Rishikesh, 12 January 2007

Dear friends and loved ones,

On Sunday 24 December we had the consecration of a beautiful white marble statue of mother Mary & Jesus. It was quite a fusion of cultures, with Hindu-style offerings of fruits & flowers, Swami Veda washing the feet of mother & child with holy water he had brought back from the spot in River Jordan where John baptized Christ, mixed with holy water from Mother Ganga. There were chants in different languages, even Gregorian chant. I was in the ‘choir’ for the latter - awful lot of practice for 2 minutes of chanting. It was fun that I remembered enough Latin to understand the words!

On Christmas Eve we had a small party, with bible readings, a German gurukulam student talking about Christmas in her childhood, and Christmas Carrols. The end was less serious; we gave and received small gifts that we had to trade at least once against somebody else's gift. Right at the end we played musical chairs with the small group that was still up. Once, as the music stopped, I dashed forward to a chair and the young monk before me dashed backwards to the same chair. He ended up sitting on my lap... Of course a monk is not supposed to touch someone of the opposite sex. Poor man, he was so embarrassed. I suppose he is quite a handsome young man with his saffron turban (he is a Sikh), but what is most noticeable about him is the gentleness of his expression. He used to greet me with this timid, unusually gentle smile of his which just goes straight to your heart, but now when our paths cross he keeps his eyes firmly on the ground, face expressionless, like someone who is in a severe form of silence called kashta mauna, “the silence of the log of wood”…

New Year’s Eve is not really celebrated here because it is not linked to any particular constellation of stars & sun & moon. It is therefore not a cosmic date, but an arbitrarily chosen one. Still, we had a very nice evening with Ma Chetan Jyoti chanting kirtan with us (sacred chants in which everyone participates - or is supposed to). Then there was hot chocolate in the dining hall. I was in bed by 11, no sound of fireworks anywhere.

Those were some anecdotes for amusement, but in fact very different things are keeping me busy right now. I am currently going through a difficult time, have even been bordering on depression. Until quite recently I was on top of the world. I felt part of a community, interknitted in some way with all the people I was meeting and greeting - even when in most cases we were not really speaking to each other. I felt full of love to everything and everyone, and I felt carried by their love. Now I am depressed, and feel there is no one I can talk with. The only thing that has changed is me, my perception... Interesting, no? It is of course nonsense. For one thing, there are people I can talk with; there are people I do talk with. But the feeling is there.

There are some ‘objective factors’ contributing to this situation. I think it started when my sleeping rhythm was disrupted for a few days. Then I did not get up at 4.30 so I lost part of my meditation and hatha practice. To compensate for not feeling good I started eating sesame cookies, and sugar is not good for me. Also, it has been really quite cold for a number of days, with frost on the grass in the mornings so I guess temperature must have been diving (just) below zero. I was not enjoying the cold anymore. Nor anything else, in fact.

Then I had a talk with someone, a very good talk but quite confronting. I said something and he riposted “Yes, typical. You are not respectful of people”. We talked for a long time and he said a lot of other things. Most of them were positive and encouraging, but this one just went in like a bomb and I have been churning it in my mind for a number of days. It was such a bomb partly because I thought that respect for others is one of my strong points. That is also the feedback I had been getting so far. And it is a strong point in one sense, but I see quite well that in another sense it is not. For one thing, when I feel sure about what needs to be done, I move ahead in what I perceive as (also other people’s) best interest, without necessarily paying much attention to whether they want me to or not. This is something I have to look at carefully. Not so much in terms of whether in the concrete example we discussed what I did was the right thing to do – I am still inclined to think it was – but more in general this tendency to disregard other opinions when I think I know best. Luckily, I am often doubtful about what should be done; otherwise I would be quite obnoxious!

Being already in a relatively depressed state, this talk and the mental churning that followed did not help in lifting me up. Then there is work. I am a member of what is called the ‘Core Team’, a small group of people that is preparing the big event that will take place here in the month of February. There will be some 150 people participating in one week of mainly spiritual work and then one week of more operational reflection on (re)structuring our worldwide organization. It is a lot of work, and I am not sure we have all the capacities in our midst that we need. Though much has been done already, much more remains to be done and time is very short.

We have been meeting every morning. These meetings last longer than we all agree they should, and it has just been suggested to step up to twice a day... For a number of days – exactly during this depressed period - I felt we were moving in circles, rather than forward. It’s amazingly easy to fall back into stress reflexes, to feel righteous in my sense of urgency and resentful towards people going off the agenda on things that have already been discussed. I felt I was loosing my center because I have so little time for practice, but of course this is my practice: to learn to operate in a context where things don’t always go as you wish, but somehow as a team, as harmoniously as possible, lovingly do the work you have been put in place to do, as an offering, to the best of your capacity. Without being stressed, without showing impatience… In fact, not without showing impatience, but without being impatient.

I looked at this as an example of the disrespect of people that I mentioned above (churning churning…). My irritation in the meetings springs from believing I know better how the meeting should evolve (even if I am not capable of giving the contributions needed to move us forward). I noticed that when I think people are off agenda for too long – and sidetracking us from what I perceive to be the real urgencies - I tend to stop listening. The solution I have been trained to apply is to be stricter on the agenda, allot time slots per item etc. (luckily for the others I am not presiding, though I have not been able to keep myself from interfering with the chair). (Those who know me from the work context will snigger, because tightly leading meetings is not my strongest point either).

As a result of all this churning I am trying to apply another approach, which is to listen more deeply. If people go off agenda on subjects that I think have already been dealt with – and we are a group of intelligent, capable people – then probably the particular issue has not been dealt with in a satisfactory manner. Rather than rejecting the intervention, I am trying to reach a deeper understanding of the (perceived) problem, and move forward from there.

As I am writing this, things are again in an upward spiral. I first cut down on the sweet stuff (but was still needing comfort food, so bought potato crisps…); I am regulating my sleeping rhythm and slowly picking up my hatha practice again etc. As a result I am feeling better. I have been more relaxed during yesterday’s and today’s meetings, and I have found that between us we are finding ways of being more effective. These improvements to our functioning do not need my frustration; in fact the frustration if anything is probably an impediment...

By the way: I have also been keeping my chin up. Literally. We have been receiving very interesting classes on “Yoga and Science - Brain Programming” by a neurologist and a cardiologist from the Himalayan Hospital. They taught us some very simple, clear cut links between our inner world and body movement. We all know of course that depressed people have a tendency to look towards the ground. They told us you can not feel depressed while looking upward. We experimented: looking down and concentrating on a sad thought and wallowing in the depressed feelings this generates, then looking up at the sky and trying to maintain the depressed feeling. Not easy! Though it was more effective during our experiment than when I was really feeling depressed, I could clearly feel the effects. I found it much more effective to not just orient my face upwards, but to straighten the spine and stand tall. But then I’d forget and let my shoulders sag again… and straighten … and sag… and straighten.

I will give you some more little jewels from the neurological research:
• When thinking of the past, a visually oriented person will look up and to the left, and when thinking of the future, a visually oriented person will look up and to the right. This is related to where visual information is stored in the brain.
• Likewise, when thinking of the past, an auditory oriented person will look left at the horizontal level. When thinking of the future, an auditory oriented person will look right at the horizontal level. This is related to where auditory information is stored in the brain.
• More touch / feeling oriented people will look right and down to access both past and future.
• Self talk oriented people will look left and down. This means they are processing information. When you notice people doing that, stop talking. They will not really hear you until they finished processing the information.

NB: left is what is left to the person him / herself, so right to the one watching him / her from in front, and v.v. for right.

Love and peace,
Sonia

P.s. this letter was written yesterday. I had just come to the conclusion that I can (just) handle the responsibilities I have, and still do enough practice (meditation, hatha, yoga nidra) everyday. Then in today’s meeting, I was told Swami Veda wants me, together with someone else, to be the ‘Event Manager’ of our great event…. I suppose the Teacher agrees this really is my practice: learn to do all these things and yet maintain my center. I do hope he also has the organization’s interest in mind…