Seeing Through the Eyes of the Ankle

Not an injury-prone person, I sprained my ankle pretty badly last night. After nearly vomiting (twice) from the searing pain of having done so, a couple of hours of ice and elevation rendered the sight of it somewhat entertaining. After all, it is not every day that my foot looks like the swollen belly of a carnivorous snake. In my mind, I imagine that my toes must have managed to catch and swallow a large desert mouse. I even had someone take a picture, but it is far too gruesome to share.

"Perhaps the Universe is trying to tell me something,"I thought as I was attempting to fall asleep last night. Could it be that I need to slow down for a couple of days and ground myself? I certainly have a pile of work to slog through, and it won't hurt to be forced to sit still. Even though I didn't injure myself running, maybe the Universe doesn't want me running through the streets of Jerusalem for the next few weeks. Ok, fine. Fair enough. I can handle this.

If the Universe is really trying to tell me something, one very clear and prominent message happens to be sticking out in my mind. I am scheduled to take a day trip tomorrow for an official tour of the town of Sderot. Sderot is the Israeli city near that Gaza Strip that has been the most bombarded and traumatized by the deadly rocket attacks released by the fighters in Gaza. Indiscriminate rocket attacks can happen at any time, and so the thought of going there has been weighing on my mind quite a bit. Lately, I have been uncertain if going there is a good idea for me. For the better part of two years, I have had a recurring dream about running to take cover from bombs falling from the sky. Obviously, this leaves me with no real desire to physically put myself in a place where this sort of thing is a regular occurrence. While I do sense the importance of going to Sderot and seeing for myself the damage that has been inflicted on this community, I have also been weighing the thought of not going. My gut has been saying, "Not now. Not this time. Maybe best to stay home this week." Yeah.

Of course, none of this was in my immediate frame of mind when my ankle decided to turn fancy colors last night. But it looks like Sderot is no longer on my activity calendar, and I am officially off my feet just in time for the Passover holiday to begin. In 11 days, I am heading to Jordan for a two day hike in Petra. This will be followed by a week of awesome adventures along the Nile River in Egypt, including a couple of overnight trains and a 5 day boat cruise through the Valley of Kings. But until then, I have no plans to fight the river within or around me. Let the Universe put me in bed for a week. At the very least, may it remind me that this is an excellent opportunity to slow down a bit, prop the foot, curl up with some tea, and add a few more pages to the doctoral dissertation.

Nothing is ever as bad as it seems.

Namaste

Happily Eva After

Spring has officially sprung. Three weeks are left in the semester. Yet, from the looks of the quad on campus these days, school's already out for summer. Between the young women in bikinis and men without shirts, it is a veritable Flesh Fest out there. For some reason, I fail to remember a single moment in my undergraduate years when I would have been caught dead wearing a bikini in full view of my professors, but that seems to be the norm here. The hormones and phermones of the student population hang in a dense cloud over the campus right now, mixed right in with the unmistakable smell of grilled burgers and alcohol.

It makes for a quite a fervor. Last week, the usual stony silence and deep cold that accompanied me all winter on my daily walk across campus from my office door to the classroom where I teach was replaced with a barrage of young men trying to talk to me. One particular young man very boldly asked to carry my books and walk me to class.

"What class do you have right now?," he asked with sugary sweetness. I laughed (inwardly) when I told him that I was heading to Professor Namaste's class.

"Oh, really?," he continued. "I hear she's good. I don't know her, but someone told me that she's really young and super cool."

"Yeah," I smiled back. "She's ok."

"Hey," he kept pressing. "Has anyone ever told you that you look like Eva Longoria?"

Oh, he was too cute for words.

I graciously thanked him for making my day, but turned down his proposal to "do lunch"...

Yesterday was heavenly. Instead of hitting the gym, I decided to go for a long, afternoon run along the lake. Twenty minutes into it, I ran into a gaggle of my bikini-clad female students and their friends on one of the lake front boat piers. They appeared to be doing a mixture of activities--sunbathing, boy gawking and beer drinking...even though they had their books and highlighters in hand. Of course, I politely decline the beer they offered me, but they still kept me chatting for a few minutes. At one point, one of the girls (who I didn't know) looked up and said from under her enormous sunglasses:

"Wow. Are you, like, really a professor here?"

"Yep," I replied. "At least, that's what they pay me for."

"And she's so awesome," interjected one of my students. She gave me a sweaty, bikini-clad side hug as she said this. "Professor Namaste is, like, the woman I want to be when I grow up!"

(Ha.)

"Wow," said the first student. "Has anyone ever told you that you look like Eva Longoria?"

Apparently, the students aren't the only ones who are coming back into their skin this spring.

Thank goodness.

Namaste

Cordoba

"Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart. And I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again."

The first time that I deeply fell in love with someone, I was scared...out...of...my...mind. What if he realized that I was woefully unprepared to emotionally deal with a love relationship and had already consciously admitted to myself that I was going to find every possible way to...mess... this...up? What if he scratched the surface of my well-crafted exterior to find that I was really still hurting from a childhood of epic crisis and instability? What if he realized that it didn't matter how sweet he could be, at the end of the day, I would never, ever, not in a million years place all of my trust in him because I had been so burned by the fire of life already that I was certain that I could trust no one but me. In sum, I was scared that the depths to which I had already lived would send him running down the street. As a result, my life felt...rather mechanical, and, at best, cliche. I was on my way to becoming one of those fatalistic women's magazine statistics, which I equally despised...

I didn't realize it at the time, but I had delegated my sense agency to all of my fears and perceivable weaknesses. My decisions were made in sub-zero temperatures, with the intention that my worldview would be self-fulfilling. I was intent on the notion that I would continuously be disappointed by the people I let into my heart, but I specifically let in disappointing people. This way, I could always be right, and, in essence, continue to dance with the phantom of gnawing and burning inside me, with which I was most comfortable. Fear not only defined me, it was both my wet-nurse and number one life partner. Who or what could I possibly be if I didn't have that constant tension? Certainly, if I wasn't this version of me, I would be nothing, I would have nothing to offer. Augh, the drama!

"Tell me a story of who you are, And see who I am in the stories I am living. And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice."

Clearly, I had to make a choice. I could be the woman who went through men like shoes, or I could dig down and start taking better care of the disappointed child spirit within me that was really just longing for balance, safety and validation. At a certain point, we have to make the decision to be who we are, not what we have been constructed to be. It's funny how the ego becomes the manifestation of this process. Personally, I hated my ego. I hated the decisions she made for me. If my ego was me, and I was my ego, I hated me. Deep down, I knew that my ego was just a socially-formed fabrication, the shell-like persona of a young woman I would probably not seek to befriend on the street. In the end, my ego was not me, and I clearly needed to work on disengaging myself from the unnecessary noise.

Ultimately, I ended up leaving my ego behind. Rather unexpectedly, we happened to part one day in a grand, medieval mosque that was once a glittering Arab jewel in Southern Spain.** We sat under an orange tree in the grand courtyard, still resonating with the energy of human prayer, and we chatted for a while. I said that I wasn't happy and wanted to find my own way. My ego fought back and said that without her, I would be dust. The parting of old friends can be painful and difficult, but, in our case, we knew it was for the best. I happened to feel that this particular spot in the world was a good place as any to leave my ego and baggage behind. It was where my ego could float among the remains of obscure, intellectual history, in a place that has been crafted by the fire of time under the hands of men who gently reincarnated the marble of the Romans and allowed the Jews among them to make their civilization great. In fact, I found it to be a place of collective ego, a place where the attempt to achieve ego-based genius was earnestly made in vain, and so a perfectly acceptable dwelling place for my well-crafted little ego spirit. So, I left it there, and only return from time to time for gentle visits with an old friend.

I think I can safely say that we're both in much more agreeable places now. I also think that now, I know more about the places on earth that make my heart whole again and again, and I'm much more willing to share without fear of consequence or resignation. Because we operate in a world where our ego is our acceptable social representative, some people find my lack of ego perceptably disarming. In my relationships, I have discovered that some men would have preferred to interact with the superficial rather than deep version of me. It's too calm and comfortable in my garden, and they find the stillness very alarming. They have nothing to battle against or fix or cry to their friends about that they "always date crazy women". Unfortunately, I cannot force someone to leave his own ego or self-perpetuating fears at the door. This is something we have to decide for ourselves...

We are not our egos, but rather, the gentleness and good habits that we practice with ourselves so that we can share our best moments with others.

Namaste


**Cordoba, Spain. It was once called "the ornament of the world". See Maria Rosa Menocal's book with the same title, published out of Yale. There's no better spot on earth to curl into a fold of a great magnolia tree and allow the world to soften your edges and cradle your soul.

Eyes, Lies and Soulful Videotape

Lately, I've been dealing with a woman who says very mean things to me while never looking me in the eye. Never. Even when I greet her personally, she won't look at me. The first second of my first encounter with her told me that she was the kind of person who will do anything possible to bring other people down, including being very manipulative and deceitful. For whatever reason, I have been her primary source of focus for the past several months.

At the very least, I want to tell her that I'm really not that special, important or deserving of all of her intense and dark energies, but I doubt that this will do much good. This aside, the ironic thing is that I don't think she's realized that I have no interest in being her enemy. Her own self-manipulations are far more terrorizing than anything I could ever do in retaliation.

So, in dealing with her, I very passively sit back, and deliberately let her spin and stew in her own juices. I smile and respond with the utmost respect when she lashes at me in person (which is often), and I always especially make sure to look her directly in the eye. Every time I do this, I watch her wither under my gaze, not because I'm being cruel at all, but because I know that my eye contact is a nuisance to her. I make sure to radiate as much love as I can muster towards her. Because I know that deep down, she's just someone's unloved child.

Of course, she does not respond especially well to this. She has a tendency not to last very long under my gaze, which I make sure to keep extra long until I see her twitch. Literally. I think this embarrasses her. My long, silent gaze shows her that she's being petty, cruel and unkind. I'm fully aware that this makes her nervous. She's more comfortable in a direct confrontation than she is in the uncomfortable silence of knowing that I know her secret--that she's insecure, unhappy, petty and unkind. She knows that I know that she says and does awful things to people, and yet it makes her terribly uncomfortable that I don't punish her for it. She says that she believes in God, which makes me think that deep down, she's just longing for affirmation of herself through a combination of external strife and self-validation. She considers herself a "good" Christian. But as the saying goes, one should not throw bricks if she lives in a glass house.

I find these sorts of situations very interesting cases for analysis. I'm fully aware that this woman going to continue to cause problems for me as long as I am seen as something in her way. But her biggest blockages are within. Other than vigilantly protecting myself from her negative energy, there is nothing more that I can do about this. Fortunately, I'm shipping off again in a few months, and this will all just be a lesson in preparation for next time. Before I leave, I'm going to write her a special thank you note for everything I've learned from her. I'm going to make sure that the card is very pretty, but filled with the images of eyes. Clearly, it matters very little that I have my eye on her at the moment. But hopefully, one day, she'll realize the power of karma and putting good energy into the heart of the Universe. By that time, I won't be watching, but she can rest assured that something larger than both of us is.

Implied Correlations

Life is more than reaping what you sow. I think that this statement doesn't do much justice to the implied correlation.

I think...

Life is about realizing that you have the potential to reap much more than you sew. The secret is not being attached to the idea that you can control this. You must plant your seeds and look for the magic in every outcome. This way, you can never be disappointed. Winning and losing becomes irrelevant if, at the end of the day, you can honestly say to yourself: "I did the very best I can. I gave it my very best shot." Other than death--or the fact that you are most likely to use the bathroom a few times a day--there are no fixed certainties in this life. Realizing and accepting this frees you of the paralyzing fear that you must lived within the proscribed boundaries of anything other than your own divine grace. Whether it's in your work or your relationships, the only expectation you should live by is your ability to open your eyes every morning and enthusiastically get through the day, by doing the very best you can. If each day is a new day, then every moment is a new opportunity to explore new ways of creating balance and symmetry in your life.

If you live according to your best self, then you won't live with regrets. You won't look back and think of all of the ways you should or could have acted to have a better outcome. No. You'll act in the moment with the liberating awareness of knowing that whatever the outcome, you did the best you could at the time. None of us have perfect knowledge, and we are all forced to operate in a realm of constraints. In the end, instrumental competition, jealousy, conspicuous consumption and other empty emotions are just like empty calories. They aren't going to help you. If anything, they're just going to make you soft and unable to get out from under yourself.

We can sit around and complain until we are blue in the face that the cards are stacked against us in this life, or we can play the game in a less victimizing fashion. We can always be "right", or we can pull our heads of the sand and realize when we're sometimes not so right and actually laugh about it. We can railroad and abuse others, or we can realize what we're doing to the people we love, take a step back from our self-imposed railroading, honor the divine in each other and simply get out of our own way.

I'm working at my favorite hipster coffee shop today. Because I feel the need to put some magic in the air around me...and see what happens...because of a smile.

Namaste

Personality and Power

"Be the Change that you wish to see in the world." --M.K.
Gandhi

The other day, I met a guy friend of mine for coffee. He's an artist and spends a lot of time traveling great distances to practice with yoga and meditation gurus. While we tend to have a few things in common, sometimes I think he's a little too far out there, even for me. The other day, for example, he told me that his personality is not who he is. According to him, his personality is his "false self".

Of course, as I sipped my morning beverage and listened to him prattle on for 30 minutes about this topic, it seemed to me like he sounded like someone who repeating what he heard at a meditation retreat. It reminded me of how some of my students sound when they repackage the political views of their parents as try to sell them as their own. I politely refrained from rolling my eyes and really tried to listen to what he had to say. But all I could think was, "How am I not my personality?". I mean, like, for real...

So, I discussed it with a few other friends, who are all in agreement to me that the personality is a reflection of the self. How can it not be? Over the course of my few years in this life, I have been very conscious of this--I have the choice to be the person I was put here to be, or not. My choices are contingent on my actions, which are predicated on my openness or willingness to engage fully in this life. For example, I could easily make the choice to be a narcissistic sort of person who dominates the room and alienates those around her. I could be cruel and conniving, vindictive or vengeful, even though I know that my best offense is only a reflection of the fact that my inner world is woefully out of balance. I could even pity myself while complaining that no one loves me the way I think I deserve to be loved, while not facing the reality that I'm too insecure and consumed with myself to even let someone unique and wonderful into my life. I could inflict my pain on others, all of the while demanding their loyalty and devotion. I could be all of these things, because these are things that people do when they disconnect from their Source, and become fundamentally attached to the material things around them rather than the precious spirit they carry inside. But, of course, what do I know? The unwillingness to challenge oneself to move forward and continue to evolve out of fear of losing control over the Queen-of-the-world paradigm, might actually work for some folks. I really wish them well with this.

My friend thinks that since the world outside of us is false construct to the true meaning of something he refers to as the "bigger picture", then the human personality is similarly just a false construct designed to deal with this false realm. This made me want to vomit. While I agree that there is always a bigger picture, I think that by saying this, one is implicitly failing to be accountable to anything but oneself, which, to me, is just as indictable as the aforementioned narcissistic personality.

In light of this, I think that my near allergic reaction to the idea that we cannot possibly be our own personalities hits on the fact that I have little patience for this brand of navel-gazing. We are who we choose to be, and everything is everything. If we simply do our best and look at every day as a fresh start in practicing kindness and good manners, then how can we go wrong? I don't need a Western meditation guru named "Rainy Wind" to make me lie on my back and scream for my mother for 10 hours to figure out the parts of my spirit and psyche that are still bruised and those that have overdeveloped to compensate for cosmic, childhood pain and suffering. I do, however, need to take the time to deal with things as they pass through my life, but realize that everything passes. Everything. You get up in the morning and you see the day as a gift. You take each blow as a lesson. You keep going. You remember with kindness those who treated you poorly, and you move on. You just do. To dwell in issues that we cannot control is to equally dwell in a realm of self-deception.

Call me crazy, but I actually like my personality. Sure, I'm not perfect, and my absent-minded, optimistic naivete can be absolutely nauseating sometimes, but I've made friends with the various parts and pieces within, and, in fact, we all seem to go together quite well. We spend a great deal of time together--Me, Myself and I--and I have to say that there's usually a nice enough harmony going on in there that gets projected out into the world in a most magical sort of way. After all, it seems to me that if we're only here for such a short time, shouldn't it be as magical as we can make it? Shouldn't it be a fun ride? And if it's not wonderful and fun, the fantastic news is that we have the agency to change our behavior, alter our course, take the lesson and make it so.

Like Gandhi says, each and every one of us has the power to be the change we wish to see. Gandhi ascribed to something called Ahimsa, or non-violence. If we just start by practicing the good habit of not committing violence on ourselves, imagine what we can do for the world. We have the power not to be so nihilistic, so abusive. We have the choice to bow to the power within us. And maybe, just maybe, we have the power to be powerful. If anything, we have the right to be the child that we were born to be, and the power to not live our lives vacillating between the being the victim of abuse and becoming the abuser.

At least, that's my two cents...

Namaste

Ode to the Acupuncturist

If I could marry my acupuncturist, I would. Aside from the fact that he's the only man on the planet whom I willingly pay to poke me (with needles), he's also an individual who never fails to impress me with his work ethic, intelligence, depth and caring manner. He's the white guy who travels to remote villages in China in order to speak (in fluent Chinese) with random old guys who are rumored to have knowledge of ancient and esoteric remedies. He sees the world through a lens that the rest of the world casts aside as myth. "Everything is everything, Namaste", he's been telling me for the past four years. He always elaborates on this as if it's the first time we had this talk. Like a child, I play along while bombarding him with questions about everything from the Taoist interpretation of global warming, to how the DNA really works, to issues of mind over matter, to the science of reversing the aging process, to the exploring the fundamental difference between "dis-ease" and "disease". He then volleys back with a discussion of physics and chemistry, partially grounded in science and equally coded in metaphor and myth. He likes the fact that I follow along. I like the fact that he even engages me.

I like to think that he finds me equally amusing. I'm sure most of his patients prefer to keep silent while he works. Instead, I'm the one that asks, "What are you doing now? And now? And now? Oh cool! And why are you doing that?" I prefer to think of myself as my own science experiment. I always ask him how my liver is doing, despite the fact the he has no problem telling me that my spleen is overactive. It's a constant issue that seems to worry him, and he tediously sticks me at various "spleen" points in my body that make me nearly leap off the table at first. "But how's my liver?," I ask repetitively, like an old woman, once my body settles down into the rhythm of my redirected-chi. He laughs. Sometimes he tells me. Sometimes he just changes the subject. I laughingly refer to my acupunture points as my "g-spots", which also brings a good deal of laughter into the room. One time I boldly asked him if there was an acupuncture point on the body for such a thing. In his usual Taoist fashion, he patiently reminded me that "everything is everything..." and continued to focus on the task of redirecting the flow of my blocked chi.

I need him for the "big" stuff, but sometimes he does things for me that aren't necessarily on that list. Like, a few years ago, I rolled my ankle the day before an appointment with him. When I hobbled into his office, it was swollen and a little blue from the initial bruising. In 5 minutes, the swelling and pain was gone. The next day, the bruise had completely disappeared. Another time, I had a migraine on the day of my appointment. Within 30 seconds, the migraine no longer existed. And finally, the other day, I developed a stuffy nose while on the table. He noticed this and told me that he was going to perform a magic trick. In rapid time, the congestion disappeared. He laughed out loud when he saw my face change at the sudden realization of what he had done. "That's so freaking cool!," I told him. Again, he laughed.

We also like to exchange our secret Sudoku strategies. And favorite Thai curry recipes.

Acupuncture is awesome. I would love to recommend my acupunturist to all of you, but, unfortunately, I'm not willing to share. But I do recommend finding a good one. Make sure he or she is honest with you. And that you can also have a good laugh while enduring the somewhat barbaric process of having needles stuck into your skin. It's a little unusual, but it works wonders for the chi.

Much love,

Namaste