Skating Up the Chakras

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.” —Frederik Backman: Beartown(Ch. 35)

 

I never imagined I would enjoy a book about hockey, a sport that leaves me (pun intended) cold. But Frederik Backman, author most known for A Man Called Ove, managed to hold my attention in his book Beartown.A teen hockey club in a small town is the setting for the story and the book fulfills my requirements of interesting characters and page-turning plot. But I particularly enjoyed his one-paragraph little philosophic inquiries that often open each chapter. Like the one above. 

 

I’ve often thought of Don Juan’s (remember him from the Carlos Castaneda books?) quote that “it takes the same amount of energy to make yourself miserable as to make yourself happy.” It’s a good reminder as to where and how to direct our finite supply of energy and attention. But now I wonder if it’s true. Because, as Backman suggests, it seems a helluva lot easier to hate than to love. 

 

From the Hindu perspective, our animal drives live near the base of the spine in the first three chakras— food, sex, power. These are granted for free to us all and is the reason why the media constantly seduces us with sexy, violent images and ads for fattening salty, crispy and sugary foods. 

 

But the fourth chakra of the heart is where the raw sexual instinct transforms to love. The fifth in the throat is where the might of the pen overrides the muscle of the sword and the sixth in the middle of the forehead is where food for the body becomes food for the Soul and Spirit. To arrive at these three upper chakras, we must make a conscious effort, climb vertically against gravity. That’s why so many of us choose to stuff ourselves with fast food, become obese in body fat and starving in spirit. Why we immerse ourselves in the constant violence of the super-hero/ horror/ thriller Hollywood fare and quickly scroll through the PBS adaptation of David Copperfield. That’s why we surf the porn sites instead of have  courageous conversation with a loved one. That’s why love is hard and hate is simple. 

 

“So many of us” is really all of us, at different phases in our life and for different amounts of time. What is inspiring is those who resist the easy way and make an effort to be better. To understand things more clearly, to feel things more deeply, to work harder to improve ourselves and help heal the world. What is deeply disturbing is those who keep feeding their laziness and are encouraged to do so by those who profit from it, be it through money or power. Those who get duped into thinking that their ignorance is as good as anyone’s understanding, their refusal to face themselves and do the work to improve is as good another’s determination to do better, their hate is as good as anyone’s love— and it’s their right to choose it. Backman’s second paragraph.

 

"So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that’s easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe—comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is the we dehumanize our enemy, take their names away from them."

 

Once you find yourselves in the crossfire of some internet name-calling, that’s your cue to jump ship. You cannot converse with someone imprisoned in the first three chakras. Better to spend that energy rising higher into your own upper three. And don’t forget the seventh at the crown of the head, when you realize your unity with all consciousness and you connect with the divine nature we all equally share, but don’t equally realize. 

 

Just to be clear, Backman doesn’t suggest that hockey, one of the more violent and male-aggressive-testosterone sports on the block, is the path to your divine nature. But even in the midst of whacking a little puck around, body-blocking your opponents, hitting them on the head with a stick if they piss you off, some luminous moments can arise. With current day politics resembling a hockey rink more than a polite debating society, we might keep this in mind. 

A Child Is Born

Amazing! It happened! After a long, sometimes painful pregnancy, my book Jazz, Joy & Justice is finally published! After two years of patient perseverance. I’m walking around singing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus and his For Unto Us A Child Is Born! As I was walking the grounds of Monticello on September 15^th,  I got a call from something called TV Spotlight asking for a 10-minute Zoom interview to promote it (now scheduled for October 24^th). That’s how I found it that it actually came out on the promised date. Hallelujah!

 

And when I returned home to San Francisco, there was a box with my 20 free copies, posters, flyers and bookmarks. The first time I got to hold this baby in my arms. Sweet.

 

Now comes the next part. A child is born— and now I have to raise it! Meaning advertise, promote, make available, sell it, hopefully give readings at schools and bookstores. So let me encourage you, my dear readers, to order a copy and pass the word on! You can go to https://www.austinmacauley.com/us/author/goodkin-doug

 

(If you do and want some background music, don’t play Handel’s tune, but go with Thad Jones’ jazz song A Child Is Born.)

Scrolling Through Love

I made it to Washington DC and now two hours to “be here now” before the return flight to San Francisco. Naturally, a quick peek at Facebook and then decided to scroll through the names of the people who liked the photo of my daughter and I all dressed up for the recent wedding. As I sometimes do. 

 

And it always warms my heart. Each name I read calls up a person I’ve shared a little piece (or in some cases, a lot of pieces) of life with. I see their face in my mind, remember a bit of when our paths crossed and call up the memories embedded in my cells. In this case, I knew just about every one of the 382 people who pressed “like,” mostly folks I’ve known in the world of Orff workshops, many from The San Francisco School, a few from college and even high school or neighbors or family friends. It’s like sending Christmas cards and pausing as you address each envelope. Each person one facet of a glittering jewel, each with their own quirks and gifts and ways that they are refreshing the world with their presence. And ways in which my little world has been enlivened by the privilege of knowing them. It’s like scrolling through the many faces of love.

 

This is time in the airport well-spent. Thanks to you all and see some of you again on my next Facebook post!

Ram Dass in the Airport

“Attention. There is a slight delay in your 8:00 pm flight. New time is 8:30.”

 

No problem. I’ll just be here now, enjoy some time to read my book.

 

“Attention. New time is now 9:00.”

 

Okay. 

 

“Attention. New time is 9:30.”

 

Hmm. Feeling a little hungry. Think I’ll search out some food. 

 

“Attention. New time is 9:45.”

 

I guess I’ll write a little blog post about my food search.

 

“Attention. Your flight has been cancelled. New time is 8:30—tomorrow morning.”

 

Why? Because for whatever reason for the delay (they never told us), it meant that the crew had worked the maximum hours allowed bv the FAA and must complete a mandatory period of rest before departing. Well, I’m happy they get to rest, but what about me? Guess I’ll stand in line to ask how United will get a hotel for me. 

 

“Okay,”said the person, “I’ll meet you all downstairs to rebook flights and book a room.”

 

Some 25 of us go downstairs, line up— and there we stand for one hour without any of the two attendants letting us know what’s taking so damn long for a simple hotel booking. I was number eight in line and didn’t move one inch in a full hour. Breathe. Be here now.

 

But my body and nervous system were not with the “be here now” program, accepting it all with equanimity. Finally I just walked straight up and said, with ill-concealed frustration, “Can you just let us know what’s going on and why it’s taking so long?” No one answered. “I’ll take that as a no.” 

The line began to move, though still way outpaced by any snail. When I finally got up front at 11:00 pm, the man printed out a hotel voucher and then had me take it to the other woman, who put it in a pile and called the hotel, asking for my name, address, phone number and e-mail to give them. Meanwhile, seven fellow passengers were ready to go waiting for the shuttle and when the shuttle came, she was still talking to the damn hotel giving them my information. “Please let the shuttle know to wait for me,” I implored and then stood there watching it drive away.

 

Be. Here. Now.

 

“Oh, it’s only five minutes away. The driver will be right back for you and the others (another seven people).”

 

Tick-tock-tick-tock. Five minutes, Ten minutes, Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes. By now it’s 11:30 and I’ve been at this airport for six straight hours. Ten more minutes and the shuttle comes. Then another line at the hotel to check in. The person in front of me deciding to buy some food before at the counter before completing the check in. Tick tock. 

 

At five minutes past midnight, I finally fall into bed. To awaken at 6 the next morning. Back on the shuttle. Back to the airport. Back through security, who asks for the new ticket they didn’t give me and no one at the United counter. Calls the supervisor who approves and lets me through. Through the security machine and my body image on the screen is lit up in five places, including “sensitive” areas. The guard has to tell me where he’s going to touch me and pat my down. Trying to breathe through the echoes of my impatience with machines that don’t work and systems of dealing with problems that are as broken as the problems themselves. 

 

So now it’s 8:06 am in the morning and they’re telling me I probably need to check my carry on bag. Oh, and did I mention that my rebooked flight from Washington is three hours after I arrive? 

 

If this is a test to see my capacity to be fully in the moment, to be wholly here now instead of wishing I was somewhere else then (like my home), I confess. I’ve failed miserably. Here’s hoping I can get home today. And then, finally, I can be here now. 

 

 

Police Benignity

After a long overdue visit—14 years!— with an old college friend in his beautiful country home in the Shenandoah Valley, I drove a couple of hours on Rt. 81 in Virginia for the third time in three days. Arrived at the Roanoke Airport and the entire procedure of returning the rental car, getting my ticket and getting through security took about 15 minutes. Total. Things were looking good. 

 

That is, until my 8:00 pm flight was changed to 8:30, then 9:00, now 9:45. Meaning I miss my connection in Washington DC, but will get a bonus (?) night in a hotel room there. Meanwhile, I was counting on some food and in this small airport, all is closed. One place was dark, no people, but a cooler with yogurts and a bowl of bananas. So I reached in  and took one of each just as a policewoman strolled in.

 

I asked, “Do you know of any way I can pay for this or just leave some money on the counter? My plane is almost two hours delayed and I’m hungry.”

 

Her reply? “I can’t tell you what to do. All I can say is I’m walking over this way.”

 

And she turned around and walked away, with an understood wink between us. 

 

Sometimes kind people, even in uniforms, do the right thing. 

The New Monticello

Book banning. Forbidding truth in history classes. Trash-talking wokeness. The Repugnantins are showing their terror that their unearned privilege is in danger when people finally learn the real story of what’s gone down in this country. They’re backpedaling toward ignorance as fast as they can and not enough of us are putting up the barricades to halt their hurtful actions.

 

And yet, I’m happy to report that there is a sizable momentum pushing the moral arc towards truth and justice. The Monticello tour, for example. When I took this tour some 12 years ago, the entire focus was on Jefferson’s impressive Renaissance-man qualities— not only President and the one who so eloquently articulated the inspired words of The Declaration of Independence, but an inventor, a scientist, an architect, a voracious reader of philosophy and history, a farmer and a prime force in creating the separation of church and state. I remember leaving the tour inspired by his accomplishments.

 

The story on yesterday’s tour did not belittle those qualities, but included the larger story. Owner of 607 human beings who allowed him to pursue his interests on a large estate by working for free, cruel punisher of any who transgressed, someone who used his power and privilege to have relations with Sally Hemmings, a 14-year old enslaved girl (who happened to be his wife’s half-sister—it’s a complicated story), father of four children by her whom he “freed” according to an agreement he made to coerce her to return from France with him back to Monticello, but never spent time with any of them, someone who publicly professed slavery as “an abomination” but failed to include black people in his notion of “all people are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights.” And yes, he was a product of his time, but story after story, I couldn’t help but feel, “Tom, you could have done better. Didn’t you ever lie in bed sometime and think, ‘What am I doing here?’ And while you probably justified it all as necessary for upkeep of this large estate you inherited, why didn’t you build a more modest house that you and a few paid laborers could keep up while you pursued your worthy interests? (Turns out that even with 600 people working for free, Jefferson was still always in debt.)

 

I was so pleased that the tour finally was dealing with these questions and I particularly loved one perky elder guide who engaged us with her questions, getting us to reflect deeper on the contradictions and not so easily excuse him. And equally impressed with the 30 people on the tour who didn’t seem defensive or offended by having to consider some of the truths DeSantis and his ilk are trying to suppress. This guide confided that when she first started giving tours in the 1970’s, she was expressly forbidden to talk about Sally Hemmings. Yes, my friends, the moral arc is leaning in the right direction.

 

And again when visiting the University of Virginia campus where there’s a beautifully grassy area enclosed by a wall telling how enslaved human beings built this campus and were the property of many of the professors. I hope a little walk around it is required for freshman orientation. 

 

So, friends, we should be alarmed at the number of states trying to legislate the suppression of truth, but also encouraged by the signs that people are ready to hear the real story and begin to change the white supremacy narrative by understanding what it is and how it works and why it shouldn’t work. It’s up to us to carry forth Jefferson’s words into the realities he was incapable of realizing. 

The Right Question

It feels like the problem with us flawed humans is our capacity to give the wrong answers to life’s persistent questions. Answers that someone else plants in our brain for their own profit and power and we too easily acquiesce. Answers that we ourselves generate and are willing to settle for, even as some part of us knows that they make us smaller and less kind and less happy. Answers that we cling to desperately just for the sake of having an answer, unable to live comfortably with the questions. 

 

But now I’m thinking that part of the problem is asking the wrong questions. That if we only met on the common ground of the right questions, our conversations, our time shared together will be less contentious, less oppositional, less spiteful or angry or jealous. That the North Star of the right question could guide us through all the temptations, wrong turns and head-on collisions. 

 

And so, when I re-read a poem from the anthology called The Path of Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, I was hit right between the eyes in the way that a good poem can. Appropriately titled, The Question, the poem begins:

    “All day, I replay these words:

    Is this the path of love?

    I think of them as I rise, as I wash dishes,

    as I drive too close behind the slow blue Subaru, Is this the path of love?…”

 

The poet, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, keeps asking the question throughout her day, notices how those “six words become compass, the new lens through which to see myself in the world.” When we gather together, when a proposal is being considered, when a decision is to be made, how different it all would be with this six word mantra for guidance. What would happen if all teachers came to staff meetings armed with this powerful inquiry when they’re asked to jump through the hoops of some bureaucrat far away? If all corporate employees dared to ask that out loud when the next machine designed for addiction is being proposed? If workers at the voting booths reminded the citizens to interrogate themselves before voting? Is this the path of love?

 

I read this poem at the end of yet another Orff workshop overflowing with joy, laughter, comradery and permission to trot out one’s extravagant quirky self. And during every minute of the non-stop five-hour fun fest, my answer to the question was, “Yes! Yes! And again, Yes!”

Given a choice, who would not choose to walk on the path of love? Sometimes it's as simple as asking the right question.