Life if like a box of cho - no, I’m just kidding. Actually, I think life is a lot like a Geometry problem. Perhaps that’s why, for the first time in my life, in 10th grade, I was one of the top two math kids in my grade.  - But my Algebra I teacher would have been absolutely stunned (as was I!) to see me in that position.
In Geometry, you have some information that is already given to you, with which you need to solve your equation. It’s always enough to do the job, though at first it may not appear to be so.  Like life, you say?  I agree!

And as in Geometry, some equations have you solve for angle AB, in another equation, while the degree of angle AB is one of the pieces of information you are already given, in order to solve a different problem.  So we’re all like that.  One person’s given is another person’s problem!

For some, patience may be a given - they’re almost born with it.  Patience, for me -well, that was definitely something I was solving for; and it has been hard-won.

It’s easy to judge others for what is so easy for us.  “What is her problem??” we’ve all thought.  Maybe we should take that question literally, as her problem is obviously something different than yours is.

When we judge others, we’re assuming they began with the same set of givens!  My friends in college liked to call me “bass-ackwards”, pig-latin for the fact that I generally tended to be going in a direction that no one else was going in. (I had started in a place that none of my friends had gone to yet. I began life with the givens of knowing that materialism alone would never make me happy, and have always known that I was not my body. I was uncomfortable with materialism, mistakenly assuming that if I took it on, I’d be lost in it, like everyone else I saw!)

These kinds of opposite directions - you and I learning what the other already knows - makes it easy to misunderstand and judge each other. Those born with perfect health, for example, often have a hard time understanding the reality of  someone born with serious health complications. Those born with wealth often have a hard time understanding what it’s like for someone who begins life with a negative family bank balance.

Just remember:  the person you want to teach probably also has something to teach you. (Right back at ya!)  Look for it!

Learning styles.  The term is unfortunate, I think, seeming to suggest that we could choose a different style, just as, say, we could choose to dress Goth today.

Some of us can choose our learning preference, or at least, sometimes can.  I know, for example, that I don’t do well when listening to a long set of directions.  More than 3 pieces of information, and I’m lost (no pun intended!). But if I  write down the spoken directions - even if I never look at the paper again - I can often make my way there with no problem!  That’s because I’m a very kinesthetic learner, and if I combine the two (auditory and kinesthetic), it works well for me. But that’s for those of us who function relatively well in several different learning styles.  My experience tells me that there are those who don’t.

We’ve all heard the stories about how, when one sense is lost, another compensates. This myth is a great detriment for some of our differently-abled neighbors and friends.  Here’s my first epiphany along these lines:

In the 90’s, I was working as a sign language interpreter.  For the first two years, my client was a high school student.  When I met her, she was 16, and was placed in Algebra 1, though she could not multiply.  She also, I discovered, could not draw a triangle or a circle - the ends didn’t meet.

Curious about how to reach her, academically, I began experimenting with different learning styles.  Clearly, visual learning was not an effective tool for her.  This would, unfortunately, include sign language itself!  Over the weeks of my very active experimentation, a very interesting thing occurred.

One day, in her remedial English class, the teacher began talking about nouns. To make sure my student remembered and understood the concept, I asked if she remembered what a noun was. She signed “A person,” the screwed up her forehead, as if what her brain was telling her didn’t make sense. “…PLAYS??” she added, incredulously.

I knew that it was not the visual similarity between the words “place” and “plays” that caused the confusion.  This student  generally did not recognize the similarity between words when a simple ending was added to them, such as -”ly”.

But “place” and “plays” sound virtually the same.  Stunned, I had a devastating realization: This profoundly deaf girl appeared to be “wired” for auditory learning!

I further confirmed my theory over the coming days, then went excitedly to the professionals with whom I worked, sure that they would be happy that this young woman had finally been “decoded”.  But these were the same professionals who had allowed this non-multiplying student to be passed through the grades until she ended up, way out of her league, in Algebra I:  No one wanted to see the truth.  No one wanted to see that this young woman had yet another challenge to deal with. She’d been “aided”, for years, on her tests and her homework by teachers and sign language interpreters who didn’t want to see that she had other issues, not just deafness. “Don’t you mean?,” they’d suggest, referring to the correct answer.  And “Yes,” she would sign in reply, knowing that this was the right answer they wanted from her.
So-

Some Deaf people can develop what seems to us to be “super vision”, and some Blind people can develop “super hearing”.  These are the people for whom the still-functioning learning style is strong  (A blind person whose primary learning style is NOT visual, for example, and with strong auditory and kinesthetic abilities for learning). For us to compare what one learner is capable of doing, how one Deaf person adapts to his or her circumstances and to impose that expectation on another… Well, that’s going to create just one more (unnecessary) obstacle for someone who just doesn’t need one more.

- Shanti Mai

I’d love to hear your experiences and perspectives on learning styles…

Years ago, I attended a Remote Viewing workshop.  My (then) sweetheart’s idea. He thought it would be an interesting way to bridge our worlds.  The experience, however, did nothing of the sort.

Unfortunately for me, early in the day we were given the Buddah as our “target”.  Tuning in to this target, as instructed, I was immediately engulfed in a luminousity, an expanded, enlightened Consciousness  (Oops! that part was not instructed).

Moved and increasingly expansive myself, I went to the instructor with my guess:  Jesus. 

Not understanding that I had experienced the target, rather than gotten objective information about the target, his reply was simply, “No. Go try again.”

With further contact, the feeling, the experience, of course grew.  I didn’t know what to say.  “An angel?”  was my next guess.  And again, “No,” was the response.

He sent me back to my paper, filled with tables and grids.  I was, by then, in such a NoN-analytical state that I could no longer even pretend to perform the (highly analytical, highly mental) exercise.  Soon it was time for our lunch break, but I knew I would not be returning.  This just wasn’t working for me.

My brilliantly analytical (computer genius) boyfriend was embarrassed at my behavior (I was in tears by this time).  To the others in the room, I must have seemed like I was crying because I hadn’t gotten the answer right.

I didn’t blame my sweetheart, nor the instructor.  Their experience did not include mine.  How could they know what it felt like to be told that I should go from my experience of touching Enlightenment, of being engulfed in Oneness, that I should return to my desk. Return to some cerebral, linear process and do it “right”. SO many years later, I was being told, again, that my experience was not Valid.

This time, however, I was an adult, and simply chose not to continue the process.

I suppose it’s not surprising that Remote Viewing, developed in secrecy for military purposes, would not have a mindframe capable of understanding a mystic.  To them, Gautama Buddah is an historical figure, nothing more.  Facts, such as his country of origin, would have been a partially correct answer, as would physical characteristics.  If I’d drawn a picture recognizable as the Buddah, I’d have been RIGHT.  Experiencing the Buddah as if I were in his presence, or as if I were the Buddah, well, that just was never a part of their expectation, and appeared - from their perspective - to be the wrong answer.

We all need to honor our gifts, our way of moving through the world.  They’re not all the same, and there’s a reason for that! I honor the scientific - I love the world of quantum mechanics, technology, computers…  It doesn’t however, always love (or understand) me!

A few days ago, a friend sent a link about voting for the White House Farmer.  I thought, for a moment, that the only thing in question was which organic farmer was going to be chosen.  - And what an amazing reaction I had!  Tears ran down my face, even as I researched and discovered that it was still only an idea (though a VERY good one!)

I spent a chunk of my childhood close to Washington, D.C., in nearby Maryland, where I went on the White House tour with my grade school class.  To imagine THAT girl (me!) seeing a gorgeous garden of produce, growing right there on Pennsylvania Ave….

Our mothers, in the ’50s and  ’60s, valued canned peas and frozen carrots and “instant” potatoes and powdered milk  (they were new-fangled).  Not a mother I knew growing up had food she picked for dinner.  That was old-fashioned, growing things. I was so unused to home garden produce that, in one of our military “home” incarnations, my mother grew mint on the side of the house, and I found that quite exotic and wonderful.

What a potent message it would be for hordes of school children to see Obama Organics during their tour!  Children hear us blather about what we believe we’re all about, what we’d like to believe our values to be.  But they SEE what we DO.  Having an organic garden on the White House lawn would be the biggest statement of our TRUE values that we could possibly make to the children.  (They understand food so much better than they do fuel, banking, and the like!)

• It would say to them that food is more important than lawns (it IS);
• that healthy soil, the soil that grows our food, is of concern to us all, ALL the way up to the top; and
• that small scale, organic farming is not a thing of the past, but is having a resurgence with this resurgence publicly on display for tourists with cameras, who though they may not speak English, will need no translated signs to show them what that garden really means.

Thanks to Michael Pollan, whose idea which has inspired so many…

Sometimes change is a good thing.

While talking with a dear friend of mine, I discovered that this 82-yr.-old had lived through some serious changes.  And not the kind you might automatically image.  You might be imagining the loss of innocence, the loss of a simple life.  No, in this case, the direction is quite the opposite.

Looking at this gentle man, I watched as he told a story of having to kill his pet golden retriever’s puppies - all healthy, all 13 of them.  How brutal that sounds to me today!  As a 12-yr-old, it was the norm, what any struggling farm family would have done, he said.  This was confirmed by two elder friends, who nodded, listening, unshocked.   Yet today, my friend had tears on the brims of his eyes as he told the tale of blowing the life right out of these gorgeous pups.

“i will never again kill a dog,” he proclaimed, his Adam’s apple moving with emotion.  Mores and values are different today, and not always in a bad way.

HERE”S ANOTHER ONE for you:

When I lived in Ashland, Oregon, a year came and went which saw the population - and property values - grossly altered by serious earthquakes in California.  Up came the retirees, with their inflated pensions and savings, altering forever the landscape, and to some degree, the lifestyle, of this spectacular and special town.  Complaining about the changes became common conversation, but I couldn’t help but remember that the KKK once paraded down the main street of a VERY different Ashland, one that we wouldn’t have wanted to live in.

And it’s all CHANGES.

It’s easy with the recent purging of B!sh and Ch*#ney to think that we always are open to, and appreciate the possibilities of change.  But we don’t.

Sometimes it takes perspective.

This past October / November, I had approximately 3 weeks of steady bliss.  It seemed no matter what happened (or didn’t happen), I went to sleep blissful, woke up blissful, and noticed during the day a constant calm, a due-to-nothing joy.  It occurred to me then that Mona Lisa’s smile may have been one of silent, pervasive bliss.

It would certainly explain our fascination with her.  “She has a secret”, they say.  Perhaps it’s the secret of lasting contentment and peace, the secret of inner bliss.  I’ve been the keeper of that secret before - for a few days, for a week, for two… And every time, I’ve thought - and hoped! - that maybe this time it would be permanent.  When you’re “there”, it feels so familiar, so right.  It becomes hard to imagine the pain of losing it yet again.  Enlightenment, after all, is normal.

Well, Mona Lisa’s smile has come and gone, yet again.  December’s stresses, some of which I’m now rebounding from, make my recent weeks of unbending bliss seem rather distant.  But I know that they’re not.  Mona Lisa’s still smiling silently on my inside, and someday she’ll be my permanent exterior, a result of my permanent experience.  I won’t hold my breath for that, of course, and neither will you.  We’ll proceed as best we can, accepting what is before us, accepting what is true.  Someday that truth will be unchanging.  For today, it is not.

I’ve been reading Ram Das’ book, Still Here.  Wise, candid, and poignant.  Timely, too, as I recently flirted with death.  Shirley’s death, to be more precise.  She was expected to die any day. I spent two weeks with this 94-yr.-old, annointing her as they did in the Bible, her favorite book.  Discussing who she’d be reunited with.  Confessing her regrets.  I told her I could see God through her when we met, she was that translucent, that ready to go.  And now, 4 weeks later, she’s still here.  But stubborn again.  She’s lost her glow.

Shirley taught me about attachment - - again!  I wanted her to die with, or in, a sacred air.  SHE wanted to “die with her pants on”, wanted to be in control, even if it meant dying from an unnecessary fall while she tried to be independent one last time.  I found it so much less attractive, her behavior, but what really WAS less attractive was my judgement of the way she chooses to leave us.

I’m grateful for Shirley’s teaching, happy to have been part of her preparation for death.  And I’m even happier (though disappointed, as well!) to have been shown that I have yet one more attachment.

Thank you, Shirley - - and good-bye.  

Love, Shanti

Last week I was writing an email to people in power, pleading for justice.  We all do that; these days there are many serious issues to plead about!  In closing my email, I found myself signing it, “In Humanity”.

I then realized, with a start, that its opposite - inhumanity -  is only a pause, only a breath away.  A space, or breath stands between the two words.  That pause….  So very essential!

When the mind is Silent - paused - we find our connectedness.  From this point of compassion, where is no them, no me, it is not possible to act in a way that is inhumane!  What is natural - and effortless!, from that vantage point, is to act in, or with, humanity. This is the value of meditation, of prayer, and other practices encouraging mindfulness.

We’ve all heard the wise maxim, “What you put your attention on, grows”.  So, at the time of celebrating Harvest, grow Compassion.  Grow humanity.  Grow in Silence, through whatever practice works for you!  It is truly a worthy endeavor.
With much Love -

and In Humanity -
Shanti Mai