In Between Rains and After Work Walkabout
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My Own Personal Cloud (and the Malas)
Last night another storm front passed us by with only a trace of rain, leaving us deeper in drought. The wind picked up, the temperature dropped, and the clouds scattered, leaving the sky scrubbed bright blue and the air fresh. Though this morning on my walk to work there was hardly a cloud in the sky, a rather menacing gray cloud hovered directly over the building where I work. Observing this odd cloud led me to ponder about how I often feel that I have my own personal cloud–everyone else has purpose in their lives and is worthy of love, but not me (this is a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea).The reality is that all of us get such feelings to a greater or lesser degree some of the time. It can be a helpful step in clearing away feelings of unworthiness to remember that it is part of the human condition. The tantric yogis say that there are three cloaks or malas (anava mala, mayiya mala, and karma mala) that result from the manifestation of diversity from the pure universal out of its own play. The sense of unworthiness we sometimes feel (anava mala) comes from forgetting that we are spirit, and anava mala– in whatever form it appears to manifest–is just because of the loneliness of not remembering our true self. When we experience or create conflict or unhappiness out of the illusion (maya) that separateness and distinction are the only state of all that is real then we are in thrall to mayiya mala. When we think we are completely in charge and responsible for everything we do and how it impacts the world, that is karma mala at work.
We practice to pierce through the clouding of our individual consciousness by the malas. By inviting ourselves to open to the luminous space of consciousness and to surrender to the very fullness of our being, we reduce the impact of the malas on how we conduct our lives. Our practice helps us to remember our worthiness so that we can be happier and freer and do our work and engage in our relationships with more love and light. It helps us remember the light in each being so we are naturally drawn to respond with more compassion and friendliness to everything on the planet. The grace of dissolving kriya mala is that when it is not obscuring our vision, we can engage fully on our path, but still accept that we are ultimately not in charge and do not know what the universe truly has in store.
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Yes, I Knew Him (and the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra)
When my students arrived at William Penn House last night for class, I said, “yes, I knew him; they are both my co-workers.” I didn’t need to say anything else. All of them read the Washington Post and know that I work for the Department of Labor in the area of pension benefits. I said that I was shaken by the news, and I would offer the best practice I could. At my invitation, we worked on grounding, being heavy in the best meaning of heavy so that we would feel the stability to rise and to stay graceful and open as we practiced some challenging standing poses and backbends, leading to a modified version of natarajasana (dancing in the cosmic fire).
One co-worker is dead (either suicide or murder in his jail cell) after having severely injured another. Yes, we all worked in the same office for three years when I first started at the Department in 1991 and episodically have worked on common projects for almost 22 years, most recently just three weeks ago. Had it been a fatal accident or a heart attack, a few dozen of us would have been at the funeral and spoken of what we liked about him. It wouldn’t have been the horrified questioning ourselves and each other of what possibly could have gone so terribly, shockingly wrong. The grieving and sense of loss are no less present and real, though, for the recoiling from his last acts and the salacious and rapacious local media coverage.
Quaker practice has me holding those affected in the light–he and his family and she and hers, and our co-workers. On hearing yesterday that he had died in jail, I was moved to chant the maha mrityunjaya mantra. I was taught that chanting this mantra every day for 30 days can help a spirit cross-over. What is spirit and to where it might be crossing was not really explained because how could it be? But I do think chanting with such an intention can be a useful tool to help focus one’s own emotional process and healing in connection with a death.
For some background on the mantra, you might want to start with this overview with useful links published by the Himalayan Institute (be advised that though citing to the YI because of the breadth of coverage, to get to the basic details, I needed to ignore the cheesy graphics and the use of the term “Lord” before Shiva in the linked article on what the author says are appropriate uses of the mantra).
My co-worker gave me this oakleaf hydrangea about 10-12 years ago; his brother had pulled an extra seedling that was an offshoot from a larger plant in his yard. It did not start thriving until two seasons ago when I moved it to a different corner of my front garden.
