Author: Janet

Last evening I received an email that broke my heart. It contained news that the son of friends had died in a car accident, and that the young man’s fiancée was also injured but recovering. I say it was news about friends, even though I have never met them in person. Pir Shabda Khan is the leader, or Pir, of a national community of Sufis known as the Ruhaniat, which makes he and his family friends at the very least, and more truly, beloveds. I know and have benefitted from his beautiful, heart-full work, most recently appreciating the book I began this blog with on January 1, Physicians of the Heart. But that’s not what came to me in the moments after I read the news. And it wasn’t what was still with me as I began this day.

What came was the remembrance of having received other emails from Pir Shabda, via the larger Sufi network. One shared the news that all of the monies that had been painstakingly raised and carefully stewarded over many years to support the Ruhaniat, as well as most of the couple’s personal savings, had been lost, courtesy of the Bernard Madoff fraud.  I remember being so moved by that email that I kept it on my desk for quite a few weeks, just to be reminded of what the fruits of a lifetime of spiritual practice can look like when the rubber has met the road.  The email wasn’t filled with anger, despair and fear, but with equanimity, not denying the initial shock and the subsequent grief, but allowing all of that to arise and move through, leaving Truth in its wake – true abundance remains, Shabda had said.

Then came another email, in January of 2011, reporting that Pir Shabda would be undergoing treatment for what appeared to be a well contained malignancy in his bowel. Again, it was the equanimity of the email that struck me, and the concern for those who would be concerned for him. He and Tamam kept everyone informed via a blog, and Shabda reported on the blog last June that treatment was complete, he was well, and gratitude and joy remain.  He wrote “This completes dealing with what was and now I will live the rest of my life to the best of my ability!” And now this.

     “If this is the way you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few of them,” St. Theresa of Avila is reported to have said to God, having just been bucked off her horse into the cold, muddy river on her way to visit other sisters in her order. Exactly, I thought. The biblical Job next came to mind as I found myself asking how ones such as these, who have given their lives so completely over to Love, Harmony and Beauty, to God and to serving humanity, can be asked to endure still more; to endure the unthinkable, the unendurable. I cannot imagine their grief.

I sat with the heartache and the questions and my open journal this morning, hoping for a word, a thought, a prayer, maybe even, dare I hope, an answer. I began to write despite the absence of anything to say, as I do sometimes as a way in to guidance. I watched as the fountain pen moved across the page, some dimension of self scrawling the words: No one is “safe,” and the spiritual life does not protect you from the trials and the vicissitudes of life. Deep sigh. Of course, I know that. But the pen continued: it gives you an expanded context within which to live it.  Huh? I stopped writing, and sat with just that. Maybe you will want to try that too, and see where it goes.

For me, where it went was to the remembrance that there is no escape from suffering in this life, the Buddha was right, life is suffering. To think that because one has said yes to God means that one is somehow spared suffering is not faith, but magical thinking, and it can actually be quite dangerous. Using that logic, if something “bad” does happen, it must be because the person to whom it is happening doesn’t have enough faith; isn’t good enough, holy enough, spiritual enough, loving enough. You can see, right, that this is not a particularly compassionate response to ourselves or others when we are suffering, not to mention just bad theology.

Everyone suffers; there is no get out of jail free card for the “spiritual” people, no magic cloak that makes the “holy” people invisible when trouble comes calling. As I sat with this, I picked up the pen again, and surprised myself: So LIVE!  Live everything, live every day! It is all mystery unfolding, and we never know when or how or why it all suddenly changes. So, what to do but be happy, have fun, enjoy your life, now, this very life, just as it is, here, today. Be grateful for every moment, whatever it brings. And love.

       Which brings me to the title of this post. When I finished journaling, I came to the computer and checked the email. In one of those wild and wonderful synchronicities, the first one was from Kathy, the widow of an amazing man, physician, husband, father and teacher named Lee Lipsenthal, who died last September from esophageal cancer (I know, more bad news, but hang in there). I knew Lee, not well in terms of amount of time spent with him, but we were heart friends. I just loved him. Kathy was writing to ask Lee’s friends to help get the word out about his book, published posthumously in November. Lee wrote it as his last offering to Life, sharing the journey he took in his last months, and most importantly the profound equanimity he had come to. It was truly inspiring to all who knew him (me included), and a deep comfort to the ones he loved. This is (finally, thanks for reading all of this), the point of this post. Equanimity. And Living Life.

Pir Shabda said, when he was talking about the events with Madoff: For the mystic: Passion for the goal, equanimity with what’s arising.”

I think this is what was meant, or at least part of it, in what emerged in my journaling: the spiritual life does not protect you from the trials and the vicissitudes of life; it gives you an expanded context within which to live it. Equanimity is one of the most important and precious fruits of the spiritual life, and it offers a profound container within which to hold and transform even our deepest sorrows.

The name of Lee’s book is Enjoy Every Sandwich – Living each day as if it were your last, and I just ordered it. I ordered it because I want to honor Lee, for sure.  But more than that, the title, the book, Lee, all of it came today as guidance in answer to my earlier, broken-hearted questions.  Or maybe it’s actually confirmation of the guidance I had already gotten, for “enjoy every sandwich” could easily have followed on my to do list above for Living Life – be grateful for every moment, whatever it brings, and love, and enjoy every sandwich!  Here is a beautiful trailer for the book, starring Lee. You’ll see what I mean.

 

Thanks Lee and Kathy, and our heartfelt prayers of love for peace and equanimity during this time of great sorrowing to the Kahns.

I just completed my session with the Winter of Wellness series sponsored by the Shift Network. Wow!  I had a wonderful time being with everyone, sharing information about Spiritual Guidance.  Our moderator, Edward Mills, was so skillful; I think he must have heard what my heart wanted to share, because he asked me exactly the questions that would bring that out. We did a brief meditation, opening to guidance, and there was such sweet sharing afterwards – it was a great opportunity to notice, once again, that Spirit can meet us wherever we are and doesn’t require a lot of time!

If you haven’t had a chance to register yet, there are still many more sessions in the series, dedicated to Optimal Wellness of body, mind, heart and soul, with some wonderful speakers. If you register today, I think you can download my session, entitled Tending the Soul,  sometime within the next week. Thanks to each of you who were on the line – wonderful to connect heart to heart!

 

A few days ago, I awoke out of a dream in which these words were repeating themselves over and over in my mind:  “No less than the moon and the stars, you have a right to be here.”  Of course any of you that are old enough will immediately recognize these words (with a one word difference) as a line from a poem/prose piece called Desiderata, written by Max Ehrmann in 1927. I don’t mean old enough to remember Mr. Ehrmann, or 1927, but the early 70s when the inspirational piece was making its rounds. As I sat with the dream, I remembered the Desiderata poster hanging in my dormitory room, not far from the “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle” bumper-sticker (I know, seems like a contradiction, but remember, those were the heady days of second-wave feminism!).

Re-reading the whole Desiderata, I noticed two things.  First, the phrase actually goes “no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here,” and so I became curious about why the dream spoke of the moon and the stars instead of the trees and the stars.  I felt into my sense of the moon, and quickly, its essential feminine, receptive nature arose in me. I have always loved the moon as feminine, as sister moon, or even mother moon. The inquiry deepened, and a new awareness arose: The moon, the essential, radiant feminine, has a right to BE, here. It’s about the given-ness, the gift of existence, of the divine command “Be,” and not about place or time, not about what one does, what spaces one is allowed into or excluded from, not about forms or functions, roles and rules. Being includes but transcends all of that, and this deep knowing seems to me to be what is fundamentally missing on the planet right now; what is necessary to recover/remember if 2012 is to be a new time for us, with a new consciousness. The dream felt like an affirmation, rather than news, about who I am now, 30 years later, but it also felt like it was beyond my individual self, offering a statement of the what is needed now on the planet, in every facet of our lives – the re-emergence of the essential feminine; space for the feminine to Be; reverent acknowledgement that no less than any other aspect of creation, the feminine has a right to BE, here.

Oh, and the second awareness?  That the Desiderata still opens my heart and inspires me as exquisite guidance for living a conscious, soul-full life.  So check it out for a stroll down memory lane, or to meet it for the first time if you are, in fact, too young to remember!

“As the barriers separating the religions and cultures of the world are collapsing, a new model is emerging, an intermystical, interspiritual paradigm that permits people from various traditions, or from no tradition, to explore the spiritual dimensions of any religion. More and more people find themselves rooted in one tradition while seriously investigating another.” ~ Wayne Teasdale in A Monk in the World

Today, the Community of the Mystic Heart is two years old. It began its incarnation as the Universal Order of Sannyasa, inspired by the vision that Brother Wayne Teasdale shared in his exquisite book The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions. Brother Wayne was a Catholic lay brother and in addition was a vowed renunciate (Sannyasin) in the Hindu tradition, ordained as such by his teacher/guide Fr. Bede Griffiths.

In the Mystic Heart, Brother Wayne calls for the “the creation of a civilization with a heart” through the practice of Interspirituality, which he defined as “the sharing of ultimate experience across religious traditions.”  He wrote that “Interspirituality is the religion of the third millenium. It is the foundation that can prepare the way for a planet-wide enlightened culture, and a continuing community among the religions that is substantial, vital and creative.”

Lest the red flags begin unfurling, let me allow Brother Wayne to continue: “Interspirituality is not about eliminating the world’s rich diversity of religious expression. It is not about rejecting these traditions’ individuality for a homogenous superspirituality. It is not an attempt to create a new form of spiritual culture. Rather, it is an attempt to make available to everyone all the forms the spiritual journey assumes. Interspirituality as a world-changing force is made possible by the openness of people who have a viable spiritual life coupled with their determination, capacity, and commitment to the inner search across traditions.”

I’ll do another post later (or many more!) on InterSpirituality, but today I just want to remember the birth of the Community of the Mystic Heart; the upwelling and outpouring of open-hearted energy that coalesced that day into a brand new form; the coming together of a group of individuals who all hold in their hearts a resounding Yes to the call of creating a civilization with a heart and were willing to make vows to do that.  May each of us find a way to respond to this call that is uniquely ours, exquisitely tailored to the gifts and longings of our own particularity as instances of the One Being made manifest.  And may the Community of the Mystic Heart continue to unfold in all ways True, Good and Beautiful, in service to Life.

 

 

January 6, 1978, was a Friday, like today, and on that day it did not rain in California, it poured. It was also, as it is today, the great Christian feast of the Epiphany or Little Christmas as we called it, growing up in my Irish, Italian, mostly Catholic neighborhood in Brooklyn. And, it was my mother’s 50th birthday, or would have been. In what I have always felt to be some particular kind of weird irony, we (well, they, as you will find out) buried my mom on this day, 34 years ago. I mean, buried my mom on her birthday – isn’t that kind of weird? Maybe weird in a good way. Instead of unwrapping presents and opening cards, she herself was unwrapped; freed from all her pain and suffering to join the communion of saints, eternally alive, leaving behind a body that had served its purpose, like crumpled, balled up wrapping paper, awaiting recycling.

Which brings me back to the pouring rain in Southern California on January 6, 1978. I remember it so well because at the time, I felt it was a rain of tender mercy falling on me and my siblings. It had rained so hard that there were mudslides, and the folks at the cemetery deemed the grounds too dangerous to allow visitors. So following the burial mass (another whole story), my last glimpse of the casket was through the rear window of the hearse as it slowly drove away from the church, the actual burial to be completed when the rains stopped. I remember the profound relief I felt at that time; a relief mixed with shame that I wasn’t brave enough or mature enough or some other stupid self-judgment about how grateful I was that I did not have to witness this; did not have to stand there in the pouring rain watching the body of this one, the body that birthed me, the body I had tended with so much love and care over the previous 6 months, be lowered into the earth, never to be seen again. Of course I did not say this out loud, being the eldest sibling of 5, and lamented with the rest that we could not be there to see mom “right to the end.”  But, oh, my inner prayer of gratitude could not have been louder.

And besides, I felt like I had already seen her to the end, walking with her every step of the way, as daughter and nurse, until the last, when I found myself up against a veil I could not cross with her. After she died on January 2, surrounded by her children in her own bed, I had only one niggling concern, and it left me ill at ease over whether I had managed her final moments well enough. Three days later, sometime during the night before her funeral, I had a “dream.”  My mother was in front of me, in the blue robe you can see in the pictures. But she was huge, I mean, building size huge, and radiant, wearing an ecstatic smile. I put my niggling to her, asking if I had let her down, let her

suffer, missed the mark. As a nurse, I had had every pain medication you can imagine on hand to use at my discretion. In the day and hours before her death, I had administered exactly zero of them. “Oh no, sweetheart, no, no, no! You were perfect! It was just what I wanted. And see? I am fine; I am so very, very happy!”  And that was it; she was gone. When I woke up, my heart was finally at peace, as it is now, remembering that Epiphany, that revelation of eternal life in but beyond all form. And yet, I have to tell you, I miss the life in form; I miss my mom. Still. Always.

Every breath is a path to Allah,
Each life an open door, beloved.
Every breath is a path to Allah,
Each life an open door Hayy! Hayy!

Every soul says yes to the Truth
ilallah-hu, Ya hu
Allah alone, beloved.

I awoke this morning with this chant breathing through me, my first awareness in the new year – what a blessing!  It’s one that we sing in our Jerrahi Zikr circle of the remembrance of God, the only Reality, called Allah by some.  Many of the world’s religions have litanies/lists of the beautiful names of God and/or the saints to recite, and so do the Sufis. Each name is a symbol, really, for an attribute of the Divine. One of the most beautiful names of God is chanted as Ya Hayy (pronounced high), which translates simply as Oh Life.  Here is a fuller explication from an exquisite new book by a group of Sufi teachers called Physicians of the Heart:

Al-Hayy is the perfection of everlasting life, and the only one who truly lives.  It is the one source of all life and the very life of everything that lives.  It is the life principle that never dies, and it is inside every being. This divine Name is also the living presence of everything, whether it is dead, alive, animate, inanimate, material, spiritual, or anything in-between…

Al-Hayy is filled with vitality; it is the inner life of the heart.  Repetition of Ya Hayy arouses a kind of life energy and freedom that is an antidote to the deadened condition of the heart that is often the result of grief and sorrow.

Ilallah-hu means only One Reality, One Essence…

So here we are, entering 2012, aware of how many millions of people begin this year with heavy, deadened hearts, full of grief, sorrow, worry.  Yet others enter with hope and optimism, believing 2012 it is bringing a profound and essential transformation.  I can’t think of a better way to begin this new year than by using my breath in the chanting such beautiful words – Ya Hayy!! Oh Life!!

Wishing abundant life and radiantly alive hearts to each and all.