Western Baul Podcast Series

Irritation: It's a Godsend! (David Herz)

We can look on irritation as a reality check since reality inevitably falls short of our expectations. Irritation can be destructive to spaces and relationships when it becomes anger. It is a gift in that it can show us something about ourselves and remind us of our intention to work. There is a lot of energy associated with irritation which can go elsewhere when recognized. Irritation can be triggered by external or internal circumstances such as being hungry or tired. People may provoke discomfort or irritation, but this reaction is often about issues from our past that we project onto others. Conscious sacrifice in not reacting to the unpleasant manifestations of others can be a challenging way to work on ourselves. We can learn to use skillful means when we need to address situations that are irritating. The greatest work we can do on the path is show kindness and compassion to others. We are easily irritated when our comfort is threatened, and habits make us comfortable. Reactivity for human beings seems to happen at light speed. We can’t catch it, but we can catch our outward expression. When things are going well, we tend to revert to old habits and go back to sleep. A deeper level of irritation occurs when we come in contact with the Work. It doesn’t go away since the dilemma of incarnation is not something we can resolve, but it can be used as food for evolution and transformation on the spiritual path. The longer we do spiritual work, the more vulnerable we become and the more susceptible to irritation. Irritation says something about our deep structure. A Master may provide irritation for others to see things in their unconscious. There would never be a pearl if the oyster was never irritated. David Herz is a spiritual practitioner who lives in Paris where he has been a journalist, technical writer, communications officer, and an English instructor at universities.

From Rigidity to Fluidity: The Art of Easeful (and Even Elegant) Transitions (Michael Menager and Mic Clarke)

The heart of transition is navigating liminal space. This in-between place offers an entry point into reality, a portal into deeper relationship with oneself and the Divine. We are continually in the process of transition. Each transition is an invitation to awaken to possibility, to consciously go with life rather than resist it. In the Vedic tradition, tirtha is a Sanskrit term for a crossing-over point from ordinary to sacred space. Hospitals, churches, and airports are transitional places. Everything in the universe is food; we just have to figure out how to use it. Savasana, the corpse pose in yoga, can be used to practice dying. We will encounter trials and crises on the path, an inner overturning such that things will never again be what they were. To transform, we must understand that our present form and the way we conceive of ourselves and the world has to disappear for another reality to appear. Winning without losing anything is a vain and illusory hope of ego. There’s suffering and struggle but also joy and love in letting go. What if we turned toward transition rather than away from it? We have a capacity to totally agree with the moment. We have to remember to breathe during transitions. If we can relax, we’ll have no problem. We can learn to befriend the cage we are in. A gap is a place where the shoreline we have left behind is no longer visible and the shore we are heading for is shrouded in uncertainty. The Way is for heroes. Part of us is afraid, but another part is courageous. There is joy in comradeship and companionship on the path. When we are in transition, it is useful to consider the inevitability of it. Michael Menager is a musician, singer, author, and modern-day troubadour whose third album is titled Line in the Water. Mic Clarke is a writer, practitioner of Vedic astrology, and mental health social worker. Both live in New South Wales, Australia and are students of Lee Lozowick.

Making the Work Your Own (VJ Fedorschak)

"Live and learn" is part of the design of a human being which comes naturally to us as children. Messages we receive in our family and society lead us to abandon our instinctual freedom and to develop habits about how to be. But the ability to live and learn remains dormant, and we may learn how necessary a spiritual path is and how we need to make it our own in order to realize its possibility. The Work refers to a system taught by G.I. Gurdjieff but also—in a broader way—to transformation which is available through different traditions or streams of the Great Work. Both effort and surrender are needed on real paths. We are all blind in some areas and, if we are honest in our self-observation, there are parts of ourselves that we don’t like. Being asleep can be considered as seeing only a sliver of reality since we are focused on ourselves. Also, we relate to the world through filters which overlay reality. The Work isn’t about being saved. Despite our insignificance in the universe, it (or God) needs our help. If we simply admire those who have served the Work in the traditions, we will not take responsibility for it. Making the Work our own is discussed in terms of practice with the details of life, strengthening the container until at some point we have majority vote to serve that which needs us, working with childish parts of ourselves and our weakest link, putting ourselves on the line, loving what we do not love, being in relationship to everyone, supporting others in their work, holding our seat without being territorial, dealing with pride and vanity, following the spirit of the law over the letter of the law, not separating life in the world from the Work, keeping agreements, and cultivating emptiness. The Work is about relationship between God and us. VJ Fedorschak is the organizer of the Western Baul Podcast Series and author of The Shadow on the Path and Father and Son.

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.