I’ll be seeing you . . .

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

. . . in all the old familiar places, that this heart of mine embraces all day through. You know the song. It was written in 1938 by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal, and it was recorded by just about everybody – Billie Holliday, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, even as recently as 2020 by Norah Jones. It became wildly popular during World War II when it so perfectly captured the inner longings of those separated from ones they loved.  

When the pandemic began . . . I was in India.  Jaipur, India, to be precise, in the state of Rajasthan. It was my second time in India. On both trips, I had taken students for study abroad. We had ridden on rickshaws through Old Delhi, visited the place where Gandhi was assassinated, walked in and around the magnificent Taj Mahal, . . . but the part of India that reached into my heart was Jaipur. 

If you’ve ever watched the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movies, first and second, then you’ve seen Jaipur. Most of the filming for those movies was done there. 

When I think of Jaipur, yes, I think of the bazaar and the Hawa Mahal or Wind Palace and the Amber Fort, those places that tourists tend to go.  But those things only come to mind.  The parts of Jaipur that live in my heart are the drums of Rajasthani music, the ever-present incense, the mounds of marigolds at the flower market, the cold soft marble of the floor in my room at Ikaki Niwas, the smells of the dal and chapattis and samosas coming from the kitchen, that spring night when my friends and I ate outdoors under the stars just 24 hours past the full moon of Holi. 

And, of course, the people — both the ones I know and have grown to love, and the countless, nameless ones in the shops and on the street and driving tuk-tuks and pedaling rickshaws and selling mutton tikka on the sidewalk and waiting for the curtain to be pulled away and the god to be revealed at the temple, and putting sandalwood paste on my forehead in welcome, and bowing slightly with the prayer hands of a thousand Namastes. 

That is the Jaipur that this heart of mine embraces.

And just last night, without warning, for no reason, I was there.  I mean, I was in my house in the United States, but for a split second, I was distinctly and absolutely in Jaipur.  It stays with me still.  I could close my eyes right now and feel the marble and smell the incense and hear the drums. 

The English Romantic poet, William Wordsworth, wrote about this phenomenon in several of his poems – the power of memory, the realness of memory, the way a reminiscence can hide in our spirit until it is called upon, either by our conscious mind or something that lives buried underneath it, and then it’s there.  Because once the experience has been ours, it is always ours. 

Wordsworth wrote a poem called “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” but it’s also known as “Daffodils.”  The first three stanzas describe a field filled with thousands of daffodils by a lake.  The last eight lines of the poem summarize the poet’s gratitude for this encounter.  They go like this: 

I gazed — and gazed — but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils. 

I hope to return to Jaipur one day.  To walk among the marigolds.  To see my friends again. To bow in reverence at the temple. But until I do, Jaipur, I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you.

Beauty is Truth . . .

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

. . . Truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Those are the final two lines of John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” The poem is considered one of the greatest odes ever written in the English language.  

Here’s the nutshell:  The poet, or the persona of the poem, encounters a piece of ancient Greek pottery which depicts two scenes: one of lovers about to kiss and one of a group of people apparently preparing to offer a sacrifice at the temple.  The entire poem is the poet expressing how this work of art will outlast living people. The lovers will always be young and in love, and the people in the other scene will never reveal the purpose of their journey or their sacrifice.  

Those last two well-known lines are the poet’s conjecture about what the urn would say to all who encounter it.  But those last two lines are also some of the lines most debated by scholars.  What do they mean exactly?  Beauty is truth? Truth beauty?

Recently, I had the honor of hearing Lisa Fischer perform. If you don’t know Lisa Fischer, you should look her up.  She has toured as a background singer for Luther Vandross, Tina Turner, The Rolling Stones and others.  She is featured in the 2013 film Twenty Feet from Stardom, and she is a Grammy-Award winning artist in her own right. 

But all that aside, let me engage in the futile attempt to describe an ineffable performance. Her vocals are simply impeccable. Almost other-worldly. She doesn’t perform songs; she moves into them and takes up residence, inhabiting the words of others as if they sprang from her own experience. She is a musician whose instrument is her body — not just her lungs and diaphragm and tongue and teeth, but her feet and hands and knees and neck. Her talent was not just the greatest I had ever witnessed, but it was greater than I might have imagined was humanly possible.

But there was something more than talent on stage.  I sat through the entire performance with my hands in a prayer position against my lips. The unfiltered display of naked authenticity was almost more than I could take. Somehow I knew that I was watching her very essence — uncovered, unhidden, unashamed, unafraid — and in beholding her highest and truest self free and unfettered, I knew in that instant that this way of being was available to us all.  

For 90 minutes, Lisa Fischer stood at the intersection of talent and authenticity, and it was holy ground. 

She didn’t talk about god or spirituality or faith or a journey.  I mean, other than the tanktop under her tunic that had the chakras running down the back.  She didn’t have to talk about spirituality. The moment itself was sacred, and she was fully in the moment.  And by her silent invitation, so were we. 

That is the power of art — to create an image, a sound, a moment that transcends the material world and shows us the truth of who we are.  Like a mirror that reflects our soul.  

For you see, beauty is truth, truth beauty . . . 

All Systems Go

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

All systems go . . . is a phrase that was popularized during the space race of the 1960s.  It was a specific person, actually, who used the phrase — John Powers, the public information officer for the U.S. Space Program —  and then it just caught on and became an idiom meaning that everything is ready. 

There is another quote about systems often attributed to W. Edwards Deming of the Deming Institute, but it’s of disputed origin.  Regardless of who said it, it goes like this: “Every system is perfectly designed to get the outcome that it gets.”  It assumes a kind of Z to A way of analyzing efficacy.  So, first you have to identify the outcome you are experiencing. Once you know that, you will know what kind of system you have in place — the system that would create this particular result. 

Many spiritual seekers have done at least some work around the idea of setting intentions, the A to Z way of attempting to create specific outcomes. Current spiritual wisdom tells us that if we get clear on our heart’s desire, set an intention, and then affirm it regularly, we can create the reality we want — the results we want. But what is going on when we set an intention and it doesn’t pan out. Are we doing it wrong? 

Or could it just be that all systems aren’t quite on go? 

I don’t have any ground-breaking answers regarding the intersection of intentions and results. But I do think that if we want to understand the connection between them, we need to first explore the system.  And in this instance, the system is us. 

I find that the more time I spend in communion with my higher self, my divine nature, whatever you want to call your true and unchangeable self, the more my intentions arise naturally, on their own, from a pure place, and present themselves to me.  They are no longer clay that I’m attempting to shape, wet and formless clay that I’m pulling from the mud in handfuls and trying with everything within me to make into something at least presentable. No.  From the place of my beingness, my intentions become like doves that fly down to the ground and land at my feet. They aren’t made by me so much as they arrive and present themselves to me.  In time, they start to fly right into my hand, and then they even begin to alight right on my shoulder when I’m not even paying attention.  As my communion with my higher self continues and deepens, the dove can even become a hawk or an eagle.  In other words, the more I simply focus on my divine nature, the more my intentions create themselves.

My suggestion, and it’s only a suggestion, is to stop trying to figure out your life’s direction or what you should be affirming.  Stop trying to carefully word your intention.  Just for a little while. Instead, go inside.  Go deep inside. Check under the hood, so to speak.  Meditate.  Read Mooji or Michael Singer or Caroline Myss. Do whatever it is you need to do to commune with your true self. If you’re not sure what that is, ask.  Let the asking be your first intention. And when all systems are go, you’ll know the direction to take.  

Just a thought from here at ground control. 

Judging from the looks of things . . .

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

I may be sent to New Thought hell soon, so, well, it’s been nice knowing you.

Here’s how it happened. Last night I decided to once again attempt to reduce my judgmental tendencies. Every so often I become aware of this inherited trait of mine and decide to wrangle it into submission. I use the word “wrangle” to evoke the imagery of a rodeo so you might leap to the correct assumption that my success in this regard has historically lasted about seven seconds. Roping judgment is a lot like riding a bull.

I’ve done the deep dive into the difference between good judgment, the laudable ability to make excellent decisions, and being judgmental, the act of priggishly asserting your illusory superiority over another and often by assessing grotesquely minute characteristics. I am talking solely about the latter.

So last night I once again felt compelled — got convicted, as we used to say in the fundamentalist church — and determined that I would withhold all judgmental tendencies for 24 hours. I’m sure that was my problem. Making the leap from seven seconds to 24 hours is guru-level enlightenment.

And so I failed. But I didn’t just fail.

I JUDGED DEEPAK CHOPRA.

I’m going to New Thought hell.

Now, I don’t know Deepak Chopra. I want to make that clear from the start. But I follow him on social media, and this afternoon I saw a post of his that included a question someone had posed to him along with his response. The question was from someone who had felt guided to open a spiritual center, become a Reiki practitioner, and help heal the world. A noble cause. But this experience was a financial trainwreck for the person. Their home was foreclosed. Their credit rating went into the toilet. This person believed, visualized, positively affirmed, cleared past energy, and set intentions, but nothing seemed to work. The question to Deepak was clear: “What did I do wrong?”

Now, let me make it clear that 95% of Mr. Chopra’s response to this writer was spot on as usual. But in the first paragraph, he said, “Where you fell short was the depth of consciousness from which you set your intention into play.”

And in under seven seconds, I popped into his comment section and wrote this:

“With all due respect, sir, I don’t believe you can assess the writer’s ‘depth of consciousness,” and your attempt to do so feels blaming. The rest of your response resonates with your usual brilliance. But the bigger issue not addressed here is the degree to which some spiritual teachers advocate a throw-caution-to-the-wind approach to visioning for one’s life and the idea that all will be fine if you are aligned, and if it’s not fine, then you were somehow lacking. Stepping out in faith is beautiful, but that step should be balanced with other elements (planning, thoughtfulness, training, prayer, saving, an appropriate support system, and also, of course, personal consciousness-deepening work). I’d like to see a spiritual teacher who doesn’t just blame, but who also recognizes that spiritual teachers may have some culpability in encouraging folks to leap before they might be ready.”

And you might think that this post is actually about spiritual malpractice or the failings of the prosperity gospel or the dangers of an affirm-it-and-manifest-it spirituality that emphasizes acquisition over being-ness.

But it’s not. It’s about judgment. And before I can engage in healthy debate about spiritual principles with one of the foremost spiritual teachers in the world, I need to check mine.

At least for eight seconds.