Hurry Up and Wait

My life is a relatively busy one. I use the word relative because I know of people whose lives are far busier than mine – either because they want that busy-ness or because they need to be doing everything they do just to live. Usually, the busy I deal with is a mix – stuff related to school or work, or both, and things I want to do. I’m fortunate enough that, for the most part, regardless of what’s on my To-Do list, I have a lot of say in what I choose to do. That’s an excellent thing to have in life, but one I forget about too often.

I’ve written here before that 2014 was THE year from hell. In discussions of various types with various people I’ve revealed just how dark 2014 was and the reasons for why it isn’t allowed to repeat itself are just as dark. But a part of why 2014 was so miserable is that I felt like I had too much on my plate that had to be dealt with. School felt very demanding. Work was, indeed, the most demanding I’ve ever known and very stressful. My birth mother’s body died (BTW, today is the 55th anniversary of when that human body was birthed). I bought a house and all the wonder that comes with that kind of thing. Then also other usual stuff almost everyone else faces like trying to see family and friends as much as is wanted or needed, trying not to be a burden on others’ lives, stress from the holiday season, … y’know, the usual.

Throughout all of that, I’m sad to report, my meditation practice waned a bit. To be clear: I never stopped meditating. Sahaj Marg is an important force in my life. But I don’t recall having any sittings in 2014. I rarely went to satsanghs either. I read a lot of our masters’ books (mostly Chariji’s, since he has been the most prolific writer out of the last 3 masters) and I did keep up with my practice at home. But I still felt out of touch. When the rest of your world seems to be spinning out of control, a meditation practice that is meant for “human integration” can be vital.

We’re now wrapping up the sixth month of 2015, and it’s been entirely different. I’ll spare you all the details of exactly how life is different, but it is. It’s different enough that I’m nowhere near the dark place I was this time a year ago.

But still, there are days when I feel overwhelmed by the householder (grhasta) dharma. It’s Sunday morning as I’m writing this and I’ve slept in later than usual, although I didn’t have a late Saturday night. I’ve been physically awake for an hour right now and all I’ve done is hit the bathroom, open all the blinds in my house to let in gorgeous sunlight (something rare lately in Indiana with all our rain!), let the dogs out, made some coffee for myself, and nest here in front of the laptop in my loft to write these words in English.

In the back of my head (and in the front of it) know the various “wants” and “needs” I should address today include: meditation / puja, mowing my yards (before more rain and house guests arrive!) and trimming, laundry, school work, yoga / jogging, going to my in-laws to pick up things needed for later this week, some minor gardening, and probably sixty other things that will creep in as the day passes.

The list of things to do isn’t very big right? Seems like it should be easily managed through the course of the day. But even a list like the one above hits me and is somewhat debilitating. I find myself mentally listing what should be accomplished today and with each new item thought of I’m a little more paralyzed. There’s a need within myself to ferret out the most productive way to do everything. The idea of inefficiency is stressful. Entire days have gone “wasted” because my To-Do list felt too immense to productively manage – so I did nothing! NOTHING. Well, not absolutely nothing: I’d find the effort within me somewhere to feed myself a few times, to maybe put some porn in front of my eyeballs, and to maybe also do a small amount of laundry (probably only because I could nap or otherwise be unproductive while the loads were going through their cycles). By virtually every standard, the day would go wasted – all because I started off wanting not to waste the day.

Another friend or two has expressed feeling similarly. It’s madness. Dysfunctional, right? Why are people immobilized by thoughts of doing things? I’m guessing the cause of this debilitation is multi-layered. Components include things like depression, feelings of being overwhelmed, inability to properly prioritize… those kinds of things seem like good culprits.

In a strong effort to make sure 2014 doesn’t repeat itself, I’ve really tried to approach a lot of life differently for 2015. A month or two ago, the local abhyasi community was studying the concept of cheerful acceptance. I missed some of the group study where this was covered, but I’ve done my best to read up about it on my own. That concept, as well as a few others in Sahaj Marg (many having to do with our 10 Maxims – I am about to start writing a series on each Maxim, actually), are part of the difference 2015 holds.

I still have a horrifying, terrible, paralyzing To-Do list for today. And as of the typing of these words, I still don’t know how any of those things will be accomplished or even how today will go. But I’m able to recognize and accept that regardless of how many things are on the list for today – or the nature of those things (how big they seem) – the day will be far bigger than the list as a whole.

I might get all of the list completed. I might complete less than half of it. That doesn’t really matter. What currently seems to matter more is feeling life in my days. People talk about “living life to the fullest,” but I’ve found that people who use that phrase often don’t seem to know what it means. It rarely means you have to go sky diving or eating fried scorpions in a Chinese street market – although those things can qualify. You could be repotting a philodendron in your back yard and live life to the fullest while you do that.

Half way through 2015 I’m able to say that the aforementioned paralysis isn’t as total as it has been in the past. Coming up to the loft this morning with my coffee in-hand and the To-Do list swirling around in the space between my ears I still felt a moment of anxiety: SHIT there’s so much to do. But it passed almost entirely, and quickly, too.

As I wrap up this post, that debilitating fear continues to leave me. I’m thankful that my personal evolution, my integration (my heartfulness practice), has afforded me a greater capacity to live more fully now instead of the way I lived before. The likely result is that I’m about to go live the shit outta mowing my yard. Then I’m going to live the shit outta doing some laundry while I finish up some gardening (living the shit outta that, too). With any luck, I’ll finish those tasks before yoga starts in the early afternoon. And if not, then I’ll live the shit outta life while doing some other things.

Have a good Sunday, reader, wherever you are. And whatever you’re doing in life today, do the shit out of it.

Aum Shri Mahaganeshaya Namaha | Aum Shanti

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Good Bye

 

I’m generally a realistic optimist, but I’m going to just say it: 2014 was the worst year of my current physical manifestation.

For me, 2014 started in early December of 2013 when my department lost a few people and I was swept into a new role. I don’t regret that move, technically, but it set the stage for a lot of other things that haven’t been super pleasant. So I took the new position at work in early December 2013. Then, my lead at work was a woman named Tracey. She had a few admirable qualities but was mostly grade A bitch material. She reminded me far too much of my birth mother. So work got REAL crazy. Very stressful. Tracey was fired in May of 2014. (7 years later than she should have been fired!)

It was in early 2014 that I began suffering symptoms of anxiety and depression. And by only February I began to really struggle with these issues.

It was around Mother’s Day that my mother came into the picture. She’s always been “hands off” in her approach to mothering except when it came to slapping us around our touching me she wasn’t married to. She and my father divorced when I was a toddler and while I saw her off and on while I grew up, at one time a full 50% of my current life was spent with no contact from her (from just before I got my driver’s license until I was nearly 30 years old – not a word from her). Then this year she throws herself on the radar with a number of grave health concerns. I did my best to fill the role of doting first-born son, but mostly in service to the rest of my mother’s family and to my siblings who aren’t local. I also wanted to support my sister – she lives locally and was quite close to our mother. I felt simultaneously humbled and honored that so many members of my family turned to me in trust to understand everything said by the specialists and then to regurgitate it in a manner others can understand as I reported back. But it was stressful and something, quite frankly, I didn’t care to even do. My mother’s health problems would turn out to be something that would suck up more than the fair share of PTO and be something that would add to my general misery.

As the spring came to a close and summer progressed I found myself spread too thin between work, school, and family stuff. Around the end of summer, my Beloved came to take issue with one of our neighbors (we inhabited a towne home at the time and one of our neighbors – a very ghetto young man who fancied himself a composer – had become a noise nuisance) and so we decided to begin the home shopping process. When it comes to things like this, my Beloved and I are definitely “all or nothing” kind of guys. We don’t hang around deliberating on our decisions. We approach our goals with everything well-defined and thought out, and then when the approach is complete – we act. And it’s done.

Our home shopping process was no different. We put our home on the market briefly before coming to an arrangement with one of my friends where we would unlist the property and instead make it into an investment property and he would rent from us with the goal of eventual purchase. While all of this was being ironed out, we not only found but purchased a home more than twice the size of the towne home. Of course, while we weren’t in a rush, we wasted no time relocating our lives to the new address.

This actually brings us to November. In the weeks that passed during the home buying process, more nonsense with my mother and school and work all seemed to compound and the load became nearly unbearable for me. I’ve known many dark and wondrous things and moments in my life, but this period was dark only.

The Saturday before Thanksgiving this year (11/22/2014) my mother passed away. She was unmarried but living with a man. In Indiana, the oldest child is the nextest of kin for someone like my mother. Lucky me. Of course, all my siblings are technically “equal” to me when it comes to everything like this, but ultimately it all rests on my shoulders. Of course, my mother’s own siblings and her mother (her only surviving parent) seem to be under the impression that their sentiments and ideas are what should be supreme. So far, nothing has gotten particularly ugly but there have been times when I’ve needed to exert some authority. There have also been times when assistance from my siblings was necessary. At this point, we’ve only to decide what’s done with her ashes and go through a storage unit that is holding almost all of her possessions. The bulk of opportunities for familiar strife have passed, but we’re not out of the so-called woods yet. Hopefully, by the beginning of 2015 we’ll only have her ashes to deal with. I’ve some other posts planned for Sthapati dealing specifically with the wonder that is / was my birth mother.

Most recently, my own spiritual guide left his body. I’ve written about that already so I’ll not do it again here. Just what I needed, though.

The year hasn’t been a total blow, though. Earlier in the year I was able to spent a lovely long weekend in a part of the USA I’d never been to with my Beloved as we visited a friend I knew only from Facebook but who has been an incredible addition to my life. There was a week or so where I thought he’d left the planet and it distressed me immensely – but, however close a call it might have been, it was ultimately a false alarm. This year also brought not only my 10 year anniversary with my Beloved, but the legal recognition of our relationship by our state, Indiana. We were among the first couples in our county to marry after it was legalized. And while it was something carried on my shoulders during an already terribly stressful time of my life, my new home is a wonderful blessing. There were, of course, other highlights and good things that happened throughout the year – but these few things are only some that stand out to me.

All in all, this year needs to finish itself – and 2015 needs to more than make up for it. I don’t typically set resolutions that start in January (I usually use, instead, my birthday which is truly my body’s calendar start date), but I’m mulling over a few – a preemptive and hopefully proactive attempt at having a deliberately active hand in guiding the direction of my life in the coming year. I’m not likely to write about them here, but they’ll serve as pinpoints of focus that I can redirect my compass to as needed so that 2014 doesn’t repeat itself.

It can’t repeat itself.

Aum Shri Mahaganeshaya Namaha

Aum Shanti

2013 Board Chairman Report

Dear Friends and Devotees of HTCI,

I’m sure that you all are enjoying great summer weather. It is time for me to give you a brief update of our Temple construction project. As I mentioned in our last news letter, we have been trying hard through various avenues to obtain visas for Shilpies (Temple Artisans) to Indianize the Temple both inside and out. At last ten of them will be getting visas at the Chennai Consulate on August 26th and will be here by September 10, 2013. The Shilpies will immediately start working outside until the weather changes. Meanwhile, we are hoping to obtain visas for twelve more Shilpies in a month or two. These Shilpies may join us by the end of this year. All the Shilpies together are expected to complete the work both inside and outside of three major Shrines by June 2014 for us to celebrate partial Kumbhabhisekum in July of 2014. The team of 22 Shilpies will stay with us to finish the work on the remaining Shrines and Rajagopuram in the year 2015 for final Kumbhabhisekum. Afterwards we all can enjoy the full potential of our Temple.

The cost of the final phase of the Temple Project including materials and labor is estimated to be two million dollars. This means that we must raise the amount over the next 20 months but immediately we need one-half million dollars to get started. On behalf of the Temple, I wholeheartedly thank you all for having helped the Temple project so far. We have invested so much money and energy on this project that we cannot go back or take a pause, this is a very crucial time so please come forward and help us out. We request all of our community members to donate liberally. If you redeem past pledges immediately that will take care of our immediate needs. You all are very busy people with various life demands, so before you forget while this topic is fresh on your minds, please write a check for our Temple so that we may continue making progress with our project.

Lastly, I have a clarification for everyone’s information. Our Temple’s mission is to strive to meet all religious, cultural, educational, and social needs of our community members in Central Indiana as much as possible. With this in mind, our Temple also has some policies in which we must adhere to. At this time our Temple cannot afford to let any community member or a group of members to organize any fund raising activity in the Temple for an outside organization since our Temple is in the middle of a construction phase and is in need of monetary support. On special situations we will still consider negotiating mutually beneficial and acceptable agreements. I sincerely request and hope that you all understand the Temple’s position on this matter.

God Bless You All,
Satyanarayana R. Marri, MD
Chairman, Board of Trustees
Hindu Temple of Central Indiana