An Elm & Houston Revelation

Posted on July 4, 2016 by angelacarolebrown

Elm & Houston Epiphany copy

Last week, for me, saw four intensive days in seminar with the iconic Tony Robbins and his “Unleash the Power Within” doctrine. If you’re not familiar, look him up on YouTube. There are hundreds of lectures, TED Talks, etc, on the man. If you ARE familiar, I’ve found, you’re either behind him with a sense of devotion that just about any other motivational speaker out there would be hard pressed to rival, or you’ve concluded that he’s a modern day Jim Jones. I find almost no one who has a tepid reaction to him.

Yes, I did the firewalk. No, I was not injured. Yes, it gave me a high like nothing else, for what it was designed to symbolize; the power to accomplish anything, even the seemingly impossible, a subject-matter I am painfully intimate with. I had a personal stake in doing this. And it delivered.

And finally, yes, we’re talking about the same UPWDallas2016 that blitzkrieged the news on the firewalk night. “Hundreds burned in failed Tony Robbins Firewalk!” As someone who was there, I can vouch for the real thing being nowhere near as dramatic or perilous as the coverage made it out to be, because, of course, “if it bleeds it leads.”

Dallas is a city I’ve barely been to, in all of my many trips to Texas. It’s usually been a case of flying in or out of DFW and picking up connections to other destinations. So in preparing to come to this city for the Robbins conference, on my menu of intentions was to visit Dealey Plaza, the site of the assassination of JFK. I really have a thing for visiting these kinds of historical landmarks, and this one especially has been on my list to visit, because our nation changed radically after (perhaps even as a result of) the assassination that day in 1963.

We only had the last day in town, after the seminar was over, to check it out thoroughly, though we did actually run across it by accident on the first night of the seminar. The friend I was traveling with, and I, had decided to walk a few blocks away from the Convention Center to get our Uber, since eight thousand other people were all trying to get back to their hotels too. And at a certain point, a few blocks into our midnight walk (the night of the firewalk, so we were already on a kind of high), my friend suddenly stopped in his tracks, looked around, as if he was lost, and then said “I think this is it.” “What?” “Yeah,” he continued, ignoring me. He then proceeded to stroll across a grassy knoll (I’m still not catching on), and pointed to an X in the street. “This is where Kennedy was shot.”

It was a quiet night. Clear sky. Bright moon. I was already open-veined and euphoric, because I’d walked on hot coals tonight, baby! And I had not burned my feet, because I had applied the fierce focus and intention taught us earlier that evening. And it was not a parlor trick; the coals were freaking hot. And so, when everything finally came into dawning for me, and I saw the corner street signs of Houston and Elm, and the picket fence where the fourth bullet had allegedly come from, and the building formerly known as the Texas Book Depository, I stood there, having just experienced something rather larger-than-life, and cried a little, just to myself, at this other larger-than-life historical ground zero. It was an eerie and haunting thing to stumble upon by accident at midnight. We spent a bit of time there, as one does, then called for our Uber. And then proceeded to end every night of the conference with the same agenda.

So, by the time we got to our last day in town, and had the seminar firmly behind us, and had a cousin of mine who lives in town escorting us for the day, to go experience this thing in the daylight, do the museum, and be official tourists, we had already experienced it the way everyone should, I’ve now concluded. The midnight visit had been a sacred, internal moment that had allowed me to feel that bit of history in an intimate and private way, and to have an emotional reaction to it. In the light of day, it was an entirely different experience. All the opportunists were out in droves, selling their bogus copies of “the actual newspaper headline from The Dallas Morning News!” and their angle on what really happened that day. Every wild theory was flying out of the mouths of the carnival barkers, creating a cacophony of chatter that was almost musical.

And then a most interesting thing happened. One such barker that I was standing near, and trying to listen to, as he explained to a huddle of tourists about the fatal shot, couldn’t’ve been more than 50 years old, and yet was saying things like, “and that’s when we all hit the deck, and then ran across here behind the picket fence…” He then pointed to a blurred figure, in a crowd of other blurred figures, in an old, dog-eared photograph he was holding, with the doomed presidential motorcade in the foreground, and said, “that’s me.” Even though blurred, the figure he was pointing to was clearly an adult, someone who was not an infant, which, at a stretch, is the only way this guy could’ve potentially been present at this 53-year-old moment in history. So yeah, we were dealing with crazy, I concluded, and he officially lost my interest in listening any longer.

From a distance, however, I continued to stare at him do his thing. I sort of couldn’t take my eyes away, because I was suddenly reminded of the most profound thing that I had learned from Tony Robbins during his game-changing seminar intensive. That all of our problems, struggles, dysfunctions, etc., exist and linger because they serve a need. And as long as they continue to provide a benefit, they will not be repaired. There is something that they fulfill. I remembered that one stopping me dead in my tracks on, I want to say, Day 2 of this thing. And so, as I stared at this man, who was more likely mentally ill than a simple con man, I was suddenly softened from the earlier eye-rolling, head-shaking, dismissive stance I’d taken against him, and wondered what need his story was fulfilling for him. A sense of significance in a world that had rendered him insignificant? Combating a crippling loneliness by surrounding himself with people who could potentially find awe in his story, and him? Whatever the benefit was, it certainly wasn’t a financial one, since everyone around him had him nailed, and no one was buying his story, or his wares. Yet they were continuing to hang on his every word, because crazy is entertaining. And it was at that moment that I realized I would probably never look at any other situation again, neither another’s nor my own, without asking that question: What need does this serve?

That changes the whole playing field, doesn’t it?

There is a plethora, a right worthy grocery list, to be honest, of struggles and hiccups that my own personal growth seems to be bombarded with these days. Much of which I’ve chalked up to a case of what I do, or don’t, deserve. Or I chalk up a certain behavior, which is nonetheless frustrating for me, to being a hardwiring.

For example, one sentence I’ve claimed for years as part of my story: I’ve spent my life not being picked. Or at least believing, always, in that outcome (which pretty much means it’s guaranteed). Case in point: My boyfriend in 8th grade literally moved on from me to someone else without a word my way. How I found out was when his “new thing” and I were racing against each other in a track meet. The girl had actually been my friend, and the boyfriend and I had not had a single conflict, so while I get kids just moving on from each other thoughtlessly, I never understood the venal nature of the moment. He stood at the starting line where she and I were poised to run the 50-yard dash, and he muttered, but for everyone to hear, “Beat her, Albertine! Beat her good!” Albertine didn’t win that race that day. I did. But it gave me no pleasure in the victory, because I was also the one beaten. I didn’t understand my breed, and I didn’t get what I had done so heinous to have deserved such malevolence. Today I can see clearly how that one incident has been so indelibly stamped on me that I have always tended to enter into an agreement with isolation and outsidership.

I’ve just thought of it as a hardwiring, a simple case of, “This is who I am. I don’t fit into circles and clubs.” But here’s the danger in that; chalking anything up to a hardwiring presupposes that there’s nothing that can be done about it. It takes the power (if it’s a plight we’re actually interested in fixing) right out of our hands.

And if I have taken nothing else away from this seminar, I have taken with me a new understanding that any emotional baggage we have only sticks around, and is given momentum, because there is a need it serves. That one just blew my head right open. Done. Brains on the dashboard. Blood and guts everywhere. Absolutely nothing I’ve ever learned in my years’ long pursuit of self-examination has made more sense than that.

And so, rather than tossing off my penchants for outsidership, for example, as a hardwiring I can do nothing about, I need to figure out what the role of outsider in my life has been serving all this time.

One thing I know for sure is that it’s been a bit of a badge of honor. I do love my solitude, and marching to my own drummer, and I have a natural penchant toward inward-turning and contemplation. So, what it’s feeding is pretty obvious. But it’s also a dubious badge, as there is always an overtone of loneliness and missed opportunity that is a part of the outsider landscape. So, maybe it also feeds a kind of “poor me” comfort? I’m not sure yet, but there is so much to play with here. So much to discover, to answer for myself, so many lids to pry open, so that maybe I actually stand a chance of delivering myself from some of these frustrations, and finally give myself the permission to pursue just exactly what I want in this life.

As for Crazy Grassy Knoll Man, he will likely remain who he is, though we never know who or what comes along to change our state, and our stake. But my attitude toward him (once I got past the stun of him cursing me out for not buying any of his wares) became more compassionate and empathetic to the battles that must be his, the battles we all experience to varying degrees of crazy. And to know that there is an answer, somewhere, somehow, for every one of us. I just want to be that little sprite whispering into Crazy Grassy Knoll Man’s ear, “I see you. You are seen.”

This was merely one of fifty hours worth of ideas that were drilled into our heads by Tony Robbins during his four days of exhaustive saturation. I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface on what this seminar did for me. And honestly, I’m not sure I’m meant to share any more of the experience than this one example, because it was such a deeply intimate odyssey for me, one of identifying belief systems, and transforming them. It was so intimate, in fact, that when my friend and I couldn’t get a seat together on Day One, we ended up not doing any part of the seminar together, as it was nice not having to be self-conscious around each other. And that was easy enough to accomplish, in a sea of eight thousand people. We just met up on dinner breaks and when it was over each day. We didn’t even witness each others’ firewalk. Instead, upon completion of the walk, I cheered for my triumph with the people around me, who were all doing the same, a communal pep rally. New bonds got formed. In fact, my firewalk partner and I decided to remain friends. The experience was intimate and expansive at the same time.

I’ve been changed by this four-day event, that’s for sure. To what degree will be discovered in the days to come, as I venture forth to apply these tools and get out of my own way. But I don’t think I truly got hit with that feeling of difference until my revelatory moment on the corner of Elm Street and Houston, the same corner that was John F. Kennedy’s last. A setting ripe with ghosts and guile. And maybe even a little grace.

Dedicated to my dear friend Ross Wright,
who gave me the gift of this experience,
went through it with me,
and who roots for me always.

Angela Carole Brown is a published author, a recipient of the Heritage Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums as a singer/songwriter, and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on INSTAGRAM & YOUTUBE.

Those Who Read Books

Posted on July 1, 2016 by angelacarolebrown

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Those who read books travel the world and time itself.

Are explorers, adventurers, discoverers.

Take on beggars and kings with no thought in the ranking.

Have their minds forced open and their spirits ever expanding

in insatiable hunger for more.

Those who read books fill themselves with wonder.

Know that a book is a friend,

a teacher, a priest,

an agitator.

Are not afraid to be made uncomfortable.

Grow the wings that continue, muscle by muscle,

to sprout upon reaching “The End” time and time anew.

Fly. Fall. Fly again.

Those who read books are changed.

And glad of it.

Off the Mat and Into the World: A Yoga Forum

Posted on May 30, 2016 by angelacarolebrown

three_new_yoga_poses

“Abandon your masterpiece, and sink into the real masterpiece.”
― Leonard Cohen

I have practiced yoga for nearly 25 years now. And, in fact, at this very moment have my head deeply buried in books on the 8 Limbs and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. One year ago today I had a most invigorating round table discussion with some of my respected peeps in the yoga world, and some not in the yoga world but are wise individuals nonetheless. The reason I know I had this discussion a year ago is because it was on Facebook, and the Facebook minions just love to remind us of anniversaries.

Facebook is actually never lovelier than when rich, vigorous conversations arise on a subject of great substance and depth. Even the shut-in can attend the party. That’s the beauty of it. And in a time when the untold uglinesses of Facebook are routinely bandied about and analyzed, and we’ve all certainly experienced it, celebrating the beauty of it is refreshing. Such conversations often arise for me, as I have a mineral-rich amalgam of FB friends, both real-time and virtual, and it’s those very kinds of conversations that keep Facebook interesting.

In this case, I was really happy to revisit that discussion, and found it just informational and insightful enough to bear sharing here.

* * *

My original Facebook post: May 30, 2015

I recently found a new yoga center in my neighborhood, and it is the real deal! Tonight was the 2nd class I’ve now gone to, and tonight’s was Kundalini, which I used to practice years ago at The Awareness Center in Pasadena, and which is the form closest to my heart. It was a great class; rewarding and challenging. Challenging in the sense of things being woken up, disturbed, stirred up, released, accepted, held onto, resisted, worked with, the whole smorgasbord of spiritual experiences, and the ultimate agenda of inner peace. Rewarding in the sense of those various shifts happening as we move our bodies, oxygenate our cells, and focus our energy toward benevolence and balance. I bring this up because for several years now I have been on the hunt, as it were, for “the real deal.” The real thing is actually everywhere; it can be found easily. But as I’ve tried to take on a regular practice, I’ve had to consider my finances, and yoga centers can be expensive. So for me, I’ve tried to find the real deal at gyms, where for one monthly fee one can do all the yoga one wants. That hunt has been largely futile. Invariably when I’ve walked into a new gym in the neighborhood to inquire about membership, and they ask me what I’m interested in, and I say, “yoga, but is it the real thing?” they, without fail, assure me that it is. They are almost always wrong. And I wonder if their answers to me are because they are instructed to say whatever the customer wants to hear, or because they really don’t know what yoga is. I suspect it’s exactly both. I am being very judgmental here (the first step to recovery is admitting it 🙂 ). But I have been genuinely frustrated, so it is what it is. What I have found is a great sweeping commercialization of this ancient spiritual practice. And that’s what yoga is – a spiritual practice. But now this other animal exists; yoga as another mode of aerobic exercise. Another way to get fit, get hard-bodied, be impressively flexible, even competitive. It’s all about the externals. But the real thing is a profound meditational system that consists of what are called eight limbs (synchronistic to Buddhism’s eightfold path), and only one of those limbs regards asana, which are the poses that seem to be the entire package in the commercialized version. (“Oh, and the faster we move through these poses the better, so we can get our heart rate up and shed those pounds!”). Yes, I’m being sarcastic right now, although I have actually heard that uttered. In any case, the real thing is a cultivation toward inner peace, spiritual harmony and balance, alignment with divine power, and integration of the physical and the mental. The word itself means “to unite” in Sanskrit. And it has been known to have profound impact on everything from depression to chronic illness to just simply improving our sense of well-being, and our willingness to self-investigate. It’s been a lifesaving practice for me. And the only reason the phenomenon is even in my thoughts tonight is because I had a most gratifying class, and it seems so odd to me that that experience has been so elusive over the past few years, and I would love it if my genuine yogi friends would chime in on this thought, and share your perspectives. In fact, I welcome anyone, yogi or no, who has a thought on this. Is there room for all of it (I suspect the answer is yes)? Or is it important to clear up general misconceptions about this beautiful, transformational practice for the lay public? Or do I just have the whole damned thing wrong? I suspect the answer to that is yes too. Fire away.

Ken Rosser
Years ago I read a yoga instructor saying that he felt that awareness of the spiritual benefits was not necessary in order to receive them, that in doing the exercises you opened that door anyway … I dunno, there was something about that I found kind of charming in the way that works so contrary to how “the west” operates in any of its disciplines …

Me
Hmmmmm. I think I may need to go to my mountain and think about that one for awhile.

Ken Rosser
Just passing along something your post loosened up in my brain that started rattling around – and I remember the quote really sticking with me because when I was raised Catholic I would NEVER hear a priest say that the act of taking communion or even praying would have spiritual benefit whether or not you believed – that whole tradition hinges on your state of belief. To say that yoga works whether or not you believe sort of makes it like a spiritual medicine in my mind, in the way that I don’t have to believe in antibiotics in order for them to kill bacteria.

I dunno…I’m just spouting here.

Me
Kenneth, your “just spoutings” are always some of the best Just Spoutings out there.

Lily Knight
Distortions are inevitable, since everything is continually changing, but you have the experience of your soul guiding you to where the light grows in you, and the practice of seeing the god in everything.

Candyce Milo
It IS hard to find that sweet spot. I know. I’ve watched Chokae’ Kalekoa post his photos and think that he may be the last of the quiet, Om breath centered, ritualistic teachers. I think a lot has to do with yoga studios needing to keep their lights on and bills paid and their courses are thereby driven by the kind of people who power through their experiences and want a heart-rate boost, or they know nothing of the practice and are looking for an “easy-workout” with some stretching. 😳 I often see disappointed faces whenever the class isn’t physically hard enough or the poses are breath-balanced.

Me
Candi, your insights about teachers needing to bend to popular demand in order to keep the lights on are very insightful. Makes me sad that people look to yoga for something that it isn’t. But then again, I’m getting feedback here about the importance of bringing my own intention to the practice, no matter what the nature of the class is (AND leaving others alone to do the same thing….when did I get to be such a bully!?), and I’m really trying to sit with that one right now. Mountain calling!

Chokae’ Kalekoa
Actually, none of them are “The Real Thing” … and yet … they all are. Don’t mean to get all Zen on a sistah … Or, do I? …. 🙂 I do get your meaning though, and feel your frustration. Having practiced deep meditation since I was 11, I feel grateful and lucky to have had my first approach to Hatha Yoga be from a meditative perspective. My first young taste of “Hatha” Yoga Practice was in San Francisco with B.K.S. Iyengar’s Book Light On Yoga. Mind-blowing. I also found Patanjali’s 8 Fold Path, in which, as aforementioned, Hatha Yoga is simply one of the eight steps. Overwhelming. Over many years came a deeper interest and enthusiastic introduction to many forms, expressions, and systems of Hatha Yoga. From Astanga, Kundalini, and Sivananda, to Jivamukti, Viniyoga, Bikram and many more. All practices, at their foundation/core, are all incredible practices. As a Hatha Yogi (using the term in this case in reference to anyone who regularly practices any form of Hatha Yoga), one has the opportunity to experience many variations of practice methods within each “Style” of Hatha Yoga, with emphasis placed on various approaches at various times with various intensities – Hard, Soft, Meditative, Flow, Athletic, Therapeutic, Esoteric, Aesthetic, etc. Although each system or style of Hatha Yoga may focus more on a particular method than others, they all (generally speaking) include, in one way or another, all of the above and more … despite the ridiculously childish this-yoga-is-better-than-that-yoga rivalries, vile commercialization and mountainous agglomerations of pure bullshit (a sanskrit term meaning bullshit) permeating the Hatha Yoga world on a global scale. Through practicing and teaching Hatha Yoga for over 25 years now; to all kinda folks on a few different continents, I have seen and experienced the fact that, regardless of whether one considers oneself to be Believer, Non-Believer, Spiritual, Non-Spiritual, Theist, Athiest or any other Club Member … “regular practice” of any Hatha Yoga system, has the potential to bring about deeper understanding of oneself, harmony inside and out … and the healthy union of body, mind and soul, whether one is fully conscious of the benefits or not. “Wax on, Wax off.”

Me
“Bullshit (a Sanskrit word meaning bullshit)…” Chokae’, I love you for so many reasons, as you are a genuine shaman to be reckoned with, but never so much as when you make me laugh.

Candyce Milo
I stand corrected, cuz I guess my post is really about “look what I notice when my eyes should be on MY mat…” doop!

Me
GURL, don’t even get me started.

Victoria Kassa
OMG, this is a lot to chew on and mull over. I have only ever practiced sporadically. Angie, your album has been my go-to, which fits my budget and gets me centered. So the real deal I think is also what you bring to the practice. I see lots of studios popping up here in Highland park. My schedule and budget are limiting me to actually explore them. However I’m just curious about the “market.” Are people really meditating or just working out? I’m gonna stick with my home work out for now. Thanks Angie!!!

Me
Thank YOU, Vicki. I’m so glad you’re using the CD! I wonder if polls have ever been conducted on your very question. I would be curious to know (the control freak in me just cannot seem to be tempered.)

Chokae’ Kalekoa
Another thought that may help… Practicing yoga and one’s yoga practice are 2 very different things. Just like rehearsal is different from performance. When working hard, correcting, adjusting, pushing myself to the limit of the moment, I’m “Practicing Yoga” – When I’m indoors, or out in nature doing asanas at sunrise, sunset, or under the moon, in preparation for, or as meditation, that’s my “Yoga Practice.” The harder my practice, the easier my practice 🙂 .

Melanie Taylor
Wow, I’ve been overwhelmed reading all the profound and thoughtful comments. I finally had a moment to chime in, as I’m always up for geeking out about yoga. My thoughts: When I get all in my head about my 30 year practice (3 of which I’ve been teaching), I’m reminded of the wisdom of BKS Iyengar, who said, “Body is the bow, asana is the arrow, soul is the target.” And it goes without saying that breath is the Way. I’m also a huge fan of “beginners mind,” going back to basics of breath moving through the body. And also, working from the outside in, because the body is the most accessible tool to the heart, which at the core of everything wants to express itself. I’ve practiced all the disciplines but vinyasa remains my favorite because it mirrors nature, the movement guided by breath like wind through the trees, or waves crashing on the shore. When I was getting certified, we had lots of spirited debate about the merits of yoga as fitness versus yoga as a spiritual practice. My feeling is anything that gets you to the mat is going to benefit you in ways you never imagined. And when you take your yoga off the mat is when it gets real. It is insidious; it affects you, increases your awareness and maybe that will lead you to be more curious about the practice itself and how you make it your own.

Lotus Lindley
What a wonderful thread. Thanks for including me Angela. Personally, I feel out of the norm of the yoga loop anymore. But, I began with Bikram yoga 15 years ago. A dancer/dance fitness instructor at that time, Bikram was the perfect transition. I loved the heat, the sweat, the athleticism that created the “work out” which fed me. It was at that studio I saw a picture of Yogi Desai, who drew me instantly. Within months, I was at a week long retreat with him, received Skaktipat & my life has never been the same. I still chuckle at how my first couple of classes in his “Amrit Yoga” system left me underwhelmed & frustrated. I wasn’t sweating, I wasn’t getting a work out, but I hadn’t yet sensitized energetically to the inward “pull” so to speak, yet either. My practice since, for the most part, has been a very solitary one. For me, Bikram was perfect & just what I needed in order to move me toward the next perfect phase. It continues to work that way! I believe Soul has a way of guiding us to what each needs along our journey. I guess the point of my story is that there are many right times, right places, right teachers, for just the right lessons ~ all along the way.

Me
Blessed peeps, this is all such spiritual gold. I want to meditate on each comment thoughtfully. I am humbled and grateful to be given such loving feedback in my moment of trying to work it out. The tangles that live in us … for me, this one’s lived for a long time, just tucked away, and only, ironically, JUST as I’ve been rewarded recently by a couple of strong classes, did this particular tangle rear up again for my perusal. It just blows my mind that finding a fulfilling class has felt like stumbling upon the Holy Grail, and it is a phenomenon I felt was worthy of a posted thought.

Melanie Taylor
Angela…One more thought to your original post as to teachers that may not resonate with you and where you’re at that day: that’s when my Iyengar mantra kicks in and I use that frustration as an opportunity to fire up my practice (deeper pranayama, extra vinyasas) and clear out negative shit that doesn’t serve my soul. Put simply, if I’m not feeling my teacher, I just go hard until I burn it out. 🙂

Me
I suspected that the idea of it being about what you bring to your own practice in any class, with any teacher, would largely be the feedback I’d receive. And so far, you all seem to be on the same wise page, which means that there is no Holy Grail; yoga is everywhere, in every inhale and exhale, every experience, especially the ones that challenge our beliefs, or just plain irritate us. I truly thank you all for this feedback.

* * *

And that pretty much wrapped up the FB thread, which went on for a few thought-provoking days, and did me a world of good. The conversation, however, continues and continues.

Leonard Cohen, iconic singer/songwriter and Zen monk, said the quote that began this forum (abandon your masterpiece, and sink into the real masterpiece) about his experience of living for some time at a monastery. As you’ve just read, I had some pretty righteously indignant feelings on the subject. And I was artfully, lovingly, but most definitely, nudged right off my soapbox. And therein, I think, lies the essential meaning of Mr. Cohen’s beautiful words.

My contributors and comrade-in-arms:

Ken Rosser is the man I call my musical soulmate, with whom I’ve been involved in several music projects, and who may just be the most innovative and soulful multi-stringed-instrumentalist I’ve ever come across. Check out our duo CD sometime, called MUSIC FOR THE WEEPING WOMAN.

Lily Knight was my Kundalini teacher (and favorite yoga teacher I’ve ever had) from way back when I studied yoga at the Awareness Center in Pasadena, and who is the one responsible for opening up this world for me of self-investigation and soul-tending.

Candyce Milo is a razor-sharp, irreverent comedian, actor, and writer, whose ability to examine the human condition in her one-woman shows raises her above the masses.

Chokae’ Kalekoa is, as Candi says above, just about one of the last of the quiet, Om breath centered, ritualistic teachers. He is a yogi-shaman bad-ass, and founder of the Shut Your Monkey Meditation Workshop, which he travels all around the globe.

Victoria Kassa is a lifelong educator, which may be the noblest calling on the planet, and someone I’ve grown up with, literally since infancy, so….yeah…family.

Melanie Taylor is a yogi, singer/songwriter, seeker, carrier of light and eternal optimist. She is also my birthday twin, and my true sister from another mister.

Lotus Lindley is a Reiki healer, and a Path of Sacred Feminine & Essential Oils Facilitator. After having only met her through Facebook at that point, she actually came to my rescue with an earth-shattering Reiki treatment when I was going through something once. Blessings to her forever for that.

A deeply heart-filled gratitude to these treasured friends for contributing not only to my thread, but to my learning, my healing, and my ongoing cultivation of peace and compassion.

May this forum offer you an insight or two that you might not have had before. Om shanti.

Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, is a recipient of the Heritage/Soulword Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.

A Rose Knows

Posted on May 9, 2016 by angelacarolebrown

Portrait of cute gril with big afro

A rose blooms and releases fragrance.
It doesn’t question its deservedness.
A rose just knows.

I’ve been wanting to tell of this encounter ever since it happened a few months ago, but have waited without really knowing why. Until yesterday morning, when I realized I’d been waiting for the title of my story. Victoria Thomas of the Agape Center, who was the visiting speaker at the spiritual center where I chose to spend Mother’s Day morning, at one point during her talk said the above quote. As soon as I heard this, I knew my piece was ready.

This spiritual center that I have newly started calling home, and sometimes sing at, hosted a craft faire this past Christmas, and anyone who had a craft was offered the opportunity to have a booth. I’d hesitated a commitment, and lost the opportunity, as booth space was spare and quickly snatched up. I didn’t represent a single thing that day, even though I have CDs, books, I’ve been handcrafting dreamcatchers for the past year, I make dolls. I sort of felt frustrated with myself that I’d had the instinct to hesitate, but ultimately it was okay as I had great fun attending in order to support all the other artists, crafters, and friends. And to top that off, on the day of the faire, right outside the front door of the center, the neighborhood’s Christmas parade was going on, so it was just one of those magical, wonderful days to be alive and to be part of a community.

“Would you like to buy a copy of my book?” she asked. She was eight years old.

The bazaar was teeming with booths and tables of handmade jewelry, and crafted dreamcatchers (damn it, I make dreamcatchers!), and exotic crystals, and one-on-one healing sessions of every kind, from Reiki treatments to spirit animal readings. I’ve always been a sucker for a craft faire, especially if the general bent is New Age-y. I am crystal and sage mama. Always have been, and this was like a miniature version of the Whole Life Expo.

I’d already pocketed a few choice purchases. Knickknacks that would add to the energy and color and boho spirit of the 700-square-foot home I call my Zen cottage. I’d just made the silent promise to myself, “No more. You’ve shopped plenty now.” But who says “no thank you” to a little girl? And a book? She didn’t have a booth, I saw no inventory; she’d just planted herself in a corner. I needed to see where this would lead.

“You have a book?” I asked her.

“Yes, I’m a writer!” she offered proudly.

“Well, okay then. How can I possibly say no to that? How much for one of your books?”

“That’ll be one dollar.”

As I handed her a dollar bill, she proceeded to pull from her knapsack a single piece of notebook paper, folded in half. I could barely contain a giggle. The title on the “cover” was The Little Fairy, and was adorned with the drawing of a stick figure sprite, some clouds and a sun. I smiled so wide at my purchase, making sure to show her my delight, and couldn’t decide if it was more precious or ballsy.

I opened the folded piece of paper to reveal the story inside:

There once was a little fairy and she loved to fly.
But her wing got stuck on a rose bush and broke.
“Oh no” she cried.
She was sad so she went home and tried to fix it but she couldn’t.
But then she knew someone who could fix her problem.
“Can you fix my wing?”
“Sure.”
The End.

Whaddaya know, a lesson in conflict resolution. Made as simple as it truly is, if we adults could only manage to find our way around the viscous clouds that apparently go with adulthood.

“What a wonderful story,” I said to her. “I hope lots of people buy your book today.”

“Thank you!” she blushed.

I couldn’t rid my brain of this little girl for the rest of the day. Was it her creativity that I found so irresistible? Or her unbelievable tenacity to assimilate with the adult world around her of product and consumerism? For certain it was her purity of spirit, and the compulsion to put her unfiltered, uncomplicated, I-don’t-need-no-stinking-booth carpe diem spirit, and her entitled (I write, therefore I am a writer!) energy into the ether.

“What’s your name?” I asked her, before I walked away.

“Angie,” she answered.

“No kidding. My name is Angie too. Except that everyone calls me Angela now that I’m an adult. But look here, we have the same name.”

All Angie could do was giggle.

“May I share something else with you? Not only do we have the same name, but I’m a writer too.”

“Where’s your book?” she challenged, without even a moment’s pause.

“Well…I….I…..” I didn’t have a ready answer.

She just smiled, and let my “well…” hang in the awkward air, waiting for a conclusion that never came. I smiled back, wished her the world, and kept on roaming, but with my tail somewhat between my legs.

I had absolutely fallen in love with this little girl’s mighty chutzpah, and decided that her book would have an honored place hanging on my refrigerator door behind a magnet, reminding me always. Reminding me always.

I see grace in everything. I just don’t see the wisdom in not. Because it is a paradigm that functions to create an environment where I always feel taken care of. And on that day, with that encounter, grace was in full action as I was taken care of by a young girl who taught me, in no uncertain terms, that I needn’t ever question my deservedness. A rose certainly doesn’t.

Neither did Little Angie.

References:
Victoria Thomas of Agape Center
Center for Spiritual Living Granada Hills

Ommmmmm

Posted on April 9, 2016 by angelacarolebrown

She was not allowed to hurt anymore today.

THE REAL : Radical Self-Care or Tyrannical Task-Mastering?

Posted on August 15, 2015 by angelacarolebrown

We all want the same things. Happiness. Love. Health. Me, I’m a fine-tuner, a tweaker. I once read a birthday book that described January 1 people as chronic self-improvers. It’s the word chronic that has me suspecting that the inference might not have been positive. Whichever position the book was taking on it, it did nail me. That is my nature in a nutshell. When the lug nuts are loose, on my life, my soul, my character, I tighten them. The thing is, the little suckers do get loose again; that’s just the normal wear and tear of living. I can either keep my tools at the ready in order to re-tighten and keep going, or I can beat myself up for not doing the job right in the first place. Even though the definition of doing the job right – when regards a lug nut – does not guarantee that it’ll never have to be tightened again. In fact, the only thing that is guaranteed is that it will. And yet that is where I get seriously tripped up.

Let’s take today. My first completely non-agenda day in more than a week. Very stressful week prior, and I’ve been looking forward to this day, all week long, of powering-down and blissfully thinking of nothing. I’ll just give a few bullet points on how this “day off” unfolded.

I wake up this morning – no alarm clock – and instantly, instinctively, ritualistically, catch my naked form in the mirrored closet door that spans the wall’s entire length and width. Judgment. Instant. Merciless. Am I bigger than yesterday? Smaller? I do this assessment every single morning, because I’m perpetually trying to lose weight. It’s so routine, in fact, that I’m not even shattered by it anymore. What I am, though, is unhappy. I will at least give myself this much credit; I no longer talk disgustedly about my weight gain. These days, when I do speak of my desire or my efforts to lose weight, it is with a conscious gentleness. I just can’t be the one who starts a frenzy of self-loathing among my women friends of a similar age, most of whom are trying to lose their middle-aged weight too. I’ve seen it happen, and have even been the instigator of that soul-crushing domino effect of “my disgusting arms, my disgusting belly,” but no longer am I the one who starts or participates in that avalanche. Make no mistake, though; I am not happy. I wish I could let go of an idea of how I used to look, and embrace where I am today. That has been a great challenge. And where I find myself divided to points of utter hair-pulling confusion is: Do I believe in embracing self-acceptance of my present, or do I believe in going after goals? Or is there a way for both concepts to work together for the benefit of body AND soul? I actually do practice a radical self-care lifestyle. I eat whole, clean food, I hydrate like crazy, I walk and hike and do yoga, I meditate, I make certain to get some nature time in, I have therapeutic and creative outlets. I am so much healthier, and feel so much better, in this lifestyle, yet still I judge myself everyday for not looking like I used to. Such a miniscule part of the whole schematic, yet I make it larger than everything else. That particular lug nut gets loose an awful lot. I catch myself in the mirror and furiously try to dissect why my body changed the way it did. Menopause! Laziness! Depending on the day of the week or my mood, there’s a different culprit to blame. And so, the ritual of judgment. Every day. And today, my DAY OFF, is no different.

Next I check email. Brush my teeth. May not shower today since I have no obligation to leave my house. Still, a twinge of guilt hits me at this decision. I should take a shower. I don’t feel like it. I’m utterly exhausted from a busy and emotional week (a dear friend was in the hospital), and I won’t be encountering anyone today, so why should I care so much about a shower? Yet the twinge lasts. Apparently not enough to make me turn the nozzle and hop in, but just enough to make me annoyed with myself, and harshly critical at what I have decided is laziness and apathy.

I start breakfast with my second annoyance of the day already in gear and it’s barely 10 a.m. Leftover ginger soup, made with turkey bone broth, and fresh spinach tossed in. Yummy. I should walk today. That’s my mode of exercise. Vigorous walks through my lovely neighborhood, or hiking the nearby canyon. But I can’t think about that right now. Really very tired. My soup is so delicious, and I love the smells it puts in my home. I don’t smell! Why can’t I shake the shower thing? I’m home alone. Why does it matter? Mmmmm, savory ginger soup. I should really walk. Goddamn it! See?

I’m already exhausted from the ludicrous back flips my thoughts are doing, all while trying to eat my breakfast. I should sit in silence and eat my food mindfully. Uh oh, is that another should ? And if you read my blog article, Mindful Eating, you’ll know why this is even in my head. But I don’t sit in silence. I turn on the TV to Kelly & Michael. It’s my morning ritual on days when I have to go to my part-time office job two days a week. On those mornings I bop around getting cleaned and dressed, making breakfast and feeding the cat, all while Kelly’s and Michael’s sparkling repartee provides white noise. I don’t tend to do the ritual on days off. I prefer a quieter morning ritual on those days, a ritual more befitting my Mindful Eating essay. Except that today my brain is romping like crazy, so I’m looking for television’s dynamic duo to help distract my head while I sip my ginger broth. Of course the guilt arises that I am giving any amount of my morning to this vapid time-waster. So, now I am killing two birds with one stone, as I judge both the TV show and my indulgence in it. I’m on a roll. I need a day off from my day off.

I don’t need to give you the full play-by-play of the remainder of my day. You get the gist. Nothing much actually happened, which was exactly the point of the day, and yet by the end of it I was thoroughly spent from all the noise. My head was so filled with guilt, and judgment, and shoulds, and the niggling pressure to DO something, and the harshly critical indictment that I even chose to have a down day, as if it is something shameful. Because what are we, as Americans, if not putting all our value in doing and accruing, as opposed to just being? Meditation always helps. But even just getting myself to the proverbial mat is really tough when a day like this occurs. Today it was impossible.

I can’t say I don’t know where the penchant to punish comes from. I do. I have made a decent but very humble living for a long time now, all the while trying to get something of mine to burst wide open, whether it’s the music or the books. And my attempts at this have been largely futile. You don’t deserve a day off, my inner imp whines at me. You need to get in that corner and do some thinkin’, young lady, about all the missed opportunities and wasted potential. And you need to nitpick at everything. And so . . . I punish.

Take the DVD I chose to watch later on of this “day off.” Twenty Feet From Stardom deserves the Oscar it won. It’s a powerhouse movie that I’ve been excited to re-see for sometime now. It’s also a movie that takes me to a melancholy place, because of the subject matter. I’m a singer. I’ve made my living at it for a very long time. But if some of the remarkable singers in this movie are, to a certain degree, bemoaning their lot of always being the session and touring singer and never the star, I watch it bemoaning my lifelong inability to reach even THEIR heights of being the sought-after voices for some of the most iconic songs in pop history. My own history, and deeply grateful living, has been quite a ways humbler than that. Most days I’m incredibly happy with the career I’ve had, and the musicians that have given me work as well as their ardent respect. But a movie like this can, on occasion, take me to a pretty dark place. So, why would I even choose to see it a second time? The easy answer is because it’s a wonderful movie. But is it purely coincidental that I chose to watch this particular movie on my day of chilling out? Or is the pesky little deep-seated self-punishment imp deciding to hang around, brilliant saboteur that she is, and telling me that I have not accomplished enough in my life to deserve to chill? That I need, instead, to be up on my hindquarters in white-knuckle anxiety. Guess what, Miss Thing? You’re not gonna get to relax. You’re gonna exhaust yourself with all the doubts and the what-ifs and why-didn’t’cha’s that can be mustered. Because you SHOULD be further along in life, and shame on you for not being.

By the end of the movie, just as I did when I saw it in the theater, I am in tears, and standing up and applauding these women of extraordinary talent and their compelling stories (my own cousin being one of them . . . an original member of The Blossoms, who did every major vocal session in the 50’s and 60’s). I am deeply moved by these stories. I am also taken to my couch. And not in the good way, the hammock and a good book and a mason jar of lemonade kind of way that is exactly what a day off should be. Nope. I am taken to it in that crippling, fetal position way that fears life passing me by without having left the mark I’ve always felt was my calling to leave.

Likewise, I’ve managed to get nothing going with my book. I have three of them already out there, but the latest is really THE book. The one I feel is my opus. And except for a handful of dear friends and awesome moral supporters, it has gone largely unread and unknown. I keep trying to say that I’m not lazy. Hey, I produce content, baby. Six albums, as many full-length books, a one-woman show. That canon does not get produced by a slacker. I keep trying to say that something else is the reason I’ve never gotten any real shots. But after exhausting all other possibilities, and coming up with no clear answers, I think I may, after all, be lazy. I’m certainly tired. Everything I have to give goes into what I create (which, ironically, never tires me). But after all of that, there’s just nothing left over to give to hustling, and promotion, and marketing, and going out into the world, and meeting and networking, and being witty and quick and charming and all those things that seem to be what is required to get anyone to give you and your work the time of day. I don’t have it in me. It’s not in my nature. And from one day to the next, as I am on this constant road of self-examination, my tune is either that I’m genuinely at peace with my nature, and am happy with the blessed life that this nature has given me, and I clearly see the power and beauty and enlightenment in that . . . to believing . . . No. Get up. Do. Make it happen. It’s not too late. Don’t collapse now. Collapsing is giving up, and there’s nothing evolved or enlightened in that. And I am split wide open and right down the middle with trying to determine which principle I actually do align with.

The spiritual work that I have been doing has been truly transformational. But spiritual transformation is not a neat and speedy ascension to that higher place. It is a resolute road of one-step-forward-two-steps-back, filled with amazing moments of insight, daily challenges to our better angels, and THIS!!! . . . this “day off” that has just sicked Ronda Rousey on my ass. It’s also not (or at least, should never be) a tyrannical slave labor camp. And that’s where I can sometimes get stymied. My passionate embrace of radical self-care and self-inquiry is so all-encompassing that it even led me to start this blog to explore the vast landscape of that consciousness. But I think that days like this can sometimes happen because I tend to fill my life with stringent standards that I’ll beat myself up about not reaching. And if not managed with some semblance of balance and breath, the whole self-care thing can actually backfire. And by breath I mean that proverbial, symbolic inhale and exhale of not having to be perfect, not having to be in ballet-dancer-upright stance 24/7.

I think that I have given myself so many tasks towards this spiritual evolution (don’t forget to meditate, don’t forget to bless your food, don’t forget to buy organic or grow your own, don’t forget to be of service to others, ad nauseam) that I can begin to crumble under the weight of them. And with the crumbling comes the self-punishment, the why can’t you get your act together? inner talk, when the crumbling is only because of all the weight I have put on my shoulders. But the answer is not to snap the whip when those tasks are not completed. The answer is to remove, I don’t know, maybe a couple hundred of those cinder blocks that I’ve heaped on my shoulders. Because otherwise, one of two things happen. I either crumble into that fetal position, self-berating and sinking into depression in reaction to the tyrant in me, as I did today, or I implode and rebel against her. So, how do I remove the weight and heft in this journey to be a better me? How do I let go, and let gentleness prevail?

The way to it is through forgiveness. I’ve been writing about forgiveness a lot lately (read Unexpected Angels : A Perspective On Forgiveness), because it is a crucial key to stepping up a little higher on that ascension, that higher realm, and it has truly been tested in the world lately. I find it easily the most important principle to explore, to put into practice, and to understand what it truly means. And I have lately neglected putting those principles into practice on my own self.

If I were someone else talking to Angela, I’d have this wired. I would passionately grab her by the shoulders and say:

“Forgive your body for daring to evolve from young to old. Whatever society says about you because of your age is society’s flaw, not yours. Forgive your efforts for daring to be committed to art, and not marketing. Everyone can’t be everything. Forgive your talents for not getting you certain gigs. They are unique talents, and clearly didn’t belong in those boxes. Maybe there is no box yet created for your gifts. Maybe there never will be. But you keep renewing your agreement with the universe to make sacred art anyway, you keep cultivating your own unique voice, and you let the rest go. Forgive your needy, needy need to reach a certain status in order to be acceptable to society, and your human moments of faltering in the mission to elevate yourself in consciousness. Your life is so beautiful, with friends and family that rival most folks’ friends and family any day of the week. You have love in your life. You have food on your table. You have health and wellness and compassion. You have a curious brain and a heart eager to evolve in spiritual consciousness. You have a very special gift as a creator of books and music and art. You deserve a day off. To sleep in, to read your juicy book, to watch vapid TV, to walk on the beach, to surf the net, to look into the mirror and love your magnificent vessel that has carried you through fifty-five years on this earth in effortless mastery. It has even saved someone’s life! So, take that, Self-loathing Thomas (lesser known and even more deep-seated brother to Doubting)! You deserve a day off to do absolutely nothing except swing on that proverbial hammock with that mason jar of lemonade and CHILL. And to know that you are not less to do so.”

Forgiving ourselves for not being perfect specimens may be the hardest thing we ever do. We all have a wart or two, or ten, don’t we? We try to buff those warts up, better them, put a little spit shine on them. Or we try to tuck them away and pretend they aren’t there. We rationalize them, justify them, or we self-berate, as I spent an entire day off doing. But it really all comes down to this: We can transform, evolve, improve who we are, learn something new every day, open our hearts, practice compassion, and yet at the end of the day we are still not perfect specimens in 24/7 upright ballet-dancer stance. We aren’t designed to be. And so all of those rough edges, the warts, the fears and guilt and defenses that still insist on lingering there, even with all the soul work we may do – that’s where forgiveness comes in. That’s where we’re tested to see if we can love and embrace every part of ourselves. Because every part has a role to play in shaping who we are, and how we walk in the world.

As for my day off, well, it came and went, and my world didn’t crumble. It just left me a whole lot more exhausted than any day off should. But I ended it with pouring this onto paper. That’s something. A stab, always, at trying to work it out. Trying to listen to the higher voice. Trying to be understanding and patient when the lug nuts loosen. Hey, all that really means is that the tire covered a whole lot of great road. And I truly am okay as long as I’ve got my tools.

I suspect I make some uncomfortable when I write about my humanness in such a public forum. But please don’t mistake this, ever, for self-immolation. It is the voice of rigorous honesty, of getting really, really real, and coming out on the other side.

One more quick story, but it’ll tell you everything about my penchant for this kind of writing. When I was an early teen, I saw a movie where a band of ski-masked looters burst into a fancy gala, and held the entire party up with rifles, and had everyone strip down to their delicates, so that their jewels, furs, and wallets could be raided. It was a scene that mortified me, and has remained as a lodged nugget of anxiety in the back of my brain ever since. This idea of being exposed, of having all of one’s bodily flaws and secrets stripped down for everyone else in the room to judge, laugh at, and shame. Here’s the light bulb though. Everyone else in the room is in the exact same vulnerable circumstance, even if, in that instant for you, there is only you. I’ve revisited that scene so often that it’s beyond counting, and yet I can’t even recall the film itself. Telling our stories is a bit like that. If we’re honest, we expose more than what advances the agenda of being totally together. And while that idea can be terrifying, it is also brave to do so in this present culture of spin and image consciousness. And a remarkable unburdening has the chance to occur, because the world of public opinion will instantly assure us that we are not alone. And by that process, we are not only unburdened, but connected. For me, there is no greater purpose in telling our stories.

There isn’t a breakthrough in existence that isn’t accompanied by some aches and pains, but what comes out with us on that other side, always, is freedom. A freedom worth cultivating and renewing and re-tightening every single day. That’s my healing motif. The voice I’ve cultivated. I believe it can be of benefit to others too. That’s why I write.

J.M.W. Turner understood that. I saw his works at the Getty recently, and was blown away by the naked pain, and storms (as symbolic as they were literal), that he portrayed. And yet, his way with light is startling. That is the way with light, isn’t it? What does Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem say? There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

Photo credit: Drea Rewal for Timestamp Photography

UNEXPECTED ANGELS : A Perspective On Forgiveness

Posted on August 8, 2015 by angelacarolebrown

Ahhhh, Facebook. It’s an odd and fascinating communications platform, when you consider that the very best of it has sometimes generated important grassroots movements, and that the very worst of it, because of the safety of our own home sitting at a computer, and that we aren’t obligated to put a human face to a name and profile avatar, has bred some of the most loathsome social behavior I’ve ever witnessed. For me personally, the gold in Facebook has been the numerous long-lost friendships that, without social media, may never have been possible. On the other end, of course, is the odd stranger that we wonder why we’re Facebook friends with in the first place, and the crazy rantings that have required the socially devastating “unfriend”ing. But every once in a great while, believe it or not, an actual life lesson can be found on Facebook. Something unexpected and valuable lurking amid the sea of cute cat videos and vomit-mouth etiquette.

Here was mine, from a few weeks ago. A friend posted a most disturbing video of a woman encouraging her child to savagely beat on another child at a playground. It was shattering to watch. And of the myriad feelings I had regarding the witness, the primary one was that we lose jobs when we’re terrible at them, and parenthood should fall within those same parameters, and I just prayed Social Services got a hold of that woman.

Many people weighed in on this post, expressing their outrage, as well. One man was so outraged that he used epithets that clearly betrayed his ignorance of his audience. The N-word was bandied about pretty freely. Gee, can you guess what race the woman in the video was? I can genuinely say that what the woman’s racial or social demographic was didn’t even enter my mind for it being so overfilled with the horror of her act (which, by the way, Put-Upon White Man, happens in every race).

Before even weighing in on the contents of the video itself, my response to the post, which included the original poster’s own words “This is so shocking!” was, “Well, it looks like there’s equally shocking right here on this thread.”

I had to wonder, too, what kind of friends my friend had that this kind of blatantly racist response was even possible, until I reminded myself that I have said yes to friend requests countless times of people I don’t personally know, because as a working artist I’m always trying to expand an audience base, and, to be frank, I have “virtually” met some pretty amazing people on Facebook over the years. And so, the reality is that with such a practice also comes the risk of inviting the periodic troll to infiltrate.

Another friend, Melanie, weighed in immediately after me. Someone I actually do know personally. Someone I regard as a pretty sage woman. She’s also African-American, like me, and had clearly also seen Put-Upon White Man’s rant too, because her comment right after mine was, “I know, Angela, right???? Lord have mercy!”

A few others made similar comments. What fascinates me still, even as I reflect on this thing that happened a few weeks ago, is that most of the comments were reactions to PUWM’s rant, not the video. His own ire at the video (we all shared that!), which just HAD to go to a very nasty place, had completely overshadowed the horror on the video. Because this nastiness was right in our backyards. Who is this friend of my friend, who would rather spit in my face than shake my hand? is the shuddering subtext. That two-degrees of separation is too damned close!

I kept tuning in to see how this thread would grow, because frankly I was waiting for my friend (the original poster of the post) to get on here and condemn this man. She never did, nor ever weighed in again beyond the original posting of the video. But I’m very glad that I did keep tuning in, because of what unfolded next.

First off, after a fashion I noticed that PUWM’s original rant had been deleted. And then somewhere down the line of this thread, maybe 10 or 12 comments in, he weighed in a second time. His comment this time was an apology. And not one of those defensive apologies we’ve all had to roll our eyes at from time to time. He owned his racial outburst, iterated that he’d been so blinded by his rage over this video, which had broken his heart, but copping to it being absolutely no excuse, and ended with “Please forgive me, ladies….” addressing the myriad women who had commented on his rant, and lastly, “Lord forgive me.” And before I could even react to it, directly afterwards was my friend Melanie’s response to that: “Thank you, Mark. That is appreciated. We need to pray for that woman and her children.”

Okay, so at this point I’ll stop calling him PUWM. He has a name. It’s Mark. And yes, even Mark deserves to be called out by his Christian name, and not Put-Upon White Man, which, admittedly, has been my way of showing him zero respect, because it’s become such a cliché, and I felt like reducing him to the cliché, because, guess what? . . . I’m goddamned mad too.

I have to admit, I was stunned by Melanie’s ready acceptance of Mark’s apology. She and I share a very similar spiritual path of compassion & empathy, and consciousness-based cultivation, and we are both huge believers in forgiveness. I just hadn’t determined whether I was ready yet. But Melanie didn’t need to decide if she was ready. Melanie leapt. Melanie forgave. Melanie chose the higher road, without question, without needing to be ready.

It really did take me a minute to adjust this thinking, to wonder how she could do this so effortlessly, to have to face that my ball of fury had just had a pin pricked into it, and was deflating rapidly into a flat, self-righteous platitude. My own initial gut feeling was that Mark was only offering this apology because he got nailed on his abhorrent behavior, and that anyone who is capable of that language, and the intent and belief behind the language, will be absolutely capable of it again. Just give him another circumstance, a fresh audience, and sumpn’ else for him to be raging about. But did I know this for certain? That his apology wasn’t genuine? That he hadn’t really thought about his irresponsible and hurtful words?

What if Mark had had his heart truly opened by this exchange, had offered his amends, and then been shunned and dismissed? What, then, would that say about the sacred principle of forgiveness? Something pretty shameful, I’d say. Melanie wasn’t about to try and second-guess Mark’s intentions; her ONLY option was to put noble principle into healing practice. If Mark’s apology really wasn’t the real thing, if there was just a whole lotta bullshit goin’ on, that’s for Mark’s soul to wrestle with.

And so, while that was murky at best for me to wade through, it was as clear as a fresh spring to Melanie, my beautiful guru-mama sister-friend.

I carefully decided to say something myself. My instinctive thought was yeah, whatever, and not to respond at all. But in the spirit of my dear compassionate friend Melanie, and my own spiritual practice of forgiveness, I also offered a “thank you” to Mark, followed by, “The video broke my heart too.”

In those simple words – Melanie’s: “We need to pray for that woman and her children,” and mine: “The video broke my heart too,” – we let Mark know that the feelings about this heinous video were shared by us all, Black and White, male and female, Democrat and Republican, Christian and Atheist. Us, them. Whatever and Whatever. That there is actually more that connects us than there is that separates us, if we’re willing to see it. What an opportunity to offer healing, when my own instinct would’ve been to let the opportunity slip right through my fingers, and remain in the huff that someone else’s hate had engendered. Mark walked away changed too; that was evident in his further comments. He probably hadn’t ever thought, for a minute, that his apology would be welcomed and accepted. And if it had just been me alone out there reacting to his rant, it wouldn’t’ve been. So, thank you, Melanie, for reminding me. Yep, folks, a true spiritual practice requires rigorous renewal every single day, and unexpected angels and bodhisattvas to show us how.

In illustrating how much more connected we are than separate, a wall was torn down. It humanized everything. And that could ONLY have happened by a willingness for forgiveness. Melanie had thrown down the healing gauntlet. In a landscape of nothing but enraged hearts, how brave to be the one.

Forgiveness is a funny thing. It shouldn’t be. It should be startlingly clear. When Dylann Roof committed one of the most heinous single crimes in our recent history, the people least likely to, the families of the shooting victims, forgave. I personally was floored. It restored my lately-waning faith in humanity. But who on earth would ever think that instead of being absolutely lifted by this example, as I was, that there would be a backlash to it? Of course, there’s always going to be a militant response to such compassionate practice, people who are natural warriors, who believe morally in an eye for an eye. And I would even venture to say that most of us who aren’t militant would look at such compassion, and admire it even as we are admitting we’d never be able to do that. But the overwhelming backlash seems to be coming from the mainstream community, and not just asserting that we can’t do it but that we shouldn’t. The angle being that it finds these forgivers to be suckers, for lack of a kinder word. The charge is weakness, gullibility, and allowance of further racist behavior.

One article I found interesting and quite intelligent, in spite of the fact that I disagree with its fundamental creed, is by Stacey Patton for the Washington Post. The prevailing thought in this article is that Black America is the only culture expected to forgive its racist perpetrators. No one expects forgiveness toward al-Qaeda or ISIS. No one expects the Jews to forgive the Nazis. But Black America is pressured to forgive when the conflict is race. And when forgiveness is given, all Black America is doing is allowing more and more offenses to be made.

“Black people are not allowed to express unbridled grief or rage, even under the most horrific circumstances.”

Allowed? At least in this country, we all have the complete free will to choose how we feel, and how we will heal. And the trap to fall in is to assume that because there is a choice made to forgive, that grief or rage are not present. Even by framing the phrase “politics of forgiveness” Ms. Patton politicizes a basic tenet of grace and love. There is no politics to this. You either practice it or you don’t. It advances no agenda other than grace and love itself.

The most poignant thing Ms. Patton says is:

“. . . offering absolution to Roof is about relieving the burden of anger and pain of being victimized. In this regard, forgiveness functions as a kind of protest, a refusal to be reduced to victims. It sends the message to the killer that he may have hurt them, but they are the true victors because they have not been destroyed.”

This I passionately agree with. But she then counters it with the pronouncement that there is a demand by White America for this forgiveness. Demand? You can bet that White America was as stunned as anyone when these families chose the higher ground. Besides, how insulting to the intelligence of these compassionate soldiers Ms. Patton’s insinuation that White America is somehow their puppet-master, pulling strings.

I also challenge Ms. Patton’s claim that when Black America, especially of the Christian ilk, subscribes to the philosophy of forgiveness, it is being done out of some investment in the hereafter, a kind of E-ticket to Glory. Heaven or not, the only true salvation for this fractured present-day culture will be in cultivating that tenet for the life we are living right here, right now.

What seems not to be a part of the argument, at least in this article, is that to refuse to forgive is to keep oneself spiritually enslaved.

It’s important to know what forgiveness is. It may be even more important to know what it isn’t.

Forgiveness isn’t permission. Forgiveness isn’t forgetting. Forgiveness isn’t remotely weak. Forgiveness IS rising above. Refusing to fuel. Bringing to the table a different kind of challenge. And just possibly, changing that landscape.

There are many valid and insightful points that this article makes, and so I do urge you to read it. But while we are cautioned by Ms. Patton not to give forgiveness quite so quickly, from my own micro-example of that very dynamic, I can personally attest that when my friend Melanie gave it quickly, the entire landscape shifted from people divided to people communicating passionately together about the original problem (that horrendous video of mother and child). Healing was right in front of us. A coming together and acknowledgement of what connects us more than what divides us that would NEVER have happened had rage been met with more rage, and heads banged. Me, I was ready to put up some dukes and be a part of the fray. But it wouldn’t have been the right choice. And a golden opportunity would’ve been tragically missed.

MINDFUL EATING : Letting Go of a Bad Relationship To Forge a New Loving One

Posted on June 12, 2015 by angelacarolebrown

“To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint,
all things are friendly and sacred,
all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

It has lately occurred to me that food, and one’s approach to food, even the enjoyment of it, would be greatly enhanced by looking at the whole affair from a sacred, spiritual standpoint. It’s hardly a new idea. Religions the world over have historically had rituals regarding the consumption of food. From the Holy Communion of Catholicism to the Kosher Laws of Judaism to the spiritual fasting observed by many religions, food and the consumption of food have played a pivotal role in the development of the soul.

I have struggled with food my whole life. I’ve either seriously dieted and lived in grumpy privation, or I’ve emotionally eaten and found myself in food stupors, blocking out some deep pain body, or I’ve thrown hands up, not cared, and gotten real depraved with it. Actually “not cared” isn’t exactly accurate. I’ve always cared, always been preoccupied, always been obsessed, always felt the pressure from society, boyfriends, even colleagues (because I happen to be in a business where what I look like matters greatly), to look a certain way and to maintain that, in no uncertain terms. I was pretty successful at maintaining a look and a weight for most of my adult life, but not without the help of a lot of compulsive behaviors. When menopause hit and I gained nearly 50 pounds, and then kept that on for the better part of the last ten years, making the new weight my body’s new set point, efforts to get back to where I’d mainly been my whole life were proving insurmountable, and really only succeeded in enhancing what was already a fairly dysfunctional relationship with food. I’ve never starved myself, or binged/purged; my issues surrounding food have been a lot subtler than that, making the whole panorama of eating and body dysmorphic issues much more complex and nuanced than popular media ever gives us to understand.

That’s my eating background, in a brief nutshell. Nothing devastating, just the nuanced struggles of a middle-class American girl pressured by a quintessentially middle-class American pastime – dieting. And so now to this recent dawning. I’ve been on a spiritual road for some time now, some of it documented on this blog, some of it hinted at in the various memoir I’ve put out there, some of it, as well, remaining deeply private, and all in the service of bettering who I am, healing what has ailed me, and coming closer to the divine and to an internal peace in the realm of higher consciousness. I made a recent decision to start approaching the ritual of eating from a sacred standpoint. So now, what exactly does that mean?

To begin with, the world is filled with far too many people who are without food, who would give their right arm for a bowl of porridge, and would consider that bowl sacred, because it is so rare. How can I possibly continue to live in this life where I have never once had to go without, and not value the privilege that I have been given? And so, a new commitment is beginning for me. It is my effort to heal what is sore between food and me.

I want to rise above my animal self, the hungers, the desires, that root chakra governance that is primal and is all about brute survival by any means, and instead appeal to that higher seventh chakra state of grace that is beyond the limited senses. I wonder if that isn’t what’s behind the spiritual practice of fasting. The idea of denying those base urges in us, in order to push through a veil to experience what’s on the other side. When we’re stripped of our animal nature, what’s left? What are we? What are we capable of? What are our limitations? Our possibilities? Fasting is not an easy thing to do, and this essay isn’t about that, but I think we can make that same journey by deeming the act of feeding ourselves a sacred one, like baptism or the Eucharist. It’s a wacky thought perhaps; this largely social covenant (think of the countless meals portrayed on Sex and the City) reduced to a stodgy sacramental rite. Yuck, you may be thinking. “Taking the joy right out of eating, Angela . . . gee thanks!” Well, maybe. Bear with me for a minute. Because for me, the way things have been for awhile now is that there are far more meals I consume than the number of them that I actually enjoy and have a wonderfully epicurean experience with. I am moved by this idea that the experience can be so much more, and consistently so, and at the same time achieve a transcendence in consciousness. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. And, for better or for worse, I am moved by it just as compellingly as it is also my belief that this will be incredibly difficult for me to adopt. But I’m giving it a go. Have already begun so, in fact. And I’ll let you know how it works out. Here’s the basic game plan.

Blessing each meal. It’s such an old-fashioned notion. My childhood always involved grace at the dinner table, usually done by my father, or my grandfather if the meal included extended family. But once adulthood hit, I sort of never really thought about it again except for those occasions of Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner with the family, where it’s a ritual that’s still employed. My brother Mike is usually the designated grace-giver, because he is the one person who never gave up the practice. Privately from me was always a reaction of, “isn’t this charming?” And yes, I admit, there has been a bit of condescension, as well as actually being charmed, in the thought. But at a recent family gathering, I found myself reacting very differently for the first time to my brother’s bowed head and earnest mutterings. The word charming never entered my head. Powerful, meaningful . . . these were the words that hit me this time, and I couldn’t possibly tell you why, so out of the blue, but it actually re-purposed the experience of eating the meal that was in front of me. Gratitude is the theme with this one. Many in the world go without. So, because I have never had to, the need to give thanks for the bountiful straw that I drew in this life suddenly became compelling. I talked about this very briefly a couple of articles back. I just need to be truly thankful every day, and putting that practice in a ritual form is the surest way to keep me always in grace (pun most definitely intended). When every meal becomes meaningful and cherished, it makes just grabbing a handful because you’re passing by the bowl, or grazing mindlessly and finishing the whole bag out of boredom or restlessness, increasingly meaning-LESS, even, dare I say it, disrespectful in the face of those for whom a meal is a rare, momentous, and lifesaving gift.

Preparing as many of my meals as possible with my own two hands. There will be times when I go out with friends, and we commune over lunch or dinner. That is a ritual to cherish, for certain. There will be times when I’ve been invited to someone’s house for dinner. There are certainly times every week when I’m on a job, and I need to eat. But other than those examples, gone largely now is the choice to grab take-out when there’s only me, when the option to prepare my food at home instead exists. I’ll almost always choose the cooking. And I am choosing to cook and prepare my meals from a Zen perspective. Meaning to notice and appreciate every move, every moment, every flick of the wrist in mixing ingredients, every whisk, every rinse, every dice, every spice. Even the selection of ingredients, which means I am having to adopt a more mindful approach to grocery shopping.

Shopping local and organic (or growing my own!). I don’t presently have a living situation where I can grow my own, other than to try my damnedest to keep my apartment windowsill pots of mint and basil alive. But if the means exists, I can’t think of a more perfect way to cultivate a sense of the sacred than nurturing one’s food from seed, bulb, or stalk, to fruition with one’s own hands? I know more and more people who are growing or raising their own, and the practice has changed their lives. For me, for now, the very least I can do is make the commitment to finding stores in my neighborhood that promote and support local farmers, so that what goes in my body is clean, and is no longer supporting the corporate machinery of factory food production, which is dubious at best. I’ve been nutrition-conscious for many years, actually. I’ve read every health guru from Andrew Weil to Gary Null, and have largely tried to live by whole food tenets (while, of course, veering recklessly enough whenever the emotional components to my eating would kick in). But this experiment marks the first time I’ve actually sought to minimize my participation in Food Incorporated, and support local and organic. This also means that if I have to go into a mainstream grocery market, I choose to shop on the end aisles where all the unprocessed, unrefined, LIVE foods reside. Everything in the middle aisles is boxed, canned, packaged, processed, and prefabbed, usually with far more than just the food itself inside, making it a very iffy proposition from a health standpoint. Our bodies deserve better.

Listening to my body. But also listening to my urges. Urges and cravings exist to compensate for something that is missing. It might be a nutritional lack. More often than not, it’s an emotional one. That’s the time to slow down, examine the urge, not judge it (also a challenge for me), and respond to it in a way that only supports the sacred nature of this experiment. If the answer I get from my soul is that I need to be addressing something, or letting go of something, then I need to do my best to go about that task, instead of burying it with nullifying food. Because here’s the thing: Food can be our greatest enemy OR our greatest ally; the trick is in determining exactly what our relationship with it is going to be. Abusive or cherishing.

Being done with “diets.” And punishment. And needing to answer everyone else’s call about how I’m supposed to look, with none of those pressures any more obnoxious than my own impatient, unforgiving self-demands. Instead, allow my eating in a mindful and sacred way to do the job of transforming my brain, my heart, and the rest of my body into a precious, godly vessel.

Eating without distraction. And instead, putting my focus on the ritual itself. Appreciating every bite, every swallow; once again, the Zen approach. As opposed to stuffing my mouth mindlessly while watching a movie, or checking email, or grabbing food on the hurried go, and juggling a jaw full of food and a steering wheel at the same time, and not even paying attention to my eventual fullness, or to the taste experience. That one is hard for me. I have such a restless, antsy brain that JUST sitting and eating, and doing nothing else except enjoying the sensory experience of a delicious meal goes completely against my life’s experience. I’ve always eaten while multi-tasking, if I’m eating alone. Doing nothing except eating my meal is essentially a meditation. And while I’ve been an ardent meditator for many years, this idea is easily the most radical of them all for me. And therefore the one I am most determined to accomplish.

I am a firm believer in food as medicine. Food can change our brains and our health, because it contains information that talks to our genes. It’s serious stuff. So, why have I lived my entire life regarding it sloppily and cavalierly at best? That’s the question I’m trying to answer even as I write this, and as I venture forward in this experiment with a new appreciation for every meal I’m blessed to partake in.

The first night that I tried shutting off the TV and the computer, and putting my phone away, and just cooking a meal . . . and then setting my table . . . and then putting on some music (actually the music was playing during the cooking . . . very peaceful evening this was), and then sitting down and eating my meal, it was a transplendent experience. I was truly in the moment. I blessed the food I was about to cook, and then I blessed it again as I sat down to eat. I took my time. I didn’t go back for seconds, because I didn’t need to. I’m accustomed to going back for seconds. Usually because I’ve shoveled my food into the trough so fast, while watching some fast-paced movie or something equally agitating online, and so the rhythm of my external stimuli would be matched and mimicked by the fork-to-mouth action, and simply wouldn’t stop. Plus I’m a musician for my living; having a 15-minute break on a gig that’s designated for the meal they offer you has borne some very gastrically-abusing habits among my musician cohorts. I learned to be a fast eater, and then the habit stuck even beyond being on a gig. This first night in this new experiment, I ate slowly. I thoroughly enjoyed the taste sensations. I relished in the art of food pairing. And I let the world and the evening go by, as I luxuriated (yes, I can actually claim luxuriating) in the experience of my dinner. I also realize that not nearly every night, nor every meal, will be that magical. There will be the occasions when my mood is terse, perhaps my day has been a challenge, and I won’t feel like cooking, or I won’t feel like gracing, and all I’ll want to do is mainline the drug that food can be with the wrong infusion, into the gullet, and numb out. But I figure, it’s a one-day-at-a-time kind of thing, like AA. Like any program that attempts to repair something that is out of spiritual alignment. It’s a mountain. And I’ll need to be prepared to climb it daily.

During the formulating of this idea, and writing about it, I’ve had to ask myself (if my creed here is truly vigilant honesty, and that’s been my claim) if all of this isn’t just a new scheme, of the gaggle of them that I’ve tried, toward trying to lose weight. And while I can’t say that isn’t a factor, the truth is I am looking for something deeper. I’m in this whole thing for a spiritual revolution. An uprising from my innards, pulling at every thread in my sight lines and my insight lines, that will help to weave me right into the tapestry of interconnected consciousness and the frequency of infinite realms and possibilities. I know, I know, I’ve gone off the reservation a bit with the flower-child rhetoric. But I assure you it isn’t without focus or substance. And it’s already happening, this personal revolution, unfolding layer by layer by layer, a tiny bit each day.

I heard an anecdote recently about some Buddhist monks who, in an effort to protect their sacred Buddha monument from Burmese soldiers, covered their beloved statue in mud, knowing that the soldiers would find no material value in a statue made of clay, when what was hiding beneath its clay cloak was a monument made of gold. And the story was told in the context of the very fitting metaphor for this idea that our true value can often be hidden beneath layers of mud, or, in our contemporary parlance, baggage. And what that parable is meant to suggest is that the spiritual journey is really more about subtraction than addition. We are already complete beneath our wounds and our fears, and through the process of shedding layer after layer to reveal our sovereign splendor, we become lighter and lighter, freer and freer.

This new eating thing? It’s just a layer.

“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine thy food.” – Hippocrates

Spiritual Algorithm: A Prescription For What Ails In 8 Steps

Posted on March 31, 2015 by angelacarolebrown

If algorithm means a procedure or set of operations for solving a problem in a finite number of steps, then consider the following eight to be a kind of spiritual algorithm that I’ve recently devised for myself, and which is changing my life.

Though, even as I’m writing this, I must pause to tell you I am experiencing an emotional tug-of-war over the idea of sharing this “prescription” forward. Because on the one hand, I am genuinely excited by some new, and some merely renewed, experiences happening in my life recently, and the reality that actual tangible results of their impact are before my very eyes, and that those results are almost touching mastery, and this, mind you, from someone who tends to be gravely self-critical, and has come from a long, long arc of nuanced depression and irascibility and disappointment, built up over years and easily masked by a generally friendly disposition, and I am turning corners left and right, and I wanna wanna wanna share so badly, because I’m feeling extraordinary. On the other hand, in any piece that serves as a how-to (think MindBodyGreen, which I love and read regularly, and yet . . .), there is an assumed authority on said subject, and the implied self-importance of owning that you have something to show someone else. I have never fancied myself in the role of teacher to anyone; never been especially in touch with my Inner Deepak. Plus, as always seems to be my thinking, what if I fall? Here I’ve made this public pronouncement of some wisdom to impart, and now I’ve dared to go on with my life and be imperfect. Nothing pleases some people more than to catch you in your failures: “I thought you were giving up sugar?” smugly coming from that friend when you’ve been caught eating your See’s butterscotch square is always fun. So, I’m usually uncomfortable in this area. Even this blog, my beloved Bindi Girl Chronicles, is rife with pieces that are really tapestries of discord and imperfection and stumbles and growing pains and learning curves, as I navigate the turbid waters of self-discovery. Sometimes I have answers. Most times I’m just posing questions.

But something’s happening, something, as I said, nearly resembling mastery. There are more and more exquisite little grace notes in my life these days that have me in the perpetual state of wow and wonder than ever before. And I can only credit eight little rituals that I call my spiritual algorithm, or my prescription for what ails, and that I have only just recently put into daily practice. Visionary teacher Eckhart Tolle has often said that there are three words that encompass the secret to the art of living: One. With. Life. One with life. He is quite stunning in illustrating the importance of recognizing that we are all interconnected, of being here now, of having experiences for their own sake, and of seeing beauty in everything. The predicament for me, in truly meditating on this, is always, “of course, but how?”

Well, I have found it. At least for me. And I am champing at the bit to share. Without making assumptions that we’re all ailing, I simply offer that if you’re anything like me there’s always a spiritual nip and tuck and tweak that can be had in order to be more present and to maximize your experience here, to be truly one with life. I came up with my eight without even thinking of the eightfold path or the eight limbs (these are Buddhist and yogic references, for those of you not in the dharma know). That was purely a matter of coincidence. And so now, I like to think of this spiritual algorithm, this prescription for the art of living, as sort of my own personal eightfold path. It’s working for me, which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s meant for you. I tend to believe that everyone benefits best from a custom-made chariot for that road to enlightenment. But the chances are at least 50-50 that my prescription could indeed resonate with you. So here it is.

1. Turn away from the anxiety-fueling news programs that litter television and the internet.

Just refuse them. They are designed for one agenda only: to whip us into a distracted frenzy, and by virtue weaken us and our pocketbooks at the seams, because having an entire culture in panic mode is profitable, and is never about being in the public’s interest. Find your current events through more legitimate sources. Do the homework needed to figure out who and what those are.

2. Read for pleasure.

As a writer I want to encourage books. I want to encourage good books. I want to encourage literature. But hey, read a magazine, just read . . . for pure enjoyment and expansion. And try as often as possible to do it outside of the digital and electronic universe. Kindles and iPads are fun and convenient, but don’t let them be your exclusive source for reading. The brain needs a good chunk of quality time every day to be removed from electromagnetic energy and social media, and to be reminded of the world of imagination and connection that does exist beyond our digital screens.

3. Meditate. OR . . .

. . . at the very least find a way to simply be in silence and stillness for a few minutes every day. The more minutes a day you can find in that quiet, the better able you will be to heed the inner voice, and the better everything will be. Guaranteed. (Yes, I am actually being brazen enough to say guaranteed). I recently read the memoir of Sara Maitland on her experiment of withdrawing from the world, in pursuit of silence. There is a whole world of discussion to be had on the topic, and its impact on a society, and which is utterly fascinating. For now, for this, however, just allow yourself a few minutes each day to power everything down. And listen.

4. Connect with Higher Power.

This term is as wide a berth as the ocean, so even the most ardent atheist can find his or hers. Something that is greater than your pedestrian self, and that has something to teach you, offer you, feed you. Maybe it’s the collective unconscious. Maybe it’s art. Maybe it’s nature. Maybe it’s the source within. Maybe it is a source out there. Whether deity or principle, it will show up for every individual on the planet, and is that unquantifiable something that maneuvers us around the land mines and connects us to each other. There is no need to affix a label; simply be with it. Find yours, and plug in regularly.

5. Create, even if you’re not an artist.

Artist is only a label. We all have creativity and imagination in us, and it can show up in the most unexpected cloak, which is usually how it works anyway. Feed that. Promote that. The spiritual benefits are untold.

6. Be a child again (closely linked to the above, and which is not the same as being child-ISH).

There is so much obligation and commitment and management and planning and fortune-making that governs our adult lives that we can easily allow it to bog us down and collapse our spirits. Easy to get so caught up in building the life of our dreams that we kind of forget to actually live the life of our dreams. So, let it all go once in a while, regularly, and do what children do. Play fiercely and with joyous abandon.

Or the flip side of that same spirit . . . do nothing. The Italians have a delicious term for it: dolce far niente, literally translated as the sweetness of doing nothing. They have raised it to an art form, but in our ambition-worship culture, we have put the label of shame to it. THAT is the shame. We do not need to be in the constant state of planning, producing and consuming. Smile at nothing. Sit and gaze. Daydream. Decompress. It is the crucial yin to our workhorse-mountain-conquering yang.

7. Create a daily gratitude ritual.

It can be a prayer, a journal log, a mantra, a meditation. Even in the various spells of my life of not feeling especially spiritual or connected, I always found such beauty in the tradition of blessing one’s food. What a lovely idea to express out loud, in a ritual, our thankfulness for the bounty on our plates, and not taking a meal for granted, but cherishing it for what it gives us. Especially considering how many don’t have that luxury. Now imagine employing that gratitude practice with everything. Just imagine.

And finally . . .

8. Be in nature.

Now, I honestly don’t think any more expounding on this one is necessary, except that I am compelled to share what’s happened to me with this one, because it seems to be the mother lode. I never truly got the phrase, “be in nature,” that spiritual directive, as I now view it, until I began the recent ritual for myself. Out of the blue, it seems, I began hankering for nature. And I think, at least in part, it’s because I’ve been a meditator for a good many years already, yet have been growing intermittently flustered (as business for me has gotten busier . . . knock on wood!) by the struggle to truly burrow deep, and my belief that it has had to do with the inability to remove myself from the world’s distractions. One truth about meditation is that doing it is possible even if the sky is falling all around us, but that’s a pretty hardcore level of meditation bad-assery that I have never achieved. I need an environment that promotes moving out of the world for a few chunks of time each day. Enter nature. Fortunately I live in a community that smacks right up against a set of mountain ranges, the ever sprawling Angeles National Forest, and its various canyons and parks. Although, I don’t believe there exists a community that has zero access to some brand of nature. We can all find some.

I’ve been hiking Aliso Canyon at the very north end of the San Fernando Valley, and which is nearly in my back yard. It’s part crest, overlooking wide sweeps of mountain, part enchanted forest, taking one into the bowels of nature with trees bridging overhead and creating a canopy. What I never saw coming was the way in which this daily ritual would become something I would crave, the way one craves coffee. Runners talk about the runner’s high. I even know gym nuts who are antsy if they miss a day of working out. That has never been me. But I crave this. And I have found that not only has it been working as a meditative pursuit, but it has begun to shift my whole health & wellness, it has brought literally more oxygen into my lungs and life, and it has, most profoundly, most surprisingly, opened my heart chakra in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Communing with creatures beyond our pets and other humans, listening to their concert, moving among the wise old trees (read Herman Hesse some time on trees….whew!…), or strolling along a shore, recognizing the cruciality of taking care of the earth, and understanding the dire consequences of continuing as we are, in promoting carbon footprinting and the decimation of the ozone. This daily experience has inadvertently made me live in and practice gratitude for what I have and where I am in life and what is precious. It has brought me to a manageable, even peaceful, mental place when life is challenging me or throwing roadblocks in my way. It has actually shifted my receptor paradigm, meaning that I feel myself being more open to receiving, or perhaps, and more pointedly, feeling worthy of, blessings; as well as nurturing the ability to see that blessings are flying all around us like gnats, and are in everything that happens to us. Not only in the stuff that feels good, and is about comfort, and is easy to see as a blessing. But even the stuff (or people) we consider bad news, because these are what serve as lessons and opportunities and teachers, and may actually be where the real gold lies. And it’s ours to either choose to recognize, or not. But why wouldn’t we? And this whole shift for me has been a direct result (I could be wrong, but the timing’s too uncanny) of my daily communing with nature.

It takes a great deal of courage to keep our hearts open. So much easier (maybe even irresistible) to clamp the heart down, to bear the armor of hurt, to be the suffering martyr, and to garner the quiet awe of others, because maybe we have no real clue who we are without our wounds. But keeping our hearts open is the greatest kind of surgery our bodies can undergo. And I dare say, for us ALL, that being in nature is quite remarkable at opening up that vessel within, for our daily access.

So, there you have it. My sacred eight. The prescription for what has been ailing me. The spiritual algorithm that has shifted me just ever so subtly, yet indelibly.

Navigating the murky waters of life is a job with tenure. All the enlightenment in this world, and for that matter all the prosperity in this world, won’t reprieve us of the task. Navigated with the right tools, however (and I offer this eightfold prescription as one tool of many), life becomes not merely a road to endure but an experience of riches beyond measure. Maybe my eight can offer you something as well. Or, hey, if you’re way ahead of me, please share your own discoveries back. I would love to hear of them. Remember, I get MindBodyGreen in my daily inbox. I’m THAT gal.

But for any who are searching, or feel lost, or even just looking for a top off, I encourage you to try it.

Costs nothing.

Big Pharma has no equity in this medicine.

Dedicated to my lovely friend Kelly Phillips,
who illustrates the prescription simply by living her beautiful life,
and allowing me the honor of observing it.

Photograph of ACB is by Holli Rae

Of His Many Legacies

Posted on January 19, 2015 by angelacarolebrown

January 19, 2015. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

I woke up this morning and hastened to the computer to post my father’s portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. on all of my various social media accounts. It’s a portrait that became sort of famous in the 1970’s. The only one of my father’s paintings that he ever made reproductions of, so that it could be owned by many. The portrait could be found, in the years that followed its creation, in several city halls throughout the country, other civic buildings, schools, private homes. I even once opened an Ebony Magazine (I was a teen at the time) to an article about an Atlanta attorney. I don’t even remember who the attorney was, as what happened next is the only part of the story that was important to me. There, under the byline, but before the title of the article, was a photograph of the attorney in his Atlanta offices. And there in the background of the photo, hanging on a wall, was my father’s King. It counted as the only example of that kind of experience I’ve ever had regarding my father’s work, since he was an artist who never exhibited, never had reproductions made of his work, save the King, and almost never offered his works for sale. He was a peculiar artist in that way. He’d made his living as a graphic artist for the aerospace industry for his entire life, and so the fine art pieces he did were purely for love and personal reward, or sometimes on commission. All of his children have his works, and many other family members and friends. But otherwise, the King remains the only of his work that circulated the country a bit in its day. Sorry about the tangent. This post is not about “the King,” as we have always called his painting, but I’m a proud daughter, so there you go. And here it is, in its entirety.

Anyway, I posted my father’s painting on Facebook, Twitter, et al., along with one of my favorite quotations of Dr. King’s, as my contribution to paying tribute to this national holiday of the birth of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.

The quotation was: “Let us truly, deeply, authentically occupy the dream, the dream of a world that works for all life, where each and every one of us is a shining star in a constellation of love. Everybody can be great . . . because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

There are so many of his wonderful quotations that it was hard to choose the one that resonated the most with my heart today. As all great men and women tend to inspire, on any given day a different aspect of Dr. King’s lifework might ring in my heart and the accompanying quotation in my ears. Because the many avenues of his life’s work extend far beyond civil rights and racial equality, as a friend of mine reminded in an email he sent out this morning to a handful of friends. Dr. King also fought for unions, supported labor strikes and better economic realities for the poor of all races, and lastly, but hardly least, he was passionately outspoken against the Viet Nam War, and against war period.

I made the post, and then went about the rest of my day, periodically checking back to see if any comments had been made. Isn’t that what we do? The rest of my day consisted of meeting up with friends for lunch and a bit of business, then working on some graphic jobs for clients, and then taking the afternoon to go see a movie, as this is the time of year that I and my ilk (a small circle of us) log in the requisite Oscar nominees. It’s our favorite time of year. I’ve seen some pretty wonderful movies this season, and today’s was going to be American Sniper.

As I sat through this well-crafted Clint Eastwood film, I found myself physically uncomfortable and fidgety in my seat. I am a movie buff (I guess there’s a range of buffness; so perhaps I’m just a semi-buff). I love movies for their honesty, their irony, their in-depth character study, and their unsentimentality. Just tell a story, and let the story, itself, do its job to move us, or anger us, or teach us, or make our hearts soar, or make us laugh, or confound us, or take us to the couch.

I honestly don’t know what I thought of this movie (I’m sure I’ll have a firmer grasp of my feelings on it a week from now, or a year from now). It yanked me in many ways. In the final frame, it was clearly making a statement about what war does to soldiers, and yet it also intended to lionize the protagonist, who is based on a real-life person. And from what I understand, the real-life person, whose autobiography the movie is based upon, was quite unrepentant about his killing credits. So, is he a hero? Or if the movie is not about heroes but about men, do we need for him to be depicted as remorseful? Or simply as someone indelibly changed by the circumstances of war, even if he is in denial of it? These are just questions. I have no answers to them. But what clearly made me restless in this movie experience was the juxtaposition of having chosen to see this film on a day that has been nationally designated as commemoration of the man who once said, “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”

I woke up this morning with Dr. King firstly on my mind. I woke up with his many, many words of great inspiration swimming in my head, because I am on his side in these matters. I do not believe in war. I’m sure my politically conservative friends and my military friends will have their issue with me on that. That’s for us to work out. But I can appreciate a depiction of war, which is why I was sitting in a movie theater this afternoon, seeing this film.

It’s the juxtaposition of having chosen this day to go, which didn’t even dawn on me until I was in it and committed, and which was most definitely the source of my restlessness, that puzzles me. What I found most poignant and most troublesome wasn’t even in the film itself (though I did find the film itself gravely problematic), but the audience’s various reactions throughout. There was hearty laughter when killings happened. Silly, immature laughter. There was universal jingoistic applause when a tension-moment in the movie ended in enemy-slaughter at its most brutal. This was the audience from a Rocky movie or a soccer game. Did the filmmakers have that kind of whipped up lust as their intention? Because propaganda, after all, was at the heart of this film, and that’s what propaganda is designed to do. Eastwood’s direct trajectory in the film from 911 to our invasion of Iraq, as though one had anything to do with the other, is why I charge him with propaganda. And yet, before I go any further down the rabbit hole of political polarities, that is not even the component of the film that left me in turmoil. That component I simply, disappointingly, chalked up to the Big Lie.

What left me divided, and it’s finally hitting me even as I write this, is that Eastwood, himself, was divided. I don’t believe he really knew what story he wanted to tell. Because while he most assuredly directed a very deliberate go-get-’em piece of patriotic frenzy-whipping, Eastwood also depicted a man wrecked by his experience over there, even as that man lived in denial of his distress. And those were the moments that had a human, thoughtful, nuanced, insightful element to it. Those were the moments that reminded me why I have always championed Eastwood as a director. But while I didn’t need for Chris Kyle to be a redeemed man, or to have some kind of awakening about his actions, it was extremely important for that to be inherent in the narrative, and it just wasn’t. It brought to mind, for me, Paul Schrader’s and Martin Scorsese’s powerful and chilling Taxi Driver. Here is a character so deeply troubled, and unredeemed even to the very end. But though Travis Bickle is never redeemed, his story, his narrative, IS, through its making a comment about society. American Sniper had every opportunity to do just that. And ultimately, because propaganda was allowed to prevail instead, it failed.

As I filed out of the theater with an audience that was more revved up than contemplative, my heart truly broke to see the fruits of a culture and a generation that I believe has largely fallen from grace, and grown numbed and desensitized. I don’t know if the blame belongs to movies like this, or to social media, or to the blitzkrieg-&-hysteria-style TV programming that calls itself news today, or to technology, which disconnects us far more than it connects us, or to a generation of parents and schools dropping the ball on guidance, or what. They’re all easy targets, and they’re probably all complicit. WE are probably all complicit. But whatever is the source, it’s happening. The deadening of the collective heart. Now, I’m not a dark and gloomy doomsayer. There’s always hope. I think that’s part and parcel to what this day stands for. But it requires action. I’m not always an action person. I can tend to be very insular in my life, and in my beliefs that being a creative artist, and putting thoughtful content out into the world, is enough. But maybe it isn’t enough. And so, this collective deadening of the heart was a pretty sobering bit of business to witness, and to be in the midst of, and to conclude, on this day, the national commemoration of a genuine peacemaker in our history. A man who said these many words:

“We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.”

“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

“Forgiveness is not an occasional act. It is a constant attitude.”

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.”

I don’t know why I chose to see this movie today of all days. It felt wrong, as soon as I was in it. Even though I think Mr. Eastwood did a skillful (if dishonest) bit of directing, and Mr. Cooper did a remarkable turn as Kyle. But I think that if I’d seen the movie on any other day, I might’ve had a very different experience, a different level of sensitivity, a different outlook on humanity. And so perhaps today was exactly as it should be. To force me inward. To contemplate. Not only King’s legacy, but how we citizens have been shaped (or not) by it. How I have been shaped by it. And what to do about that, if the answer turns out to be a less-than-proud one. Because, really, that’s what today’s movie experience was about for me –– a mirror. Which brings me to my favorite of all of Dr. King’s words: “The greatest sign of maturity is self-inquiry.”

I am chasing that maturity every single day. On rare days, I even catch the little fucker.

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Bindi Girl Chronicles

Category Archives: Wellness & Self-Discovery

An Elm & Houston Revelation

Those Who Read Books

Off the Mat and Into the World: A Yoga Forum

“Abandon your masterpiece, and sink into the real masterpiece.”
― Leonard Cohen

My original Facebook post: May 30, 2015

My contributors and comrade-in-arms:

Ken Rosser is the man I call my musical soulmate, with whom I’ve been involved in several music projects, and who may just be the most innovative and soulful multi-stringed-instrumentalist I’ve ever come across. Check out our duo CD sometime, called MUSIC FOR THE WEEPING WOMAN.

Lily Knight was my Kundalini teacher (and favorite yoga teacher I’ve ever had) from way back when I studied yoga at the Awareness Center in Pasadena, and who is the one responsible for opening up this world for me of self-investigation and soul-tending.

Candyce Milo is a razor-sharp, irreverent comedian, actor, and writer, whose ability to examine the human condition in her one-woman shows raises her above the masses.

Chokae’ Kalekoa is, as Candi says above, just about one of the last of the quiet, Om breath centered, ritualistic teachers. He is a yogi-shaman bad-ass, and founder of the Shut Your Monkey Meditation Workshop, which he travels all around the globe.

Victoria Kassa is a lifelong educator, which may be the noblest calling on the planet, and someone I’ve grown up with, literally since infancy, so….yeah…family.

Melanie Taylor is a yogi, singer/songwriter, seeker, carrier of light and eternal optimist. She is also my birthday twin, and my true sister from another mister.

Lotus Lindley is a Reiki healer, and a Path of Sacred Feminine & Essential Oils Facilitator. After having only met her through Facebook at that point, she actually came to my rescue with an earth-shattering Reiki treatment when I was going through something once. Blessings to her forever for that.

A Rose Knows

A rose blooms and releases fragrance.
It doesn’t question its deservedness.
A rose just knows.

Ommmmmm

She was not allowed to hurt anymore today.

THE REAL : Radical Self-Care or Tyrannical Task-Mastering?

Photo credit: Drea Rewal for Timestamp Photography

UNEXPECTED ANGELS : A Perspective On Forgiveness

MINDFUL EATING : Letting Go of a Bad Relationship To Forge a New Loving One

“To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint,
all things are friendly and sacred,
all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine thy food.” – Hippocrates

Spiritual Algorithm: A Prescription For What Ails In 8 Steps

Photograph of ACB is by Holli Rae

Of His Many Legacies

Portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. by Ted Brown

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“Abandon your masterpiece, and sink into the real masterpiece.” ― Leonard Cohen

My original Facebook post: May 30, 2015

My contributors and comrade-in-arms:

Ken Rosser is the man I call my musical soulmate, with whom I’ve been involved in several music projects, and who may just be the most innovative and soulful multi-stringed-instrumentalist I’ve ever come across. Check out our duo CD sometime, called MUSIC FOR THE WEEPING WOMAN.

Lily Knight was my Kundalini teacher (and favorite yoga teacher I’ve ever had) from way back when I studied yoga at the Awareness Center in Pasadena, and who is the one responsible for opening up this world for me of self-investigation and soul-tending.

Candyce Milo is a razor-sharp, irreverent comedian, actor, and writer, whose ability to examine the human condition in her one-woman shows raises her above the masses.

Chokae’ Kalekoa is, as Candi says above, just about one of the last of the quiet, Om breath centered, ritualistic teachers. He is a yogi-shaman bad-ass, and founder of the Shut Your Monkey Meditation Workshop, which he travels all around the globe.

Victoria Kassa is a lifelong educator, which may be the noblest calling on the planet, and someone I’ve grown up with, literally since infancy, so….yeah…family.

Melanie Taylor is a yogi, singer/songwriter, seeker, carrier of light and eternal optimist. She is also my birthday twin, and my true sister from another mister.

Lotus Lindley is a Reiki healer, and a Path of Sacred Feminine & Essential Oils Facilitator. After having only met her through Facebook at that point, she actually came to my rescue with an earth-shattering Reiki treatment when I was going through something once. Blessings to her forever for that.

Share this:

A rose blooms and releases fragrance. It doesn’t question its deservedness. A rose just knows.

Share this:

She was not allowed to hurt anymore today.

Share this:

Photo credit: Drea Rewal for Timestamp Photography

Share this:

Share this:

“To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine thy food.” – Hippocrates

Share this:

Photograph of ACB is by Holli Rae

Share this:

Portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. by Ted Brown

Share this:

“Abandon your masterpiece, and sink into the real masterpiece.”
― Leonard Cohen

A rose blooms and releases fragrance.
It doesn’t question its deservedness.
A rose just knows.

“To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint,
all things are friendly and sacred,
all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.”