Western Baul Podcast Series

Living a Fluid Life (Juanita Violini)

Living a fluid life is about engaging what life gives us. As we walk through life, we’re walking through the movie we’re creating through our projections, which make life appear solid. But life or reality is fluid and dynamic, changing every moment even if we don’t usually notice. The source of the effort to confirm our solidity is an uncertainty about whether we exist. We use references points outside of ourselves to feel separate. We are always going to have stories; it’s our attachment to them that we have to give up to allow the fluidity of life and to see life as it is. The paradigm or consensus reality we live in is very materialistic. Coincidence and synchronicity signify the fluidness of life leaking out. If we’re aware of nonduality we don’t have to identify with what’s happening in duality. Paradox is when two contradictory ideas are both true. We are exposed to reality when faced with paradox. Our story is created by the mind pretty fast, before we realize it. If we think we’re self-observing and feel bad, it’s not self-observation. What we are mostly afraid of is our own projection, which has nothing to do with reality. Our projections are useful in that they point us in the direction we need to work. To mechanically complain or explain ourselves makes life solid and leaves no room for fluidity. When we go with what shows up in life, we are happier and carry a lot less weight. We sell life short when we make things solid. If we can go with life when it shows up differently than expected, then what happens in place of our preferences can be just as good or better than what we wanted. This can have a ripple effect in our lives. When we let go of little things, we experience freedom and lightness that encourages us to let go of bigger things. Juanita Violini is an artist and writer/producer of interactive mystery entertainment who has been a student of the spiritual path for over 35 years.

O Earth, When Will We Hear You Sing... Thomas Merton and Journal Writing as Prayer (Regina Sara Ryan)

Lectio Divina (“divine reading” in Latin) is a centuries-old tradition of being inspired by reflecting on the text of a scripture. It may also be considered in terms of “reading” creation and what Thomas Merton called the “calligraphy of nature.” Merton (1915-1968) was a Catholic monastic and mystic whose writing impacted vast numbers of Christians by introducing them to a perspective on Eastern traditions they had never been exposed to before. He used his journaling as a portal into prayer, an entryway to clarity of thinking and love for God. He acknowledged times of doubt, fear, and anger and wrote with self-honesty and courage through it all. Merton walked a razor’s edge in monastic life as his writings were subject to censorship in the Church. He met Tibetan Buddhist masters, considered Zen, Hindu, and Sufi teachings, and reported his own nondual experience. He wrote about the Vietnam war and had communications with Martin Luther King, Joan Baez, and many other public figures and writers. Merton stayed the course within the Catholic Church, sensing that God had placed him where he was. He was much loved by those resonant with the roots of mystical Christianity and maligned by those who were rigid and felt he had gone outside of the bounds of his faith. His overriding context was that all of life is a play of God. He felt that our desire to go where God wants us to go is praise of God and that “The gate of heaven is everywhere.” Journaling can be a way of communicating with the deep self, our highest self. Prompts were given to those who attended the talk, and some shared their journaling about “what I know and don’t know about prayer.” Regina Sara Ryan was the editor of Hohm Press for 35 years. She is a workshop leader, retreat guide, and author of The Woman Awake, Igniting the Inner Life, Praying Dangerously, Only God, and other books.

Does Traditional Spiritual Training Apply Anymore? (Lalitha)

Spiritual traditions have deep roots and have proven themselves over centuries to produce fruit. On the path, we experience the longing of the heart, the intuition of what is possible for a human being. Longing has no conclusion, no end. Our survival instinct has a limit, but longing has no limit. It’s unusual for someone to be interested in traditional spiritual training unless they are with a group of people who have experienced longing. When spiritual life becomes stronger than survival instinct, training becomes personal and we may find that we cannot work through life long obstacles on our own. Many want training on their terms. The price for training is deeply held beliefs. Traditional training has the strength and clarity to produce calm-centered knowing. Many self-announced teachers have no accountability. The fruit of longing has the quality of having no life of one’s own, described in the traditions as a mood of joy, delight, relief, gratitude, and discovery. Effort is needed to develop fearlessness and mental stamina. We almost always make decisions based on invisible motivations. We pick up influences that trigger a physical and subtle response and pass them on to each other. Our choices are colored by the influences we have collected. Intuition of the Beloved can carry us. The content of spiritual traditions may no longer suit the context of cultural situations. The content falls away; the context can never fall away. The practitioner’s greatest gift is to hold their seat and practice invisibly. We can develop an aim for spiritual life and make decisions based on that aim. When we’re talking about traditional spiritual training, it’s all about relationship. Lalitha is a spiritual teacher with an ashram in British Columbia, Canada, who was empowered by her master Lee Lozowick in 1998. Her books include Waking to Ordinary Life and Cultivating Spiritual Maturity.

Bittersweet: A Refuge in Troubled Times (Mary Angelon Young)

The reality of impermanence and the inevitable experience of loss is enough in life to give us a wound. On the path of transformation, we need a broken heart that only God—which can be referred to in many ways such as the Divine or the Absolute—can heal. Heartbreak is extreme in the times we are living in. Bittersweet has an in-between quality where we experience different deep feelings at the same time. Caring is needed to work with bittersweetness in an alchemical way. Grief is a spiritual enzyme. A broken heart encompasses the suffering of the world; it can be inspirational and turn us to want to relieve the suffering of others. A broken heart can teach us how to pray and have humility in the face of the awe, wonder, and mystery of creation. We can’t understand the Divine, but we can cultivate trust which may start with recognizing that we don’t. It’s important to stay present to anger and outrage until we get underneath to the sadness that is there, which can allow the transcendent to come into play and for a hallelujah to arise. It’s easy to bypass our personal wounds. We may see parts of us as enemies, but we only change by loving all of ourselves, which is not about indulgence. Personal wounds are a way into the objective wound of a broken heart. The Sage is established in universal love and loves us as we are. When we have a clear moment, we can re-affirm our intention to the Universe. When we feel lost, we can do the next right thing. Freely offering gratuitous goodness is a gesture of love. The point of living may be to experience both the human and the transcendent. Mary Angelon Young is a workshop leader with a background in Jungian psychology, an editor, and author of As It Is, Under the Punnai Tree, The Baul Tradition, Caught in the Beloved’s Petticoats, Enlightened Duality (with Lee Lozowick), The Art of Contemplation, and other books.

In Relationship (Myosho Ginny Matthews)

Relationship is meeting what arises with full feeling and consciousness. Dependent co-origination means that our consciousness arises at the same time as all consciousness. Lost in inner dialogue, we do not experience true relationship. Zazen (sitting) is an opportunity to meet what arises in the moment in a silent, unmoving state. Myosho Ginny Matthews describes practices of zazen, chanting, and samu (work) which were engaged in her sangha and with her teacher, Sasaki Roshi, who came to the U.S. from Japan and lived into his 108th year. We can learn to dissolve through work practice, but it is harder to dissolve into the complexity of work in the world. A teisho is a spontaneous commentary on a koan, which is an enigmatic question used in Rinzai Zen Buddhism to open to a state beyond the fixated self. There is the opportunity to manifest true beingness in koan practice. We can’t stay dissolved in the Absolute as a human being—we go in and out. Mystical traditions say our relations come out of the womb that birthed us all. Sweat lodge is an experience of going into the womb of the Earth. Practice is to make relationship with whatever is in our world. We’re not in relationship if we’re not present and attentive. Death is not an isolated event; it is a complement to the ongoing reborn quality of each moment. We can learn to hold opinions lightly. If we make relationship with the reality of the moment, it’s usually not as difficult as we think it will be. In grief, pain lives with us. Suffering is holding onto pain beyond its reality as it changes into something else. We can disappear in a moment of bowing. Myosho Ginny Matthews was a student of Joshu Sasaki Roshi for 40 years. She took lay ordination in 2000, leads retreats on practice, is a dance teacher and choreographer, and is featured in the book, The Unknown She: Eight Faces of an Emerging Consciousness.

Encouraging Boredom in Our Lives (Matthew Files)

Culturally, boredom has a negative connotation as something that we should not experience. Being bored is an uncomfortable place to be in, which we usually try to remedy. But this misses the point since boredom can be useful and even necessary on the path. Chogyam Trungpa notes that Westerners tend to be fascinated by the aesthetic appreciation of the simplicity or rigidity of rituals such as the Japanese tea ceremony or zazen. He says the point of vipassana meditation is to get bored. Trungpa makes a distinction between hot boredom, which is agitating and the first kind of boredom we encounter, and cool boredom, which is refreshing in that we do not have to do or expect anything. It is difficult to get to cool boredom without going through hot boredom which we look to alleviate through excitement and entertainment. Boredom shows up when there are gaps in our consciousness without stimulation or a way to satisfy ourselves. This happens in daily life as well as in meditation. Interesting times distract us from spiritual practice and paying attention to ourselves. We can encourage the space for boredom to arise rather than being caught in the current distractions of the world including constant use of cell phones. Boredom arises if thoughts and activities are not motivated by attainment or credentials. We entertain ourselves all day with subconscious chatter and are uncomfortable with silent gaps in our conversations with ourselves. We can consider that life may have no inherent meaning and that we give meaning to things in order to entertain ourselves. Remedying moods and emotions doesn’t ultimately work, which can leave us no choice but to be with things as they are. When we give up hopelessness, hope goes with it. Matthew Files facilitates groups that support people to look deeper into their process, formulate their own questions, and become responsible for their choices.

The Essence of Creation Is Transformation (Nachama Greenwald)

Transformation is essential for the evolution and thriving of creation, which includes human beings. The process brings greater clarity, healing, and resilience into our lives and creative growth into the world. We see cycles of birth, death, and rebirth occurring in nature and on a global and personal level. Transformation is alchemical; it involves a shake-up of our usual routine and a plunge into groundlessness. Strong medicine is provided by life itself. There is poignant bittersweet beauty in impermanence and change, in loss and death, as well as in new growth. A distinction can be made between horizontal translation, a lateral shift in which our fundamental perception of the world remains the same, and vertical transformation where there is a radical shift in it. Rebirth follows death, always. Parts of ourselves that we’ve exiled can be transformed from shadow to light and become gifts we offer to the world. The caterpillar has to die to become a butterfly, but it resists the change. Personal examples of dying to identification are described. We are all hard-wired for survival at the level of ego, but at the level of soul we long to surrender to the holy process and love more profoundly, turn toward what is, and become more fully ourselves. Liminality means dissolution and refers to the betwixt and between place between death and rebirth when the way things have been is dying but what’s waiting to be born has not yet emerged. It’s a place of receptivity which is necessary for us to pay attention to ourselves in a deeper way. When external doors close, inner doors can open. Transformative moments are spontaneous when we’re transported into a place of awe and we experience our unitive nature. Nachama Greenwald is a physical therapist, editor, and musician who for seventeen years was a member of the Shri blues band which performed Western Baul music.

Cultivating Virtue: The Stoic Traits of Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, and Justice (Bandhu Dunham)

Stoicism is a philosophy founded by Zeno around the fourth century BC. It was important in Greece and Rome and culminated at the time Marcus Aurelius was emperor. The primary purpose of philosophy is to reveal our shortcomings so we can overcome them. Stoicism is about living in harmony with the universe. There are four cardinal virtues that Stoics cultivate: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Pithy quotes that are useful to consider are discussed. Knowing the difference between what we can and can’t control is key to figuring out what to put our attention on and how to adapt. We find strength in realizing we have power over our minds, not outside events. Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor who was aligned with Stoic philosophy, said that decisions not conditions determine what a man is. We may not be able to choose the conditions that come to us in life, but we can choose how to relate to those conditions. Wealth is to desire what we have; poverty is to wish for what we don’t have. Stoics maintain that our being is contained in an inner citadel that we create with Stoic virtue. We are invincible and cannot be defeated if we maintain our character and principles. Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, was written for himself as a diary. There is a thread of accepting reality as it is when we are self-contained. Stoicism involves not being swept away by emotions and not being in denial of them. Happiness depends on the quality of our thoughts. We can see obstacles as directing us to shift our perspective and move forward. The trials we face introduce us to our strengths. Rivers are easiest to cross at their source. Once neuropathways are established, it’s much harder to break a habit. Stoic virtues are universal and offer a way into any spiritual practice. Bandhu Dunham is the author of Creative Life and an internationally recognized glass artist and teacher.

Storytelling Is a Core Competency of Spiritual Practice (Rick Lewis)

Rick Lewis talks about the process that led him from being a performer and corporate events speaker to hosting an online writing program. Most everyone fashions a life that is obedient to our deepest fears. We carry stories about who we are and what is possible throughout life, having made unconscious decisions in childhood that we will not engage in activities that could put us in touch with feelings such as shame or rejection. The highest expression of spirituality on some paths is to serve what is wanted and needed in the moment, but we cannot do this if constrained by stories we hold as part of our identity. Our stories remain hidden before we challenge them with action. Until then, we can only serve in the small ways that show up within our comfort zones. At a hinayana (solo path) level, telling stories about times when we have been reactive or unconscious is a way to study patterns so we can map out the territory and have an edge to act differently in the future. At a mahayana (path of service) level, sharing stories is a way to learn and develop connection and compassion. Human beings are wired to think in stories. We are designed to learn from problems and the biggest and most worthwhile problem we can take on is the spiritual path, which is about how to counter the story of separation. Telling our stories can nurture relationship and connection with ourselves and others. We can self-observe when various I’s take over during storytelling. In a spiritual community, the degree of vulnerability and authenticity is set by the teacher. Most of humanity has a capacity and hunger for authenticity. The lack of acceptance of parts of ourselves that we project onto others can hold us back from being authentic. Rick Lewis is a national speaker and author of 7 Rules You Were Born to Break, The Perfection of Nothing, You Have the Right to Remain Silent, and other books.

Yearning, Longing, and Desire for Oneness (Debbie Hogeland-Celebucki)

Is the source of yearning for connection on a human level the same as longing for God on a spiritual level? The urge for connection is pre-thought, pre-psychological. It begins at birth when we first experience separateness. Practice is about patterning the nervous system to let go. When we can sit in the center of the storm of our feelings, we can be with suffering and with "what is" in a way that does not seek fulfillment. To come to acceptance doesn't always happen gracefully. To go fully into yearning—a process that happens over and over—leads to shattering, which is a doorway to reassembling without the same identification. We may yearn for love and project that we’ll be satisfied on a human level and find that we long for love on a much deeper level. Acceptance of every part of us, and of the masculine and feminine, brings us to the next level. Suffering doesn’t end when we accept suffering, but something shifts. Longing and suffering co-exist. It feels different when we are able to ride the waves of heartbreak. The ability to hold personal and universal suffering is needed in the world. Hate is projection of suffering onto others; realizing this helps us to be compassionate. Clinging is part of life and never disappears, but our work with it can be incorporated into practice. We need a strong matrix to hold longing. In each incarnation we may have one destiny to fulfill, which involves use of the body. We don’t read a book to experience the wine; we empty our cup and drink the wine. Longing is satisfied in the longing itself. Letting go of expectations opens us to a commitment to love. We can work with desire and identity, letting go again and again. To honor longing is not a casual choice. Debbie Hogeland-Celebucki is an advocate for the wisdom of community and conscious parenting and the author of Widening the Circle: Inspiration and Guidance for Community Living.