a Mexican-American woman visiting from the States. I had just taken a cooking class and was telling her I ate more lard that day than I probably had in my entire life, and felt fine from it. She told me her grandmother cooked with lard, that pans where food was cooked with lard washed clean really easily, while food cooked with oils left a sticky residue in the pans. Her grandmother figured the same thing happened in our bodies.
"Fat free" is a dangerous fad. Healthy fats are so important to our proper body functioning. Nuts, oils and even pure lard, not hydrogenated man-made synthetics, help our bodies work just the way they were created, perfectly.

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Silence

12/7/2021

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Most mornings, after I check in and hopefully don't go down some rabbit hole, I click on the Siddha Yoga website: www.siddhayoga.org, for inspiration. This month the subject is Silence; every day another aspect of silence is highlighted.
The ability to be in silence is virtually uncultivated in our culture, what with TVs playing and distractions celebrated 24/7. Sure, many of us got "the look" from talking or even squirming in church, but we were never taught to be still. At least I wasn't.
The first time I ever went to the Ashram, I came up in front of the Guru. Besides my awkwardness and discomfort, I remember the profound silence in the hall. About three hundred people were sitting in stillness, and I was caught in my racing mind, standing frozen and numb.
A year or so later, I was in a small group sitting in the Guru's courtyard. This was, to be sure, an exalted opportunity: there were hundreds of people who would have loved to have been sitting in there, but I knew a guy.... We sat in silence as the Guru sat in a chair, in sunglasses in the bright California sun, inscrutable. My body sat still. I was forty years younger then, and able to sit cross legged on the floor with ease. But my mind. Oooh la la! I'm sure the Guru could hear my constant inner blabbering: "What is going on here??? Why doesn't somebody SAY something? What is going on, what's supposed to be happening????" and on and on and on.
I needed something I could hang my hat on, some words or a song or Something. There was no place in me that knew how to be in silence and my mind struggled, not with some problems of my own, but with the silence itself. The stillness of the mind. I realize now that my father got it on the golf course and my mother in her garden, because everyone seeks the peace of a quiet mind, but that didn't spill over into the rest of their lives, which were tense and stressful. Years later, living at the Ashram, I made my sons go to programs where they had to sit still. I was trying to give them something I never got, the discipline to sit still for an hour and hopefully, cultivate the quiet mind I didn't have.
And so this morning, after I post this, I'll go sit, in the silence. I don't do it often enough and realize that with cold weather, retirement, a town where I know almost no one and a pandemic going on, it is by far the best game in town. When my mind gets quiet in this way, it DOES carry over into the rest of my life. I just have to make that choice, between stillness and distraction.

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Invitation to a Soul's Passing

11/30/2021

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I just never liked Ed. He was a (Yankee) redneck who smoked cigarettes and drank crap beer, but my boyfriend Steve really liked him. Steve was a sensitive smart guy, so if he liked Ed I'd give it a try. That's why I was on a hillside outside a party, talking with the two of them, when Ed told me he had cancer in his throat. Instantly all my feelings turned completely around.
I didn't care anymore if he was a big mouth, which is what I had always thought. I started going over to his house, which was just about four miles away, to give him Reiki. Surprisingly, Ed was wide open to whatever I had to offer. I think I called it foot massage. Lots of the time he hurt too much to do more than gently hold his feet, so that's eventually all I did.
Ed's bed was already down in the living room by the time I started going over there much, but before that, he'd lay on the couch and I'd sit at his feet. His wife continued to smoke cigarettes and hang out with her friends in the room, drinking beer and talking, as if her husband wasn't dying, ten feet away. The TV was always on and I finally asked her not to smoke in there because I couldn't take it. Ed never said a thing, never complained, but was very quiet, in his own world. His girls came and went as if he was always going to be there, wrapped up in their teenage lives.
We didn't talk much; I'd just sit for an hour or so, offering what comfort I could.
As his time to pass came closer, the family no longer allowed visitors. While I thought it was great that the girls, especially the older daughter, wouldn't be parading people through the house, I wanted to be there. I knew from watching him how much comfort he got from what I was doing.
The day of his passing I woke up early with an insistent voice whispering, "Get over there. Get over there, Now!" So I called the house and asked whoever answered if they had had breakfast. When she told me no, they hadn't really been eating, I said, "I'm coming over to make you breakfast now," and I think hung up before there was room for discussion. It was my in.
Stopping by the convenience store between our two houses, I got some bacon and eggs and cheese and milk, maybe biscuits in a roll, and oddly, a bag of oranges. I hurried.
Ed was in the living room in a hospital bed, new since I'd been there last. His wife and two daughters were there with a nurse. That was all. And me. I went in to see him, but he wasn't conscious, so I just held his feet for a moment then went in the kitchen. The younger daughter got me Ed's electric juicer so I could make them all fresh orange juice. It was a point, that this was her dad's juicer, that he loved making fresh juice with, that he'd used for years.
I was juicing away, when all of a sudden the juicer just stopped, and a moment later his wife let out a howl of grief. I ran into the living room just in time to see Ed's spirit leave his body. A wispy white form rose over his head and hovered there for a moment, then rose. His family was screaming and crying, and I was in awe. I just stood there, until it was obvious he was gone.
I went back in the kitchen. The juicer worked fine again. All my life, since I had been raised on the "if I should die before I wake" prayer, I had feared death. Ed gave me the gift of seeing how easy and holy it could be.
Thank you.

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Music, up and down the road

11/19/2021

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Music can recall a whole setting, where I was and what I was doing and feeling, years ago. For me, the most potent musical link to forty-five years ago is Joni Mitchell's Hejira, from 1976. Rasta was a baby and I used to drive from my parents' house in Chappaqua, NY up to my friend Martine's in Woodstock. That was the only music I ever played, over and over until it was embedded in my soul. I knew every song by heart. I still do.
Today I was listening to it on youtube, and the line that popped out was "you just picked up a hitcher, prisoner of the white lines on the freeway..." and immediately I thought of the time CJ and I took a ride into Vermont and didn't agree on whether or not the hitcher got to smoke pot with us.
It was 1974, and I was living in a wild and crazy artist's commune in rural Massachusetts, in the cold and frozen North. CJ lived down in civilized Connecticut, and once in awhile he'd drive up to see me and bring some Thai sticks, which the communards greatly appreciated, and we'd have us a time.
This one time, he wanted to show me Woodstock, VT, the town consistently voted most beautiful in America, partly because all the electric wires in the whole town are underground. A couple of Rockefellers were responsible for that. There were no overhead wires, and until you experience that lack of visual pollution, it's hard to realize what an ugly mess it makes.
It really wasn't far from where I lived, so we cruised around, smoking Thai sticks and laughing and probably listening to music. It wasn't Hejira, not yet, but the world was full of great music those days. Then we picked up a hitchhiker, a nice seeming young kid, and I didn't want to turn him on to this really strong weed, and CJ was all about it.
I don't even remember if we did or didn't, but I'm betting we didn't. After a couple of really unfortunate events getting people high for the first time, I shied away from it. Joni reminded me. We just picked up a hitcher, and he had to stay straight because anything else made me nervous.

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September 22nd, 2021

9/22/2021

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It had to be Bill Murray who said, "There are only two types of people in the world: those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don't." Who else would say that?
Like all great philosophical statements, that gave me something to contemplate. Are there only two types of people in the world? And if so, what are they?
Today I think there are spiritual people and people who just are not, or who resist the urge to be what I consider spiritual.
Ok, for all the ages, here is my definitive take on what the difference is: a spiritual person is constantly thinking of ways to be a better person and help the world, and a "worldly" person is constantly thinking of ways to "get ahead." Spirituality implies inner awareness or consciousness while worldliness is just that, awareness focused on the outer world. Of course, most of us are made up of a combination of the two.
There is a wonderful Native American story about the two wolves inside each of us, the wolf of aggression and the wolf of peaceful cooperation, always at war within each of us. "Which one wins?" asks the child and the Grandparent wisely answers, "The one you feed."
It doesn't matter one bit what religion you follow to be a spiritual person, or if you follow a religion at all. Religions can, over time, harden into dogma so that people who talk the accepted "party line" can fool themselves into thinking they are being spiritual. A true Christian follows the teachings of Jesus and tries their best to apply them in every life situation. This has absolutely nothing to do with the people who call themselves Christians and think going to church is proof of that, but act selfishly.
The same is true of the so-called New Age movement, where there are plenty of totally dippy people spouting "woke" philosophies and acting in egotistical ways. It may be the same in every religion. There are so many ways to pervert even the purest of teachings, to misread and twist the original intention to use it for power and control. This is the similarity of all fundamentalism, which is led by dogma and ideology and not by inner experience.
I was so fortunate in 1980 to meet a true Guru, part of an ancient lineage since passed down to his successor, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. He taught that God lived inside every person, and that teaching gives us a focus to turn within, become still and listen. Like every other person with the two wolves battling away, I realize the hard part is making the choice to turn within and listen. The world pulls us outward, toward having and getting and defining ourselves by our outer life. The inner world is one of being. It's in making that choice that the power lies.
It was Bill Murray, in the movie "What about Bob." He plays the loving and loveable and totally annoying patient of Richard Dreyfuss's uptight, controlling, and socially acceptable psychiatrist. It's a good metaphor for our times where we see old rigid structures struggling to control social change that is new and vibrant. The outer world has changed so much since I was born, while the inner remains unchanging and eternal. And that is the peace of an inner life.

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My Reiki Journey Part 1

7/25/2021

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In 1985, as a brand new and proudly licensed massage therapist, I had the great good fortune to work in a very small clinic that served a large, diverse clientele. Affiliated with the meditation center where the kids and I spent every summer, there were always people who wanted treatments of all sorts, which is what we provided. Three little rooms on either side of a central hallway made perfect spaces for us: I gave massages, the man next to me taught the Alexander Technique, and something cool was going on in the third room. I don't know what went on across the hall; that four or five feet of divide made it like another country.
From the third room on my side, all I heard was laughter. Delighted ribbons of laughter pealed out of there, while the Alexander guy kept his stiff perfect serious posture and I rubbed away on the big sore muscles of the guys from the building crew.
Mine was hard physical work; no one had ever shown me or taught me that we could relieve tension in the body in softer, easier ways. I did what I had been taught, and one day I was working on a guy who was about 6'4" with size 14 shoes and he actually apologized for being so big and hard to work on! Did I mention that meditators are a little bit mind readers? Something had to change.
That day, the third room woman and I were locking up and leaving at the same time, and I asked her, "What do you do in your room?"
With a huge smile that shined in her bright blue eyes she answered, "I do Reiki!"
Immediately I told her, "I want to do that, too." I wanted a practice where people laughed a lot, and where I came out looking as fresh and happy as she did, not all tired out like I felt at the end of the day.
"Ok," she told me, "I make a class."
And she did. My good fortune again was to have met a Reiki Master who could teach me. At the time I had never heard of Reiki, so to have met a Master was what we at the center recognized as Grace, aka pure good luck.
Krishni held the class for four of us at our mutual friend Carol's house, across the street. I remember very few details except getting hooked up to this exquisite energy that made me feel high, relaxed and connected in a way I never had. The last day of class I had to drive down to the airport in NYC to pick up my kids, who had been staying with my parents in Georgia, so I bid Krishni an early farewell. She was returning to Sweden that afternoon, I was moving back into "real life" as a single working mom, I had this amazing gift and in all the hubbub of regular life, for the next eleven years, I forgot all about it! I didn't see Krishni again for ten years; Reiki awareness and practice dissolved into the fabric of my extremely busy, struggling and often overwhelmed single mom life.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where I meet the Reiki Master of my Dreams and reconnect.

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Poetry

3/16/2021

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High school nearly ruined poetry for me. Once we hit that "transmogrifying bee" of John Crowe Ransom's, they lost me. If I had to stop reading and experiencing to go find a dictionary, I wasn't interested. Did it have to be so fancy and challenging? In those days I had a much larger vocabulary, too. Now I have to search for words, but that's a whole other story.
I didn't know about Mary Oliver, and people like her who took their raw aliveness and put it into beautiful words that normal humans knew and could relate to. What I learned in high school was that poetry was all about rules, meter and rhyme.
Before it got to me, I wrote this:
Loneliness to loneliness
And though we mask ourselves in words or silence
Our needs speak out in all we do
And speak to those alike.
I am speaking to you.
I was a stranger in a strange land, hyper-aware and sensitive in a place that didn't have a place for it. I never fit. My mother had taught me about awareness, but hid her own in alcohol and superficial suburban chatter that made her acceptable and likeable. My dad had no time for any of it and was totally puzzled by me.
I was sensitive and aware; I became bulimic, anorexic, then turned to drugs when throwing up was no longer an option. My brother and I actually laugh about it now, how my dad would start picking on me at the dinner table and I would go throw up. It was the only thing I could control, the only place he couldn't get at me, even though in his mind his criticism was intended to make me better and stronger.
Poetry has nothing to do with rules. There might be structures to it, and it's probably really important to choose your words wisely, but it's always important to choose your words wisely. I haven't always: my apologies to everyone, including myself.
From my same fifteen year old self:
Human games are all the same.
Wanting more and more and more
Is such a useless thankless chore.
So just let go of all you want and all you know.
Be kind. Keep love in your mind.
I was so smart and kind then. I love finding these old papers, proof of who I've always been.

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Morning Musings 4/7/21

3/15/2021

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I just found a phrase I scribbled on a piece of paper years ago: self-indulgence or self-care? When I was practicing as a massage therapist, I treated all manner of humans: huge, thin, hard-working, never-having-to-work, curious and bored. I treated a Princess from the Middle East once, who told me, "I feel so heavy!" during the session. Yes, I told her, that is called relaxed. That is what it feels like when your body relaxes. She had never felt it before.
What happens when we don't ever relax and reset our meters is really bad for the body, the mind, the spirit. We drink our coffee (I do) and go, go, go. I don't have to enumerate for you all the ways we speed around, and the things we get anxious about, and the absolute nonsense we often entertain about what other people are thinking and feeling.
How do we counteract that and reset our meters? Here are my favorite go-to's, and then some others that I wish I would get back to:
Reiki self-treatment. If you have Reiki training, great. If you don't, even spending 20 minutes a day putting your hands over your heart or wherever you want with the intention of healing and/or soothing your system is a great way to support yourself.
Journaling, writing down your thoughts with no editing or intention except to write until you're done.
Getting a massage is a great way to reset, and I plan to start that practice again soon after this year away from it.
Meditation. Sit for 20 minutes and watch your breath. Or repeat your mantra. The idea is to give your being a break from your mind, and as you do, you will enter your heart, or a great stillness. I find it takes 20 minutes to disconnect from thinking and sink into that quiet space.
Anything can become a meditation. It's a matter of a quiet mind, steady breathing, a loving heart. Cooking works for me, and writing. Some people garden, exercise or chop wood. Hatha yoga, the stretchy form of yoga, is especially good for stilling the mind, as its original purpose was to prepare the body for long meditations.
Treat yourself. Whatever form you choose to bring peace to your being and to your day, it is self care that ripples out to everyone in your life. This is how we change the world, just as John Lennon said.

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Dementia, the trickster

2/28/2021

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My mom was a big fan of Dell Easy Crosswords. My dad liked the harder ones, calling me from time to time to check on a French or Spanish word, while my older brother Rocky competes in the National Crossword Contest every year there's not a pandemic raging. And he ranks very high. But for my mom, and now alas, for me, it's the Dell Easy book, full of crosswords so easy I asked Rocky if he thinks they make me stupider to do them. (He said only if you can't answer them!)
Today I found one of my mom's Dell Easy books I had tucked away years ago at my son Rasta's house and on the front cover my mother had filled in the blanks with her name, her married name, her maiden name and her nickname. As I looked at this, I flashed on all the things she had covered with her name and address labels, sometimes sticking 10 or 20 of the same label on a pie plate or casserole dish. I had always assumed she did this because she was so possessive of her stuff, a trait I sincerely hoped not to inherit. But seeing her name in those block letters on the crossword book cover hit me like a sack of bricks. She wasn't just trying to possess, she was trying to not forget. She had dementia, but at the time, I didn't know it. She was trying to make sure she could remember who she was. She wanted to not disappear.
Dementia is a trickster. My mom was always distant and difficult for me, so it was just in hindsight that I realized it was way worse than just her personality. Today, it broke my heart to think about all the times I was impatient, all the times we clashed and I thought she was just being difficult on purpose. Cause she could do that, too.
Until a few months before she died, my mom arranged the flowers at the Nursing Home birthday parties. She liked to give "the old folks" something to look forward to, even though she was 98 years old at the time and had to hold on to the counter as she arranged the flowers. There was nothing I could do to help, and even offering made her angry. There was this insistence on things being a certain way, a way that really didn't make sense and created lots of stress. But at the time I didn't realize how crazy it was; I didn't realize she had dementia. I thought she was just being a little more herself than usual.
My brother used to try to set her straight, explaining to her how things really were, but there's no setting straight with dementia. It's just crazy ideas and theories that you hope will pass.
So if your folks are making no sense, starting weird projects in the middle of the night, wandering around the house or insisting on something that just isn't real, love them and keep them safe. Don't let them use the stove or drive, but don't argue either. Just love them and be as patient as you can. My blessings and best wishes go out to you.

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I am a lifelong seeker of connection with the Divine through music, food, art, meditation, healing work, love, travel and people. My search has taken me around the world to my current home in the mountains of GA. Everything I do is part of this Divine Life. On a good day, I am aware of it, and grateful.

108

FAT

Silence

Invitation to a Soul's Passing

Music, up and down the road

September 22nd, 2021

My Reiki Journey Part 1

Poetry

Morning Musings 4/7/21

Dementia, the trickster

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