Rishikesh, 22 February 2007

Dear friends and loved ones,

The first part of the following text I wrote two weeks ago, just before mailing my last letter. It was wonderful to read it now, because I had completely forgotten. I came across it as I was starting on this letter because I placed it in the file where I always make notes for the next letter. It is really helpful to journal, to write these things down, because mind is so selective in what it remembers, and how…

Yes, this certainly is the practice for me. I have slept little the passed few nights because I was trying to write the most soul searching letter that I have written so far [the one you received two weeks ago]. Today was to be a day off, and I was looking forward to the morning meditation and then a session of guided hatha yoga.

Just before the hatha started, Swami Veda called me to suggest we find time for a particular meeting during the second week of our ongoing event. I proposed integrating whatever it was he wanted to discuss into the meeting that was already scheduled, but he said no, he already had an agenda for that particular meeting, and it was quite full. You have an agenda, I said?

We also had an agenda. There is a 12 person committee called the ‘Core Team’ organizing the first part of our February / March events. It is a two week retreat is how we translate our spiritual practices into every day life, the culmination of 18 months of ‘spiritual homework’ that invitees and delegates from our centres all over the world have been doing. This spiritual work should lay the foundation of a new umbrella organisation we hope will not fall apart when our spiritual guide – Swami Veda Bharati – leaves the body. Which, by the way, he has promised to not do for quite some time to come…

The Core Team has been working since the beginning of January. There is a sub-committee in charge of programming (of which I am a member). The first week of the event focussed completely on the integration of the practices in our lives and on emotional purification (these are almost synonymous). In the second week that starts now we move towards creating the umbrella organisation – AHYMSIN, the Association of Himalayan Yoga Meditation Societies International.

The first week went very well and we are now working on the concrete proposals for the second week. This could not be done earlier, because we are adapting the programme following the ‘flow’ of the event and the group processes. I am enjoying, but it is really hard work, similar to a peak period at the Embassy.

This morning Swami Veda announced a day off to everyone at a moment we had planned to hold discussions, and a little later I find out that an agenda for the second week has already been sent to the printers…
There’s the practice staring me in the face. I am finding this difficult to handle. Resilience (flexibility) has never been my strong point. I know lack of sleep plays a role, and also the savoury biscuits I ate this morning (wheat is not good for me).

Yesterday I had a wonderfully meditative day. I was bursting with love and joy, despite some tiredness. This morning in just a few moments because of this confusion on the programme (assisted by lack of sleep and bad diet) I slipped back into a negative emotional state.

And yet I know - intellectually for now - that there is no need to take it badly. The list of items Swami Veda drafted to be on the agenda are each one of them subjects we (Core Team) also wanted to tackle. We are completely in line with what Swami Veda wants us to do. That is good news! Why am I upset?

Just for the record, the painful stories that my mind is running now:

- Discontent because I had envisaged my day so differently: do the hatha, go to the hairdresser (desperately necessary), finalize my letter [the one you received two weeks ago], and work on Swami Veda’s Africa book. Instead of that, I find myself again organising and sitting in endless meetings. (This is a blessing: we sat with Swami Veda for hours, and that’s really wonderful – if you are in the right frame of mind!).
- A strong resentment that while the committee is at work, SVB makes a programme and sends it to the printers. Consultation took place because we found out by chance. (In reality this is not like him; he has a habit of consulting widely and something just went wrong in the communication. There definitely is a tendency to put several people on the same job, though). As a result, I now need to put energy into gearing up my motivation, because my first inclination is to say: OK, you do it, and withdraw.

Not helpful, and as I said in fact the points he put on paper reinforce (and improve!) what we had been planning. Why do I not take it that way? Why this defensive reaction? Is lack of sleep a sufficient reason? I suppose it means my baseline emotional state is less good than I thought; because I slip back into this when something in my environment may be interpreted as difficult.

OK, enough for now. This was not written as a letter (though I may find myself using it), but as therapy. I hope it will help get me out of this state.

End of quotation…

Oh, my friends, indeed I will use it in a letter. So nice to read it now. And yes, it did get me out of that state. I had already forgotten about it. But I will tell you another “incident” that happened last week. It had me puzzled until through someone’s remark another piece came up.

The other day I went into town for the first time in many weeks, and I was severely disturbed by the noise and the exhaust fumes and – most of all – the child beggars. Now there are always beggars, and I usually remain quite even minded. I have seen people get upset, and tried to tell them to not be so affected (to no avail of course). Now I saw myself having exactly the same reaction. Or worse: I felt like hitting them at one time! They were sweet looking, and really young, six or seven years old. I was fully aware my internal reaction was outrageous, and it was one I thought I had left behind a long time ago. (To my defence: these child beggars were unusually insistent, the first one following me around for at least five minutes, calling out to me and pulling my sleeves. But still. No need to get violent.)

That same day and the next I was really thinking hard what had happened. I talked about it to some people, trying to figure out for myself why I had had this violent reaction. One side is obviously that if you do not respond (I mean internally), they leave you alone much quicker. When they see you go off your centre, they hang on because most people will eventually give money just to be rid of them. So to have a certain level of irritation in the first place definitely makes the situation worse.

But why was I so prone to anger? I had been working very hard and not been getting a lot of rest nor doing much practice. Also, I realised I was going to be in town longer than I had foreseen, and I was painfully aware of everything that was waiting for me back at the ashram. And then I had been a little slack on my diet, having wheat and sweet stuffs. But is that reason enough? Yes! Well, with one dietary thing added.

As some of you know, I stopped drinking coffee approximately two years ago, because I felt it was disturbing my energy level. It gave boosts of a nervous kind of energy one moment and left me feeling depleted the next. It was difficult to go off coffee (a process of years, which I started in 2001), because I had developed a caffeine addiction. This is quite harmless but when you stop drinking coffee you feel terrible for five days (headaches, and feeling ‘weak as a dishrag’ as we say in Dutch).

Swami Veda has recommended dropping habits like drinking coffee for a year or so, but then having some, so as not to become a fanatic. So somewhere in my last weeks in Benin I had some coffee. The days after that I felt completely depleted without realising why. On the third day I considered (in fact decided, but I did not have time) to go see a doctor. Just in time I remembered the coffee thing, rode out my five days (as I said, stopping has been a process of years, so once I realised what it was, I knew quite accurately how long it would take. If I were any more intelligent I would have recognized it much earlier), started feeling better on the fifth day and decided – this time once and for all (I hope!) - never again to have coffee.

My final decision was really firm - for coffee. Black tea (as opposed to herbal or green tea, not as in tea without milk) has similar effects. I had not drunk it either for almost two years. But as you all know (even if only by reading these letters) I lack discipline. And this is India. You get offered tea all the time (tea time, meetings etc.) It was winter and cold, and eventually I succumbed and started having tea.

I made a half hearted attempt to stop once or twice, but never with any real decision behind it. I thought it would be easier to stop once back in Holland. After all, tea is not that harmful...

Then I sat with someone who is equally sensitive to coffee and tea. He has a stronger character than I do, and even in India abstains. So when I said I would stop back in Holland he replied: “Wouldn’t you rather go back feeling a more peaceful energy?” It then clicked in my head as I realised that my ‘baseline emotion’ had changed over the past weeks, at least as much linked to my tea consumption as to the other objective reasons to be stress sensitive (like sleep deprivation). This explained a good part of the upsets I had been feeling around the organisation of the event as well as my reaction to the child beggars in Rishikesh.

Obviously I still have emotional purification to do, because tea or coffee will only enhance a disturbance that is (potentially) there, and not create it. But I am off tea again. Still slightly headachy and tired, but on day two I already started feeling this pleasant baseline emotion coming back. I still get drawn out of it too easily, but more and more often happiness really shows itself as my baseline emotion. Tea and coffee clearly take me away from that.

To be completely honest: on day four my baseline emotion was down. Lack of sleep and the other aspects of diet clearly throw me off centre too. In yoga terms, I guess it comes down to the four ‘primitive fountains’: sleep, food, self preservation and sex. This is something I have known for a long time, but I think that through all this self observation it is now somehow becoming more ‘real’. As a result, I have moved closer to where I will not so much be depriving myself of coffee but choosing the joyfulness of habits that are more convenient to me. So the changes that I am looking for in a sense will almost happen by themselves. Does that make sense? Anyway, it is what is keeping me busy.

Very busy. AHYMSIN has been created, early in the second week of our event. The day before, Swami Veda said that when the new structure had been created, perhaps the Core Team should be dissolved as its tasks could taken over by the Executive Committee. I encouraged this idea enthusiastically, thinking I would soon find time for personal practice. Only to find myself appointed General Secretary and member of the Board of Directors. It is an interim Board of Directors, in principle for something like a year, but of course it is going to be a busy year as we are building the new structure. And I will be starting a new job in summer (my next posting for the ministry; I will be informed what it is to be in March or April, but most likely I will be posted in The Hague).

This letter is already too long, but I had promised to let you know about the renunciation vows. I considered doing a shorter period, but Swami Veda said taking vows for anything under three years is not useful. He said I should wait. So I will now see when and how I take small vows - internally, I do not need formalities. Plenty of work still on the diet level, for one thing. For the moment, never again coffee and tea, but I will start working on cutting down on wheat and sugar.

A very nice thing happened during our talk on renunciation: I told Swami Veda that I had recently felt very seriously attracted to someone. I mentioned his name and it was heart warming to hear the deep appreciation in Swami Veda’s voice as he spoke about the depth of practice of this most recent love of my life.

I said I had indeed learned much from him and would have liked to spend more time together. Then he answered, admonishingly: “don’t distract a monk!” I felt a surge of joy at those words, which allayed this nudging doubt that my ‘generous’ thoughts were what I was allowing myself to think while suppressing more selfish thoughts. But this was real and deep joy, and it made me feel safe in this regard. Perhaps too safe. I do still think him of with more affection than I do most other people. A few weeks ago, he had invited me to come and visit him over where he lives. But now he sent a note to say it would be better if I came next year or so…

Anyway, no need to worry about me. As I said, my baseline emotion is quite happy, even if sometimes tears (or stress reactions) wash over me. They go away and just a few moments later someone says: “wow, you look so radiantly happy!” Yeah, it sometimes gets clouded over for a short period but there is a lot of love in the old heart. I would like to shower you all with it.

Love and peace,
Sonia