Yogi Yuyu Rides Again

There are many.  Everyone has within a glimmer of the divine flame, but some glow so hot it's hard to miss.  You are already probably knowing the four or five best-selling writers on spirituality, so I will not repeat them here; but I would like to be introducing you to Dean Sluyter.  His Cinema Nirvana and Zen Commandments are masterpieces of creative clarity and humor and insight.  Sluyter can "lighten up" the search for enlightenment with brilliant effect.

Another Great Soul is the American author Byron Katie.  A "lit lady" and a very down-to-Earth teacher, she seems to have found a profound wisdom, and I am finding she helps many break their mental chains with a process she calls "The Work."  Learning to love the world by questioning one's assumptions and thoughts,  she and her husband, Stephen Mitchell, have written A Thousand Names for Joy and Loving What Is.  I hope you will be finding them as fulfilling as a yummy bowl of Beach Boysenberry.  Bon Appetit!

I am sorry for your suffering.  However, I am understanding life’s message to be “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.”  If you have recently lost a dear one, you are allowed to grieve.  But could you not also celebrate the joy they brought you?

We will all die (if we were ever born).  Our bodies will someday be returning to the molecules and atoms that were kind enough to come together for a while making the all-important US.  Isn’t it being miraculous that we were ever here at all?  And isn’t part of our sadness either the knowledge of our own mortality or the sense that, “Wow! Look how great they were, and even they didn’t escape this fate I fear.”  You see?  We often turn their lives and deaths into our story.  So here’s the part where suffering is optional.  We can choose our story.  We can choose to believe the myth that our lives can never again contain joy without them.  Or, we can – like those heroic parents who have lost a beloved child to disease – choose to live for them.  To make each day worthy of the dear one we still hold in our hearts; to choose to work to defeat drunk driving, or find a cure for cancer or M.S. or birth defects.  And in the meantime you can sit up here with me and the most gentle music of Carole King. We’ll “climb way up to the top of the stairs, and all our cares just drift (Gospel back-up eases in) out into Space.  On the roof it’s peaceful as can be, and darling,…”

Oh, most decidedly, yes.  First, my true believers are promising to cut down on fast food and replace it with SLOW FOOD.  For the sake of your body and soul, you need to think before you put something into your body.  (This also applies to junk food you put in your mind via TV and the Internet, but that’s another story.)  SLOW FOOD is not only meaning what you eat and how you eat it, it has to do with how you prepare it.  Teach your children how to cook.  Start with an easy soup, cutting up a few vegetables.  Have your children help prepare meals, and then SIT DOWN TOGETHER to eat.  We are not machines, in need of refueling; we are social creatures reconnecting with the source of our lives.

Second, your question is mentioning restrictions. Here I must be teaching you a most profound truth:  you are free.  The universe is without limits, and so are you.  Do not accept as truth any limits on what you may become or do.  If you wish to exist on brown rice and bean sprouts, you are free to do so.  If you wish to become Julia Child, you can be that, too. Personally, I believe life would be poorer without the occasional ice cream cone.  Could I interest you in some Karma Dharma Caramel?

Please, please, don’t be beating yourself up for feeling grief. Not only does that not shorten the pain, it can create a mixture of guilt and grief that is excruciating.  So, please be cutting yourself some slack – you are human and you have lost someone you loved. But that was very careless, wasn’t it?  Where did you put them, you silly, forgetful thing?  Oh, there they are – deep in your heart.  They weren’t lost after all.

It is only illusion that you have lost someone or that indeed, you were ever separate from them. We are one.  You will always have the experiences you shared, and – though many religions talk about meeting your loved ones in heaven when you die – the truth is we are our loved ones then, and even now. 

Until you can accept this important truth, be gentle with yourself: get lots of rest and take time to be with your friends, perhaps sharing an Eelec-trical Banana Split (or some great lasagna or other comfort food). Write a letter to the deceased (your other self) and let them know what’s happening in your life.  They will be very glad to hear from you.  Look around you for their response.  It’s there, in the laughter of children, in a parent patiently tying a child’s shoes, in a woodland walk, or the ocean itself.  Be patient, and look...

Ah, my lovely chelas, I have most assuredly been missing you, too. Please accept a Flower Power Forever Sundae as a partial apology.  Sometime I will be telling you of my near-death experiences in the past year. But now I must be sharing my joy over my most recent adventure. I spent the last two weeks in a foreign city (Texas is its own country, is it not?). There I joined a community of learners that included a past President of the National Science Teachers, a contributor to NASA's Deep Impact and Stardust missions, a martial arts expert afraid of hot sauce, and a wild woman who "only poisons her husband occasionally."

Our shared purpose in gathering was to learn the latest developments in nanotechnology (the science of the very small).  At the same time, we were learning techniques to help interest young people in this emerging field and to practice the scientific process as they learn.  I'm excited about the porspects for medical and energy applications for these new materials (treating cancers and greatly expanding solar energy) But the fun of it all is the infinite possibilities - we just don't know what's around the next corner. http://www.ted.com/talks/justin_hall_tipping_freeing_energy_from_the_grid.html

Tags: houston, nano, nsta, teaching

Oh my goodness gracious, where to start? I hope you will not be taking offense if I say,  “you can put lipstick on a pig…”  Ms. Palin is a walking, talking (unfotunately) hair-do. Why anybody considers her a more serious candidate than our other vacuous hair product, Donald Trump, is beyond me.

I am hastening to add that everyone is human, and we shouldn't be holding one demonstration of dumbness against her. But when one claims to be the candidate of family values and does such a questionable job of raising kids?  When one advises a disgraced, racist talk show host, "Don't retreat, reload!"?  Can this be the best American can produce? And yet the eight years the American public put up with G.W. Bush make me wonder if they aren't really seeking someone as poorly educated as themselves..... 

It’s sad but true, a new low point in American public behavior. In the course of defending innocent lives, it might become necessary to take a life; but we must take care not to become that which we abhor.  I think of my father, a professional soldier. He signed up to fight the Nazis, which is admirable, but he hated Jews and Blacks as much as Hitler or any of his brownshirts did. And I know from my friends in the Vietnam generation that one of the first trainings given to our fighting men working with bayonets was to “Kill Gooks”! They were trained to see those from other countries and races as less than human, making our guys less hesitant to kill.

            So what makes our public jubilation at Bin Laden’s death any less despicable than Arabs laughing and celebrating the deaths of Americans?  Are we inherently better than all others in the human family?  I am fearing that our culture, from football to X-box, places so much emphasis on winning and violence that we are in danger of losing our souls.  Albert Schweitzer said it this way: “A thinking man feels compelled to approach all life with the same reverence he has for his own.”

Perhaps the lesson is being that we are not so important, not so essential, as we thought.  The hectic world of appointments and chores has paused for a moment, and children are sledding instead. You could curse the fates for postponing that important project, or like one mother  I enjoyed meeting during the storm, you could make warm cookies to take to the snow-covered adventurers.

The physics test I had scheduled for my students will not happen as planned, but I am being grateful for the reminder that we are human beings first, creating sculptures and snowmen for making memories, and there will be time enough for learning the intricacies of projectiles and snowballs later.  Miss Newton-John was singing it rightly...

It feels like heaven's reaching down
To tell us here on earth we're not alone
As the rooftops glisten
And your cheeks turn to rose
We will lie in wonder making angels in the snow

First, let’s please be getting some clarity on who is failing. Yes, the public schools are suffering from fear of litigation and are trying too hard to keep those who are disruptive to the learning process. But most of the teachers I know are intelligent, dedicated professionals who are using all the latest research on best practices. They are not the weak link in the chain.  I used to believe that the answer was higher pay to attract better teachers (and the current group certainly deserve better pay). But even the best professionals struggle in a toxic environment.

Much of the blame is having to be laid at the feet of Madison Ave and the techno zombie society they’ve created.  Children only spend 1/9 of their young lives in school. Before they’re four, many of them are spending two to three hours a day on TVs and computers.  By middle school, most of them have cell phones and become adept and texting under their school desks.  By high school, not only have they been exposed to everything the internet has to offer, but they spend 5 to 10 times more time online or on TV than they do on homework or any other reading.