|

February House Practice Donations

ByElizabeth

This month’s recipient will be the Environmental Defense Fund.  Why?  Because in his State of the Union Address to much applause by Democrats (Republicans don’t clap for a Democratic President even if he is giving them everything they want), President Obama announced that part of the support for “clean” energy would be for nuclear power plants, “clean” coal (an oxymoron if I ever heard one), and off-shore drilling.

You might wonder why not have the February cause be an organization that is doing work in Haiti?  I feel it is important to support organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee and Doctors Without Borders, who are doing yeoman-like work to ease suffering in Haiti and other places around the globe, and I have given some support.  Following disasters or major incidents, though, society as a whole often experiences “donor fatigue.”  I want to make sure that in the aftermath, the other changes I seek in the world do not go unsupported by me.  So I try to give extra, and I try to remember all the things about which I care.

Similar Posts

  • | | | |

    Another Self-Induced India Photo Flashback (Roadside Temples)

    ByElizabeth

    Another self-induced India photo flashback after a long work day reading and writing at the computer with breaks only for shoveling snow and for eating and cleaning up.

    We were traveling on the bus when I saw the Durga temple (the fifth photo–the one with the white glare and flat sky, but an incredible Durga).  I suggested to my seatmate that he take a picture with his better camera.  I recall it quite reasonably and correctly being pointed out to me the flat, white heat of the midday, humid sky and the glare off of the window would make it impossible optimally to show the intricacy and vividness of the temple.

    I snapped a picture anyway.  I was seeing things at angles coming and going and with whatever the light was at the moment.  I likely wasn’t ever going to be there again and certainly not any time soon.

    Sometimes the bus would pause in just the right place for a perfectly composed shot, but mostly it didn’t.  In this, the act of taking these photos was much like other aspects of life and practice.  Our path is not always certain.  Sometimes it is hard to see because there is too little light or too much.  Sometimes we have something obscuring our vision.  Sometimes we are going too fast and only notice just before it would be too late for that turning.

    But even with vision turned or obscured, we are always experiencing something.  How can we make the best of each moment of experience?  For me, it is meditating and bringing the spacious awareness of meditation to what I am witnessing.  Taking photographs helps me witness in a certain way, too.

    roadside temple 1a roadside temple 1b roadside temple 1c roadside temple 1d roadside temple 1e roadside temple 1f roadside temple 1g roadside temple 1h roadside temple 1i roadside temple 1j roadside temple 1k roadside temple 1l

  • | | |

    A Graywater Inspiration from Friends (and opening to grace/muscular energy)

    ByElizabeth

    When we are on our mats, being open to grace — the first Anusara alignment principle — includes being open to the teachings so that we can receive and act on them in a healing and loving way.  Adding to that muscular energy by lovingly embracing skin to muscle to bone in a conscious embrace, drawing into our center to recognize our inner spirit, and drawing from periphery to the focal point brings us into optimal balance.  This pulsation serves as a way off the mat to open, inspire, and engage us in progressively more intentional and uplifting ways of living.

    Being open to inspiration from friends and about town, open to learning new ways to be kind to the earth and to ourselves, is a way of bring the principle of “opening to grace” off the mat.  Actually keeping the intention and acting on it has the attentive embrace of muscular energy, which draws us onto our inner light in a loving embrace so that we can better serve.

    I was thinking about Anusara principles off the mat, yesterday when I went visit a friend in NW one of whose roommates fosters cats.  There is a community garden in the back and the house is warm and friendly.  In the bathtub were two buckets filled with water leftover from showers.  Instead of using fresh, potable water to flush the toilet, when it is time to flush (honoring the drought axiom about yellow mellowing, etc), the house residents fill the tank with the gray water from the shower.

    Find it too complicated an idea to shower with a bucket in the bathtub with you?  You can still save water by filling your watering can or bucket when you run the water to warm up enough to get into the shower.  That will save a few gallons.  Not up to using the water to flush the toilet?  Use it to water houseplants or for cleaning floors, etc.  Or take it outside to water potted plants.

    First step is opening and witnessing the possibilities and understanding where you are ready to expand.  The second step is to try to more consistently live your inspiration.  I know when I see people living with such intention I take better care to move in that direction, even if I am not ready to go as far.

  • | |

    “A Balanced Diet, in Moderation, Is the Best” (Yoga of Eating Part IV)

    ByElizabeth

    Geeta Iyengar, in Yoga, A Gem for Women, sums up the proper diet according to Ayurveda as follows:

    “A balanced diet, in moderation, is the best.  Ayurveda says that the stomach should be filled with two parts of solid food and one part of water, and that one part of the stomach should be kept free for the movement of air.  Food which is not congenial to the system should be avoided.  Too oily, dry, spicy, and sour foodstuff are not good for the system.  A diet which is balanced, light, varied, and well cooked is ideal for health.”

    In other words, to be healthy, we should eat fresh, varied, well-prepared, tasty food.  We should eat with sufficient awareness to know enough the effects of what we eat on our energy level, sleep, digestion, and ability to move and think that we know what is good for our system in small, large, or any quantities (and eat mindfully in accordance with that knowledge).  We should not eat to the point of fullness and beyond (this is a common suggestion in the West for losing weight, i.e., stop eating when you are full or right before — think getting away from the unrealistic American portion size).  Any other dietary practices should serve to find this place of moderation and enjoyment, the two real keys to health and happiness with and in eating.  Diets that take us away from balance will be hard to follow, unhealthy, and cause all sorts of other shifts in our mind-body.  What is best for you depends on your own knowledge of yourself and your environment.

  • | | |

    Sometimes

    ByElizabeth

    After I have been working and studying intensely, I sometimes find myself called to lie underneath the cats and read fiction.  Just because it isn’t hard work, doesn’t mean I won’t find treasures that further my explorations.  This bit, for example:  “Then he felt his heart floating again, sunlit and serene, impossibly heavy, impossibly light; he felt the earth itself balanced on his outstretched finger.”  Patricia A. McKillip, Alphabet of Thorn.

     

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.