The Science of Happiness

Stumbling upon everyday teachers thrill and exhilarate me. They are like fresh, vibrant, sweet watermelons exploding with color and taste in a hot summer afternoon like this. More and more, I am discovering teachers whose backgrounds are a fascinating intersection of science (usually neuroscience, psychology, some quantum physics) and spirituality (typically Buddhism). I used to be turned off by Buddhism. I found it very frou-frou lacking in any really deep substance you can truly sink your teeth in. It incessantly talks about happiness in a way that was if not unappealing, just lacked resonance.

Until I met the scientists, the psychologists, and the philosophers.

My doubts were eased, albeit slowly, by intelligent, logical scientists who, with research and scientific, replicable data, substantiate the claims of Buddhism about happiness, calmness and equanimity. Meet the people who bring the art AND science of happiness in one digestible, practical, human package.

There is Dr. Rick Hanson, neuropsychologist, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom. The basic premise of the book is that our brains possess plasticity and malleability and that we can alter our physiology through contemplative practices such as meditation. The book is pretty interesting because it talks about the physiology of the brain, illustrates it in very scientific (but digestible) way, and demonstrates evidence of how what we feed the brain (good, bad or indifferent) alters it.

Through American Public Media’s On Being, I also discovered Sylvia Boorstein, Psychologist and Buddhist Meditation Teacher (and also author), and James Kabat-Zinn, a molecular biologist and take this, “founding Executive Director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.” James Kabat-Zinn particularly appeals to me because I applaud him for his efforts in bringing mindfulness practice into mainstream medicine.

And then there is Matthieu Ricard, a French-born son of a philosopher and artist with a PhD in cell genetics, turned Tibetan Buddhist monk who is allegedly dubbed the Happiest Man on Earth based on the brain waves studied by neuroscientists. He is one of them "olympic meditators" and of course denies that there is any scientific evidence that solidifies this claim. Indeed an empiricist. I love this man. What I hear when I listen to this guy is a man who has obviously debated and philosophized so many million times ideas such as God and its existence, consciousness, and happiness (they way Tibetan monks are trained), but who have also experienced all these phenomenon first-hand. Here is a clip of him being interviewed by Krista Tippet:

Being: Video: Live Conversation with Matthieu Ricard | The "Happiest" Man in the World — Meeting Matthieu Ricard

These scientists are on to something. I will be stupid not to listen and pay attention.

But why do I even write about this? Because the teachings are so compelling and moving to me that I have to share it with people who might find value in it (yeah, yeah, sort of like a Mary Kay sales rep… LOL). Because I have watched my life change before my very eyes because of what I have learned from these teachers. Because I’m happier. Because in this world of economic recessions, wars, poverty, catastrophes, global warming, I can still taste the equianimity and appreciate the wholeness of the big picture, that I can still find it in me to be okay with the world (even the ugly parts).

Namaste.

Nightmares

Dreams are very telling for me. They have been over the last couple of years. I may have whined about my lucid dreaming experiences, but later on have seen their utility in my life and have learned to accept it as a rare gift. I guess you can say that I’m one of those people who have bought into the Jungian view about the unconscious and their manifestations in dreams (better than Freudian, I think!). Guidance from a trained Jungian has taught me to understand my own psyche and the unconscious that lies latent. But experience has also taught me that there are never any definitive, linear interpretations to dreams. We can take stabs at what they mean, and most of the time, if you are attuned to your inner life, I honestly believe that they reveal amazing insight into emotions, feelings shoved deep in our unconscious. But again, you can fall into the dangerous trap of overanalysis and come out with the conclusion that rarely is there ever an absolute answer.

I have been feeling physically drained all week, which is quite ironic because this is the week that I don’t have anything outside of work planned. My schedule has been wide freaking open, I have to rub my eyes in disbelief. I don’t remember the last time I had a week like this! I can always tell when my cycle is looming over my head like a dark, heavy rain cloud. Exhaustion and craving for unhealthy salt-laden food is symptomatic. I can tell that this week is that week.

I skipped the confounding and nonsensical (to me, at least) Irish revelry and traded it in for a cozy night under the covers. I wasn’t prepared for the assault of nightmares (two that I can count).

I will not go into details, but I understood that the fear that I dare not confront in waking life intruded my dreaming life. Why? Just because that’s what dreams do. That’s what their purpose is. They say that when we are in our waking states, our egos are very safe and comfortable. Our egos let their guards down when we are asleep, which then makes for a conducive, safe backdrop for our unconscious to come out and play.

After almost two years of solitude (well....they were all mere flings, after all), I find myself on the verge of something beautifully and instantaneously terribly serious. During the day, I am the warrior, strong and ready for the battle again. At night, I’m the helpless, fearful princess trapped in the fortress waiting to be rescued. Apparently.

I may be unconventional in the sense that I am grateful for bad dreams, especially those that rock you to the core. It’s YOU telling YOU something, and the more important the message is, the more forceful the dream will be. And because you have been told, you are now in the position to ACT.

I processed today and I feel re-energized, rejuvenated. It makes me feel good that I understand the workings of my life a little bit more. A Buddhist teaching reverberated with me throughout the day that is helping me be a little less scared:


The nature of everything is impermanence. If we look at everything – relationships, loving people – through the impermanent nature of reality, if we look at, say, a water glass and understand that it is ALREADY BROKEN, then our relationship with it completely changes. If we love people as if we have already lost them (fatalistic or not, THAT is the eventuality of EVERYTHING), we become less afraid because when you think about it, who else are you not going to lose?

Namaste, high tens, cartwheels, and now, chaines….

And the Winners Are...

I have the most difficult time at bookstores. I start browsing and I never want to leave.

On a partly rainy afternoon, the North Face-wearing crowd congregated at the bookstore. Some were holiday shopping, some nosying. Some, like me, were there to scratch an itch. With the upcoming trip that commences with a 23-hour flight crossing continents, a stack of fresh books was imperative. After hours and hours of fruitful browsing, the winners are:

1. Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom by Dr. Rick Hanson. I HATE that this is in in the self-help self section and I hate that I hate self-help sections. There is such a societal stigma associated with self-help, and maybe not all of it unfounded either. A lot of these books are quick fixes that just do not work. A lot of these authors (kooks?) promise you this or that in 10 easy steps. They offer a one-size-fits all therapy in a 100 pages. Realistic? I have my doubts. I sought out this particular book since I have heard great reviews about it and it's a subject I am madly fascinated with - the intersection of science (particularly psychology) and spirituality. Rick Hanson himself is a neuropsychologist and a practicing Buddhist. The book was co-written by a neurologist who, with scientific, provable, replicable experiments, verify how contemplative practices impact and mold your physiological brain, and later on, the mind.

2. The Book by Alan Watts. I am sometimes happy that I wasn't alive yet in the sixties. It cannot be described enough how the sixties, with it's massive counter-culture movements and a socio-political climate ripe for it, was a profound time for collective awakening. It would have been an extremely overwhelming time and I think it would take a strong vessel to hold such intense and radical philosophical, cultural and spiritual shifts. I may not have been there to personally witness it but I am glad that I still have access to the great minds of that generation via the likes of Richard Alpert a.k.a. Ram Dass, an ex-Harvard professor who has a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford. Although not single-handedly, he is responsible for bringing the Eastern teachings of Yoga to flower power America. Alan Watts is a similar individual also influential in the 50's/60's. Although I have heard of him, I have not read his writings. I opened up the book and read a few pages and they instantly resonated with me. I'm actually excited about reading this one.

3. The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing by Jalaluddin Rumi. Rumi is one of the most revered Sufi poets who wrote about love with such precise eloquence. Love in its many forms takes us to places within where there are usually unspoken words for. It is a colossal task to describe the indescribable. Yet Rumi does it with such honesty and beauty enough to send chills up my spine.

"A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home."

"Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along."

"You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you."

There were other books that made it to the short-list, but not quite to the register.

The Other Contenders:

1. Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti which is a collection of Jiddu Krishnamurti's (a great Indian philosopher) writings on human existence. I have always wanted to read Krishnamurti but the selection at the local bookstore was not that extensive and this one wasn't quite doing this for me.

2. The Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra. The Banker encouraged me to get this and after hearing the title AND the author, I said no. The title turned me off so quickly because there seems a lot of ego in it. It connotes that Deepak Chopra is some authority on life and he knows and unlocked the secret to it. Really? I also mentally associate it with "The Secret" book which I found lacking in substance, to be honest. But out of curiosity, I checked it out. There it was: Fifteen Steps. To his credit though, they seem like they're the same Buddhist/Vedanta teachings repackaged to make it palatable to the mass market. What doesn't sit well with me is the marketing scheme (ergo the fifteen steps) which spells out that the intention is not to reveal or share a truth, but to make money.

3. Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. I had wanted to get his biography on the Buddha, but the store didn't have a copy. I was going to settle for this one, but the first few pages lacked lucidity for me.

What does your reading list look like nowadays?

Gyrations on Gratitude

There is scientific evidence that gratefulness practices have the power to change the bleak outlook and glum disposition of the grim. I have written about neuroplasticity before, which is the ability of our mind to alter the brain by cultivating mini-patterns so that they eventually get entrenched in who we are. It’s practicing baby cartwheels to eventually get us ready for pole vaulting. Well, that’s a little extreme, but you get the idea.

Here is one particular case study. This is a video of a Buddhist meditation/Yoga teacher’s mother who supposedly was a sour miser who was “ruined” forever after her son “trained“ her to find something to be grateful about, no matter how teeny. It's a funny video. Oprah and her propaganda for gratitude diaries was on to something after all.

Since it is Thanksgiving week, I thought I myself would pronounce my gratefulness and thankfulness for the daily miracles in my own life. Because my life has been going at lightning speeds lately, it would be nice to memorialize these “little things”. It would be good practice to step away from the buzz of everyday life and create a little space for counting blessings, if not as a sustained practice, at least this week. Don’t you think it would be nice to look back at them again one day in the future, say five years from now?

But here is something you perhaps would not find in ten-steps-to-gratefulness-or-other books (not that I have checked).

Embodiment.

Contemplative and meditative traditions of Buddhism, Zen and Yoga could talk your ears off on this one. Simply put, it’s being in your body, ideally, at all times. What that means is watching your breath (a tiny bit of semi-useless piece of information: did you know that in a single breath, a quadrillion signals are fired by neurons? A quadrillion is a thousand million million. Lots of zeros!). Feeling your heartbeat. Feeling your hands and feet. When was the last time you felt your pinky finger? Exactly the point.

So they say that one shouldn’t just stop at gratefulness. One should feel what it is like to be grateful at the same time. After saying thanks, pause for a moment (closing your eyes help) and soak in the feeling, as if you’re a sommelier having intimate moment with wine.

Oh my goodness. How delicious.

The Chinese are superstitious about Mondays. They say that you should be careful about what you do at the start of the week, because chances are, you would tend to recreate these all week. Hmmm… did a neuropsychologist come up with that? Well, it’s a Monday and I guess there’s no better day for igniting a habit than today!

Today, I am grateful for:

• The gift of remembrance, of memory. I found myself remembering my Dad and the gift of memory allows me to reconnect to that part of me that is him, too. It makes the missing another person a little less lonely if you think that although they have passed on, they are still alive in you. My sleeping patterns have been so wildly off lately and I remembered how my Dad had the most abnormal sleeping habits I’ve seen in anyone. And sometimes I wonder if he was an enlightened being of some sort who has kept this secret all along until he left this plane. And if reincarnations were true, is he back in another human form somewhere and will we meet?
• Living a life that I want to live. It’s really unimaginably larger than life, when I really think about it. It’s amazing how reality is really very farfetched from what our minds can conceive. When I say unimaginably, nothing about where I am has been even remotely close to what my limited mind was capable of imagining and churning. There is stillness where I want stillness. There is tremendous activity where I direct it. It’s a delicate tightrope balance act on your hands, and I acknowledge that not everything is in my control. But for even that humbling truth, I am grateful.
• The internal mysterious rhythms that allow music and its inception to be possible. Making something phenomenal and jaw dropping from practically out of nothing - where does musical genius come from?
• Silence
• Malleable realities :)(a phrase stolen from Jason Mraz)
• Mondays. If it weren’t for them, there would be no Fridays.
• Friends and family who make time to nurture themselves and are proactive at owning their happiness and destinies. Yay!!!!
• Pretty little pink things for dainty wrists. Michael Kors and his designer who had the genius of designing a pink-faced chrono stainless steel oversized wear-to-the-shower watch
• Snow blanketing mountains. Gorgeous.
• Gavin DeGraw, wailing “I’m gonna love you more thank anyoneeeeeeeeeee….”
• Eyeglasses. Yeah, yeah. Gone were the days of 20-20. And just the gift of vision in general!
• Salsa. Oh MY GOD. Thank you, Billy Bob.
• Short workweeks
• Thanksgiving :)
• And all the turkeys who have died and are going to die yet. :(

What are YOU grateful for?

Namaste!

Closer

I still have a lot of neurological re-engineering to do. The imprints of the caretaker archetype in my psyche is a lot harder to banish than I thought.

There has been no better word to describe how I have been feeling in the last few days than exhausted. Drained. Exhaustion and I got very intimate. Exhaustion and I have been sleeping together. I knew something was amiss because despite the constant heavy traffic in my life, I never get this way. Physical activity hardly ever exhausts me. I get tired, but I hardly ever know depletion. There are only two things that I can identify that exhaust the living daylights out of me – unnecessary exposure to people who are so bought into the illusion of their helplessness, and my own unhealthy patterns.

Yesterday, I found myself opening up to a long-time friend about some incomprehensible stuff that I didn’t realize I was keeping in. Old patterns are frigging hard to break, man. It turns out, I was falling back into old habits of selfish desires to control situations and people because I hate sitting in the unknown. They are about the persistent and unhealthy desire to give all of me but deny anything back in return. They are patterns of infallibility and perfection.

I honestly did not know I had been carrying this the last two weeks. But it’s amazing and beautiful to watch it release once it’s recognized and acknowledged. Thank you, Aussie.

Last night was the soundest sleep I have had in a couple of weeks. I feel like I was defibrillated. I am so relieved because I had to see the Little Guy today and he doesn’t deserve a half-assed, zombie reading tutor. He deserves 100% of me. Today is a big day for us because I got him a Star Wars (his favorite) book that is in his reading level.

And to practice being on the receiving end, I’ve accepted an invitation to go to a Volunteer Services Appreciation social. I cannot be arrogant to think that helping out a child doesn’t deserve a little pat on the back and some ice cream. Little Guy’s teacher gave me an RGJ clip two weeks ago stating that it has been proven that children who receive tutoring help do exhibit quantifiable improvements in reading and math aptitude. I need to be open to receive gratitude when I deserved it.

I am making a difference. I don’t know why that’s so hard to admit but it is.

Tomorrow is another day to make a difference. Tomorrow is another day to recreate our future - inner and outer both.

Happy Thursday and Namaste!

Breaking Through

One of the most fascinating things for me to watch is humans (particularly myself – I am my own laboratory, after all) exhibiting cognitive behavior. I like being aware of thought, where it emerges from, what its compulsions are, and then watching it as it is turned into choices and decisions and how these thoughts via volition eventually influence our reality. To go a step further, I like being aware of the patterns that I create with frequent thoughts and actions, and lately, have been experimenting with building new healthy patterns and reversing old, unhealthy ones.

It’s interesting how and where you find parallelisms. In Eastern traditions of Yoga and Buddhism, they talk about “samskara”, which are grooves that form in your brain for habitual and repetitive actions and thoughts. In physiology, it is common to hear “muscle memory”, especially in sports, and I’m finding out from experience, also applies to dancing. The more your muscles get accustomed to certain movements, the more natural certain movements feel with time. In neuropsychology, they say that nerves that fire together, wire together. Neurons that are activated in similar regions in your brain associate and the more they do so, the more the pattern (and that region of your brain) is strengthened. Brain parts that get the most activity and stimulation, get more supplies of blood, oxygen and glucose, therefore in a way, reinforcing that part of our brain the more we invest in it.

Here is a caveat: I am no way a scholar in Yoga, Buddhism, or trained in physiology or psychology. Do not take everything I say here as gospel. These are my personal conclusions from what I read about that coincide with observable and replicable phenomena in my own life.

And here is a profound learning for me. A single breakthrough does not equate success. It is not about stopping at the single BIG breakthrough when and if it happens. It takes a lot of work. It involves painful and risky investments. It is about constant and habitual practice until you form those grooves in your brain, until your muscles remember, until the nerves that you want to wire together, finally fire together. You do not light an entire palace with one candle. It’s going to take a multitude of candles to keep a big space lit in the dark.

For an hour every week, I volunteer at a local elementary school. I help out a first grader who is struggling with reading. I instantly knew the kid I'm working with this year will be a challenge. The Little Guy could not read simple words like “Bob”, “will” and “that”. There were days when he would flat out refuse to try anymore. Last Thursday was our first breakthrough. I got a couple books from the library that would not drown him and at the same time appeal to him. He is the second child that I have worked with in the last couple of years and it’s amazing when it happens - the first breakthrough. You work with them for weeks and you don't see any progress. Then from out of nowhere, they just start reading. All of sudden, it’s like a light flicked in their head, and they just know how to sound out syllables and recognize words they have read before. It is an incredible honor to see this child transforming right before my very eyes and knowing that his life is not going to be the same anymore. But I stop myself from doing ten cartwheels because I remind myself that a breakthrough is not a breakthrough if it is not replicable. A series of mini-breakthroughs make The Breakthrough.

Namaste.

On Neuroplasticity

I find myself drawn to teachers who straddle the delicate line between exoteric and esoteric, who walk between the ethereal and the material, who balance between the spiritual and the worldly. On the material plane, I understand that this is a very dualistic way of seeing the reality of things, but I have to be honest about where I am. I cannot claim non-dualism and oneness when I am not there. I guess this is why I am drawn to The Dalai Lama who is a staunch supporter of both science and religion. The Buddha himself has been said to possess a scientific mind as well in his adamant teaching for his students to experience the teachings for themselves. Empirical knowledge, after all, may be one of those things that can leave lasting imprints on people. As opposed to just reading or hearing or understanding something from a purely intellectual level, first-hand experience and experimentation is still the most powerful of teachers.

I am astounded by the stuff that I have been finding about the intersection of spirituality and science, particularly how it has been scientifically proven that meditative practices do have positive and lasting effects on the brain, and therefore, can also alter a persons disposition. If you are curious, here is a video of Rick Hanson, a neuro-psychologist-slash-Buddhist-practitioner-slash-meditation-teacher, talking at Google about his scientific findings in the spiritual realm.

While the Eastern practices of meditation are said to eventually lead us to enlightenment (which really is essentially "moksha" or liberation and, in Christianity, eternal salvation and heaven), my experience has been that psychology can be used with these contemplative practices as a powerful tool to get to the same place. I personally like Carl Jung's definition of enlightenment - that which is to bring unconsciousness to consciousness.

We live in a very cluttered, chaotic world, and admit it, we have been conditioned all our lives to assimilate, socialize and conform. If we survive adolescence and the early impressionable years of adulthood unscathed, then awesome. More power. But does that really exist? Does anyone really ever get here without any form of psychological wounding? Then when we get older (happens at mid-life for a lot of people), there is a sudden onslaught of existential questions. Is this all that there is? This can't be it. There has to be more to life than this. Some turn to fast cars and boob jobs. Some turn to a Higher Being. If we choose the latter path, we then realize that everything they told us when we were young about happiness has been wrong - success, money, houses, cars - they all bring us fleeting waves of happiness but not lasting and true joy. Where is that everlasting happiness then if it cannot be bought or acquired?

I personally believe that psychology in whatever form you can get it (podcasts, books, psychotherapy, dream analysis, etc.) can be that bridge between your past and everything you knew about life, and where you want to be, which is to become that vessel of joy, love, compassion, and unconditionality. I am not a New Age chick and I don't proselytize self help books either. I think it is important to exercise both caution and discrimination when choosing who to listen to or read. What is also important to me is that these people have to 1.) do or have done the work themselves and 2.) are grounded in proven teachings, which are usually a combination of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Spirituality is known to be a safe place to hide. Everything is supposedly happy, mellow, zen, and perfect. It's an easy fix, people think. I just sit and my life will suddenly get better??? If it was seriously THAT easy, wouldn't you think then that enlightenment would be everywhere?

My reality has been that because of my psychological make-up and controlling tendencies, I cannot get to that unchanging place of perpetual oneness and unceasing bliss and reside there unless I deal with my demons first. I cannot use spirituality as an escape route, as another identity that I build around myself out of my need to feel whole and complete. I have to deserve that. I have to work for it. I have to sort out my issues because they are there. Denial of their existence doesn't work and I know because I have tried it again and again. Meditation alone will not heal. It is not meant to.

I do believe that people are wired very differently. In Yoga, there are four paths because someone somewhere (Patanjali? I don't even know..) realized that people have different tendencies and inclinations. Some think more than they feel. Some are more anahata than sahasrara (see more about chakras here, if you're interested). According to one of my Vedanta teachers, each of the four Yogas speaks to certain types of personalities. Jnana is for the scholarly, intellectual types. Karma is for the givers and caretakers. Bhakti is for the devotional. Raja is for the contemplative. Ultimately, the goal is to integrate all of these paths.

My teachers are my teachers. My experiences are my own. In as much as I am, on the deepest of levels, one with everything, I have unique fingerprints that nobody else in the world has. Yes, we are one, but we are separate and we must accept and embrace that separateness before we can get to the oneness...

Metamorphosis

I've had a physically difficult, snot-filled couple of days. I have been as sick as a dog. I honestly don't remember the last time I got sick like this. It's terrible.

My life experiences especially in the last 365 days or so have been teaching me that inside and outside are really one. I'm not claiming a universal truth here. I don't think I'm New Agey at all. I'm just speaking from empirical knowledge.

The last few weeks have been admittedly tough that it's not surprising that it eventually led to a physical illness. I have been hyper-processing some heavy shit that my body eventually had to collapse with the exhaustion. I've heard this from both Anthony and The Psychologist - sometimes, physical illness is cathartic. It's a release of sorts. It's cleansing.

I fought it with all my might, though. I'm a bada$$ woman - a puny cold is not going to deter me. But you know what? There's beauty in the surrender. There's a bottom if you allow yourself to sink with it. Eventually, you naturally come up to the surface. To the sunshine. To the fresh air. To the smell of rain and pine trees.

There is tremendous strength in vulnerability.

I cleaned out my closet last weekend and got rid of clothes. I had three mattresses that were sitting in my garage since I moved in that I finally got picked up on Tuesday. Some people in my life that weren't the healthiest for me have been slowly edging farther (and honestly, I'm glad). I'm cleaning house - literally and figuratively.

"I've had my run. Baby, I'm done. I'm coming home."

Namaste.

All Grown Up Now

It’s fascinating how opportunities for awakening can take so many different forms. The Colonel came to see me last week after months and months of absence. We hugged fiercely. She was bawling while I held her and was held by her. She said I was stoic, but in truth, I felt an immense amount of love that was indescribable. In a flash, I caught a glimpse of what life must have been life like for her in the last few months, but I felt no sadness or grief. Only a tremendous, overwhelming feeling of love.

Just as she is an altered person, I’m a different person from when she left a few months ago.

I am all grown up now.

There are only a few people who truly see me with vision that goes beyond the senses. It can be unnerving because around these people, I cannot hide. To do so will be a dishonor. Here’s a profound realization after the Colonel’s return: When I cannot be accountable to myself, when I fail my own self out of trembling fear, I have to be responsible to these people who see me. When I choose to look away and pretend I don’t see, I need my head yanked so I am forced to see what I need to see for my own salvation.

I have to once and for all own my destiny. I cannot keep letting other people carry that for me.

Namaste,
Trish

My prayer today is that the entire Universe – sentient or otherwise – be filled to the brim with all the love that is beyond our human imagination.

Puer Aeternus

I have to say. I am impressed with my salsa dancing.

I know, I know. It sounds mighty egotistical, but I am just being honest. It’s amazing how quickly I’m picking up on Latin dancing. I have completed my beginner’s class in August and have now graduated on to intermediate. I have been to three Latin social dance parties so far and I find it flattering that I have been asked to dance by a few men who are regulars in the circuit (that means they have gotten really good at the genre and they think I put up a good act of pretending to know what I’m doing). I really appreciate that because I get to practice being docile and submissive, for once, yet at the same time, practice rapid footwork while being spun around. What Billy Bob said would take a year has only taken me a month.

Life’s been quiet lately. In the last week, I’ve counted one big synchronicity, which gives me a controlled sense of delight because it tells me that I’m in that flowing place which is supposedly our natural state where inside and outside is one. Remember the blog post about the volleyball game? I was driving to a party on Friday night and it occurred to me that I dreamt about that volleyball game a couple of weeks ago. August 23rd to be exact (I have lucid dreams, you see, and because of them, I was propelled to journal my dreams). Ain’t that something?

Speaking of life being quiet, I have been more introspective than usual which is probably because of The Danish. One truth that I am coming to accept is how afraid I still am of intimate (read: stifling) relationships. I knew that I have a very obvious pattern of building “relationships” with men who live far away, but I always chalked that up to my wandering nature. I travel so much, so of course the men I would connect with would be in the city that I happen to be spending my weekend in. Well, this weekend, I was not travelling but still managed to draw in two out-of-towners. One from New Zealand, one from Manhattan, none from Nevada. What are the odds?

Oh, so much work to be done!

On the surface, it looks like I’m just having a lot of fun in my life. To some, it may appear reckless and flighty. I have been called “boy crazy” and even that is alright. People judge my actions based on how they would act or react to the same situation. And that is understandable because we can only perceive the world with our own eyes and no one else’s. What people don’t see that only a select few are privy to (or what a limited number of people are capable of seeing), is that I work a lot on myself. My decisions are most often very conscious and deliberate instead of haphazard and scatterbrained as some people deem them to be. I put a lot of emphasis on empirical knowledge and experience. My intention is to work on myself, grow some fierce fearlessness, and ultimately learn to trust life.

I do admit that I often wish that people loved themselves enough to work on themselves, that people would own their shit instead of projecting it on to people. But I remind myself that ultimately, all I can do is work on my own crap and get it out of people's way. Hopefully, if they are sensitive and open enough, something in me touches something in them and inspire them to ask themselves the important questions. Is that too much to ask?

Hello, Anger.

The past week, I have watched myself go through sadness, frustration and the last couple days, anger. I don’t get angry very often so the feeling is a little foreign to me. Relative to some people I know, I’d like to think I have cultivated the gift of acceptance and serenity. It’s easy to be placid when you have a self-contained life as mine. Everything is pretty much under control. But in the last few weeks, I have consciously opened the door to two things that could shake up my life and my sense of perceived control – a potential romance and a roommate.

To put it rather bluntly, The Danish dumped my ass almost a week ago. His planned trip to Reno in October is not materializing as he had hoped so he decided to not pursue the whole thing anymore. I really do not blame him. An intercontinental relationship, while romantic, is not realistic. In his mind, the only way this was going to work was if he moved his life to America, at least for a couple of years, since I don’t speak Danish and would have a difficult time finding employment in Denmark. A couple of weeks after we met in Vegas, the guy was job-hunting online for opportunities in Reno, which I thought was sweet. But part of me was scared since I did not want to be responsible for someone giving up roots, family, friends, sustainable living, for Reno, NV. If he ended up moving, I will essentially be responsible for this person’s happiness. In my mind, if there was someone who would move, it would have to be me because I don’t have deep roots where I am. And maybe on a deeper level, I want to be the onus on someone else.

Being blindsided and having the rug pulled from underneath required a lot of letting go and acceptance. I think I did pretty well on this. I did not see myself grasping and constricting. People are where they are and one thing that I constantly learn is we cannot punish people for how they feel. There is sadness, though, and I allow it to come and go as it pleases. If I can be accepting of how other people feel, I cannot disallow my own feelings to render expression either. A week later, and anger paid a visit. I am not angry at the person. I am angry at a situation that I cannot control and wield. How controlling and obsessive of me.

To compound to this, I was on the verge of kicking out my roommate after she has only spent three nights at the house. I don’t think I’m being overly reactive. I have reasonable grounds. She has a little pug and while the dog’s cute and well-behaved, I have seen her take the dog out to the yard with the slider AJAR, as if beckoning all the critters and crawlers to come in. This would be okay at any other given circumstance. But I live in the desert and I back into open land. You do not leave the doors open. That’s an open seduction for wildlife to come in and have a party.

Last Saturday, while watching a movie in the living room with a few friends, I saw a scorpion scuttle about on the floor. A scorpion! It’s a good thing that my friend’s boyfriend was there to take care of the poor guy. I know it’s a violation of ahimsa (non-harming), but between me and the scorpion dying, I had to make a choice. Then Monday morning came and that’s when I just about lost it. In the year and a half that I have lived in the house, I never had pests or mice. I had a bag of chips and a package of granola on the counter. Apparently, Mighty Mouse made it inside the house (perhaps via the gaping open door left for longer than it should!!!) and had himself a little feast. Ugh. My privacy and my rodent-free house have been compromised and it is driving me nuts. I called a pro to take care of it, but it’s been two days and the culprit is still at large.

I went to Yoga asana class at Gold’s Gym the other night. Yes, some parts of the class were horrific, but sometimes, you just have to take Yoga where you can. Authenticity lives in you; it is not external to you. On several occasions in the past, asana practice has been helpful to me in bringing up repressed, dark emotions to the surface. The pigeon pose opens the hips and someone told me once that the hips/pelvis region is the seat of emotions in our subtle bodies. So when we do hip opening asanas, we invite those emotions to release. Since that yoga class, I’ve watched my anger surface. I have been upset, frustrated, and just mad. I am crabby and irritated. I don’t want to talk to people. It does not take much to bring my blood to boiling levels.

And I accept that I am angry. In fact, I honor it by giving it space. I own the anger. No drama about it, no finger pointing. I cannot allow myself to build stories around my anger which can exponentially enlarge it the more I invest in it. I cannot allow myself to dwell in anger either, because neuroscience tells us that nerves that fire together, wire together. We can’t make that a permanent habitat. I deal with it the only way I have learned how.

I sit with it.

I don’t try to reason myself out of it. I don’t convince myself to think positive crap. I try to seclude myself from people until it passes. And if my hunch about this is right, it will slowly dissipate and release itself. It will go and pass the same way it came….

Namaste.

Sticking with the One that Sticks

Is life really about throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing which sticks? Is this what the Masters say when they say “Neti, Neti” (in English, “Not this, not that.”)? Is life really simply a division equation where we employ exhaustively the process of elimination? I have read the Dalai Lama talk about how Buddha encourages his followers to discern, challenge, and most of all, experience the teachings for themselves; if they don’t make sense, discard them. But not until you have lived it.

I have watched a consistent pattern in my romantic options and what I find is hilarious. In the last six months or so, I have noticed that I have an uncanny and natural talent of attracting Europeans (not Americans who have European roots, but the kind that actually was bred in Europe). A sub-pattern to this is the European engineer (50% of the entire lot). Somebody made a joke once that I’m like a sailor with a man in every port in Europe. The sheer number of these occurrences tells me that this can’t be just mere coincidence. There must be some psychological explanation to these absurd patterns.

They say that patterns repeat themselves because there is a part of your unconsciousness wanting to heal itself. Jungian psychology talks about “the shadow” which is that aspect of yourself that you have shoved under the rug because it was undesirable to society and mainstream culture. And it’s not necessarily always the ugly characteristics either. Some of one’s positive characteristics and talents may be pushed away for one reason or another; and in this instance, it is called the “golden shadow”. In my case, I think writing has been my golden shadow. I have safely tucked it away, hidden from plain sight for a long time. Part of why I made the decision to publish this blog is to unleash that part of me and own that aspect of myself. In a deeper sense, this allows me to make myself vulnerable and release a little bit of control, both of which I think are very detrimental to my maturity and growth. Is the European thing a psychological project that I need to start owning? Is it a shadow of sorts?

I follow the Buddha’s advice of experiencing and experimenting in the romance department, to the consternation of a lot of my friends. I don’t have reservations about slamming handfuls of spaghetti after handfuls of spaghetti on the wall, to see which one sticks. As I get to know these people, I simultaneously and maybe even more importantly, get to examine my own self. Relationships are very powerful for reflecting ourselves back to us. Stuff that won’t necessarily come up in our daily lives only surface in the context of relationships.

I think another mound of spaghetti has slid down the wall again. That one went deeper than the others and I’m pretty sad about it. On the same token, I trust that what’s mine will come to me, so I’m not worried about it. But still it irks me that I have these patterns and I don’t know what they are telling me!!! If I were to be funny, I think it’s telling me that I should pack my bags and finally take that trip to Europe that I have been dreaming about. I could fly for free to Europe in February if I wanted to, except that I won’t have vacation time left if I spend a week in Manila and another week in Australia or somewhere in Asia in December.

I am out of theories on this one and I think I’m okay to putting this one to rest for now. I had a good run today. Tonight's a full moon and I have candles and a hot bath waiting.

Ciao, bellas...

Bad Reviews

I did not realize until now how Love has gotten so beaten up, misused, and how it evokes, almost invites, so much fear, dread, mockery and ridicule.

You get none of it and people pity you.

You get an abundance of it and people think you are delusional.

I furrow my eyebrows in confusion. What is it that these people want then?!

It is frustrating sometimes because people have their own, personal versions of "love" and "how things are ought to be" in their minds. Because this is what they know through experience, vicarious or otherwise, they assume those same rules MUST apply to everyone else. This is the tradeoff to being cognitive beings. A lot of what we know comes from direct personal experience. A + B = C. If in our own lives, A + B is ALWAYS = C, then it must be the same truth for all individuals, too! But here is what I have been doing over the last year of my life, and not just in the Love Department either. I contemplate, challenge and experiment if A + B is indeed = C.

Here is what I have been finding so far:

1. There is an immense amount of fear attached to love due to obvious reasons. We all have had our hearts and our selves broken at least once. If you haven't, there's already too many movies and songs out there that will make you feel that you have. This is completely okay. They say this is the human condition after all.

2. But did it ever occur to man that there is a variety out there where you do not lose any part of yourself despite how much you give, but quite the contrary, gain something each and every time instead? Isn't this what unconditional love is about, the Holy Grail of all people who seek love - loving for the sake of love and not expecting to get anything at all in return?

3. Love is known to take us to places within us where we are happy, carefree, liberated, truly present, and in the moment. Especially in the honeymoon stage, couples are pretty much sharing a meditative space when they are together, if we take meditation to mean as pure, undivided attention and/or presence. I sometimes think it's not the person we grow attached to, but the wonderful feelings that this person spurs. Therefore, when there is any threat of that person abandoning us, we feel the irrepressible urge to breathe into a bag. We get scared shitless. We are terrified that we are never going to feel that way ever again, that we are going to run out of the happy hormones.

4. So if you consider #2 & 3, I come up with the conclusion that maybe we need to look at things differently. I think that we should never be left wanting for "love". We must cultivate it in our deepest core until it just becomes us. If we are always full on our own, by ourselves, then loving one person, ten people, a hundred people, will not take away from that love in us. Because love has become you. Do flowers ever fear of losing their fragrance?

5. And just to reiterate, I believe that to love someone, you must first truly love yourself. Many of us do the typical lip service to this one, and people underestimate how much work this really entails.

6. And assuming I was wrong from #1-5, and assuming that there will be so much bloodbath after we have loved, SO THE F*CK WHAT???!!

It is a great thing to have friends who offer different perspectives. They mean well and have the best intentions. They caution you against falling in love because they don't desire your (eventual and in their view, inevitable) heartbreak and suffering. People view the romantic kind of love as investing, almost losing oneself, in the other person and in the relationship. Psychologically, I was told that this type of projection is inevitable, almost necessary, at least in the beginning of any relationship. However, the healthy thing to do is as the relationship grows, people must grow individually too and carefully and painstakingly, each person withdraws his/her projection of perfection from the other person.

I have confessed, even publicly in this blog, that I have started to feel my heart stir again, like it has not done so in a long time, or maybe ever. I am touching something so real and raw again. And the difference is, this time, I don't feel the need to cling to it or possess it. I want to allow it to unfold on its own. I anticipated how people would react to that admission, and sure enough, they think I'm nuts. Some of them don't know how exactly to react so they resort to the least threatening approach and laugh it off. To me, this is the most insulting. Mockery of someone's feelings is a bit unfair, I think. And that is completely okay, because if I allowed my intellect to take the rein on this one, I would be thinking of myself as a biga** fool, too.

But here is what I have been surrendering to lately.

Love is not a function of the mind. It is a function of the heart. And as Blaise Pascal so eloquently put it, "The heart has its reasons for which reason knows nothing."

So I shelf my mind for now since it has been running my life for most of my adult life. For once, I am allowing my life to be lived from the heart.

Namaste.