I feel incredibly off. In large part, it’s because I’ve been sick with a cold for the last nine days. Add in lack of sleep due to said cold, disruption at my apartment because of construction, Trump returning to the White House, the collective heartbreak around the LA wildfires, continued destruction of Gaza, and all the other tragedies in the world, and I want to pull a Rip Van Winkle. If I could go to sleep and wake up once everything is better, that would be great.
When life is like this, I remind myself of a few things: One, I don’t need to tackle my life’s problems (or the world’s problems) all at once. I do what I can when I can. And two, what’s called for is the next right action. The next right action varies but it’s always something small and manageable like taking a shower, calling that person, or running an errand. Little things snowball into big things and I can trust the big things take care of themselves when I focus on taking the next right action over and over again.
Lastly, to keep myself from falling into a pit of despair, it’s important to find the good and remember the miracles all around me. To that end, I’m resharing a post from August 2023. I hope it helps you as much as it does me.
After a long day of staring at my computer screen, I walked outside to my apartment complex’s terrace where something caught my eye. Leaning against the far wall beneath an overhang is a bag of detritus. It’s filled with dirt and pine needles and everything workmen scooped out of our gutters from at least eight months ago, if not longer. Do you know what was spilling out of that bag?
A well-developed nasturtium vine. There are so many things about this that are astounding. Number one, I’m on that terrace every few days watering my plants. How did I not notice it before? And number two, it hasn’t rained here in MONTHS. How did that nasturtium vine survive?!? It’s not like any of my neighbors were watering a bag of soil in an attempt to keep a plant alive. And yet, not only did the vine survive, it thrived as you can see in the picture.
The vine in question. Look at how big it is!
When I saw this plant, I literally laughed out loud because it was so unexpected and also miraculous. It reminded me that miracles are everywhere if we look for them. Miracles often have the connotation of being something big and obvious, but they can also be small and discreet, like this nasturtium vine.
I could use more miracles in my life. It’s easy for me to become disheartened by the ever-present pessimism in the news. Fires leveling towns. Floods. Famines. It’s a lot. And yet, if I look around, I also see evidence of miracles. Back in November, scientists captured footage of the black-naped pheasant-pigeon, which hadn’t been seen since 1882! In Brazil, the Golden Lion Tamarin used to be on the brink of extinction with about 200 animals in the wild, but the population has rebounded to around 4,800, according to a recent study.
Miracles happen every day with people surviving deathly car crashes, getting pregnant when they thought they were infertile, or walking again when they were told it was impossible. It’s easy to think, “Well, that wouldn’t happen to me,” but what if it could? What if you could also receive a miracle? And like me with the nasturtium plant, what if miracles are all around and we’re just not noticing them?
Given the choice between a world where we’re all doomed and one where miracles occur, I vote for the latter. It reminds me of a concept we have in my spiritual tradition called madhuvidyá, which literally means “honey knowledge.” It requires seeing everything as an expression of an infinite loving consciousness, also known as Brahma.
My spiritual teacher says, “This madhuvidyá will pervade your exterior and interior with … [ecstasy] and will permanently alleviate all your afflictions. Then the ferocious jaws of [degeneration] cannot come and devour you. The glory of one and only one benign entity will shine forth to you from one and all objects.”
That may not seem relevant but for me, practicing madhuvidyá means remembering God is here, there, and everywhere. Because everything is Brahma, everything is a manifestation of that infinite loving consciousness. In that framework, OF COURSE miracles are everywhere. How could they not be?
I dream of a world where we recognize the strange and the unlikely occurs all the time. A world where we make room for magic and mystery. A world where we understand this entire universe is composed of an infinite loving consciousness that is all-knowing and all-powerful. A world where we recognize if that’s true, if anything can happen, then miracles can too.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Piggybacking on my post from last week about a new definition of perfection, I’m pondering a new definition of “good.” When I think of “good” or “being good,” it’s usually in a binary way: “This is good, this is bad.” And often “good” is from an outside source. I’m “good” if I follow the rules, if I do the things other people tell me or want me to do. But because people are contradictory (myself included), I’m also a rulebreaker. If I think a rule is stupid or doesn’t make sense, I won’t follow it. A fight I had near constantly when I lived in London was, “No, I don’t want to do it this way just because it’s always been done that way.”
The past few weeks I’ve toggled between wanting to do things my way and wanting to do things other people’s way, with my inherent goodness at stake. My therapist encouraged me to change my definition of good to encompass living in harmony with nature and all created beings. She specifically told me to look up “walking the beauty way path,” a Navajo/Diné concept.
Diné historian Wally Brown explains in a video that anyone can find their own way to walk in beauty, regardless of their background or beliefs. What the beauty way path means, fundamentally, is acknowledging the sacredness of all life and trying to be in alignment with the natural world. Instead of, “Did I follow a rule that someone else set?” it’s, “Am I treating all beings with respect? Am I striving for inner peace?” If so, I’m walking the beauty way path. There’s a prayer to go along with this concept that I’m including below:
In Beauty may I walk.
All day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.
With dew about my feet may I walk.
With Beauty may I walk.
With Beauty before me, may I walk.
With Beauty behind me, may I walk.
With Beauty above me, may I walk.
With Beauty below me, may I walk.
With Beauty all around me, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of Beauty,
lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of Beauty,
living again, may I walk.
It is finished in Beauty.
It is finished in Beauty.
This prayer reminds me of a similar concept in my spiritual tradition: madhuvidyá, which literally means “honey knowledge.” Practicing madhuvidyá means seeing beyond the surface of people, places, and things to witness their true form. It’s recognizing everything is Brahma, Cosmic Consciousness, Source, the Universe, whatever name you have for it. In other words, it’s seeing beauty everywhere.
The beauty way path means recognizing I’m enveloped in love and beauty. That love and beauty are me. And if I’m treating others as if that’s true, I don’t need to worry about being “good” or “bad.” I’m doing something else – I’m walking a path, adjusting and course-correcting as need be. I may not always see the beauty in me or around me but that’s OK because as with everything, it all comes down to practice.
I dream of a world where we toss aside the binary of good/bad. A world where we focus instead on treating others with kindness and respect. A world where we see the beauty above us, below us, behind us, around us, and inside us. A world where we walk the beauty way path, whatever that means for us.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
My spiritual teacher uses the word “beatitude” a lot because that is his wish for everyone, that we all experience felicity of the highest kind, or consummate bliss. That got me thinking about bliss, what it means to be blissful, and how that squares with, well, life. For instance, on New Year’s Day, my parents and I found the back window of our car rental smashed in. How does that fit in with consummate bliss?
I don’t know because I’m just a human being, but what I do know, according to my spiritual philosophy, is every entity is moving from crudeness toward subtlety (some more quickly than others). The image that comes to mind is that of a river flowing toward the ocean. A current is carrying us from where we are now to somewhere else. Parts of the river are calm, others are choppy. While flowing down this river we may experience anger, fear, or sorrow, but the one constant is the water itself. Maybe bliss is like that. Maybe it’s the ever-present water below carrying us forward.
In my spiritual tradition we have a word for viewing the world from this lens. It’s called madhuvidyá. Madhuvidyá literally means “honey knowledge” and requires seeing everything, EVERYTHING, as an expression of an infinite loving consciousness, also known as Brahma. Yes, that means our car rental window getting smashed. It also means all the bad things, all the irritations, all the whatever that seem anything but blissful.
Working on this “honey knowledge” thing. Photo by Arwin Neil Baichoo on Unsplash
“This universe of ours is not absolute truth – it is only a relative truth,” my spiritual teacher says. “So the wise should try to know the absolute truth. But simultaneously it is also desirable that while striving to realize the Supreme Entity one should maintain an adjustment with this relative world. While doing one’s duties properly with the application of madhuvidyá, one can achieve permanent cessation of afflictions from this relative world. Then all the entities of this world will be as sweet as honey for the spiritual aspirant.”
That’s what I want for myself. I want all the entities of this world to be as sweet as honey. Not in a spiritual bypassing sort of way, but a recognition of both the relative truth and the absolute truth. The relative truth is I was so pissed off about the smashed window I screamed at the top of my lungs, cussing out whoever did it. And the absolute truth is the glass scattered across our backseat, the person or people who broke the window, and whatever they used to break it, are also Brahma, are also love, are also the Supreme.
As I enter this new year, it will be easy to fall into the trap of seeing things in black and white. Or labeling them as good or bad. But maybe I can also keep in the back of my mind that I’m evolving, the world is evolving, and the river we’re traveling on will never run smooth. But regardless, the water pushing us forward is there, is steady, is constant, and quintessentially is love itself.
I dream of a world where we can hold relative truths as well as the absolute truth. A world where we understand rough things will happen to us but love is still there. A world where we realize we’re all on a river moving forward in our evolution. A world where we do our best to lace our perspective with honey knowledge so that we can experience untold sweetness.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
A few days ago, I visited Mount Rainier National Park for the first time with my parents. Doing so, now I understand the hype about the Pacific Northwest in the summer. It was gorgeous – the mountain views, the lakes, the wildflowers. It took my breath away (sometimes literally as I huffed and puffed up the mountain).
I noticed as we drove back to Seattle where my parents live, I felt sad and a little disgusted. We went from mountains in the distance to skyscrapers. We traded in wildflowers dotting the landscape to shopping malls. After so much beauty, my nervous system started reeling and I wanted to make civilization and cars “bad” or “wrong” while trees and wildflowers were “good” or “right.” Except, how does that serve me?
I know these days our society is all about polarization as well as black and white thinking. You’re either right or you’re wrong. You’re either sane or delusional. We keep speaking in absolutes but that’s not reality. Reality is nuanced. You can be a little bit right and a little bit wrong. In the case of civilization being “wrong,” civilization also spells amenities like schools, hospitals, and libraries. Those are good things. And in the case of Mount Rainier being “right,” living there also means being buried under snow from about mid-October to mid-May. That doesn’t sound so great. Nowhere is a utopia. Nowhere is perfect.
I mean honestly. Look at this! Photo by Gabriel Phipps on Unsplash
Instead of labeling one thing as good and another thing as bad, I think about a practice that’s touted in my spiritual philosophy: madhuvidyá. Madhuvidyá literally means “honey knowledge” and requires seeing everything, EVERYTHING, as an expression of an infinite loving consciousness, also known as Brahma. That means trash on the street, cigarette butts, and yes, even people who do terrible things, are an expression of Brahma. As you can imagine, this practice is HARD.
However, my spiritual teacher says, “If you properly follow madhuvidyá you can keep yourself aloof from the shackles of actions even though you perform actions. This madhuvidyá will pervade your exterior and interior with … [ecstasy] and will permanently alleviate all your afflictions. Then the ferocious jaws of [degeneration] cannot come and devour you. The glory of one and only one benign entity will shine forth to you from one and all objects.”
The practice of madhuvidyá also creates peace, in my experience. It creates acceptance that yes, even this thing I don’t like or perhaps even hate is an expression of an infinite loving consciousness. Practicing madhuvidyá means I’m able to see beyond the surface of people, places, and things to witness their true form. I’m able to recognize everything is Brahma, Cosmic Consciousness, Source, the Universe, whatever name you have for it. And just as the name madhuvidyá suggests, that makes life sweeter.
I dream of a world where we understand everything is a little bit good and everything is a little bit bad. A world where we recognize even things we find distasteful are also an expression of an infinite loving consciousness. A world where we do our best to practice madhuvidyá and see things as they really are.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.