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

Unlike so many Americans with African roots, Barack Obama is lucky to know which country his family hails from.  It’d be like knowing merely that you were European…  Italian?  Portugese.  Belgian?  Finnish! Scottish?  Not many of us would be comfortable with such vague information.

When I was in 5th grade, a relative of my father’s - perhaps a 2nd cousin, we were not at all a close family - sent us a request for information; she was doing a family genealogy. I was very intrigued, and offered to help her.  Sadly, she broke my heart by sending me a very condescending letter. What she didn’t know was that, 14 years later, I would solve the mystery that ended up stumping her.   At the time of publication, her volume left a mystery:  was the “John Harrington” on the neighboring lot indeed the father, the next link to the past?  At this point, due to a lack of paperwork proof, that strain of the Harrington tale “ended”.

For myself, I wondered why no one tried to start from the other end - to start where Harringtons started and see if they could find evidence bringing a John Harrington to that town in that time…

I forgot all about that thought until, at age 25, newly arrived in Ireland, my brand-new map in my hand, I became transfixed (without a thought in my head) with a little island off the coast of County Cork:  Bere Island. Nearly a week later, having gone to a music festival and traveled around a bit, I claimed Dublin as my own town.  Told a new friend about my neat and mysterious experience with Bere Island, to which he said, “Well sure, that’s where the Harringtons are!”  and proceeded to bring out his phone book, which actually included the professions of at least some of the listings.  The first one he showed me was (first name?) Harrington, ferryman. For a small island, there were lots of Harringtons.  I knew that, though there were lots of Harringtons in England, that my family was Irish.  Several visits to England had never brought any feeling of familiarity, had solved no personal mysteries. Discovering the Irish connection really did. (More about that later in a later post!)

It was like my cells recognized their own roots.  So….  Intuitive - or genetic?  Who cares, really?  It was a deeply confirming experience.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s like the question about the chicken and the egg.  It’s irrelevant really, which came first:  What’s important is the connection between them.  And that’s what you get when you know your roots.

I’d been so very zen in the many months leading up to the election.  Que sera, sera!  Whatever will be, will be. I was calm and surrendered - and ready! Prepared for any untoward surprise -  another stolen election, martial law…

But a different kind of surprise was in store for me:  I was anxious!  Not wanting to be by myself, waiting for the results, I looked online to find an appropriate election party.  Not hard to do, in Seattle!  By the time I got into the inner sanctum of The Showbox (scores of people were turned away; I waited…), well, by that time, CNN had called the election.  Skeptical (not wanting to be unprepared and taken by surprise), I held back until I heard that Obama Had Taken Florida.  I became unglued, crying, joyful.  HOPE-ful, and in a room filled with radiant, joy-filled strangers, all fans of, and some actually employees of - The Stranger, the host of our party.

When I left, walking the one block up 1st Avenue toward Pike Place Market, I passed a homeless man, muttering to himself. But when I listened carefully, I realized what he was saying!  It was:  “Freedom……  Real freedom……”

Within 5 minutes, though, it was too LOUD to hear anyone muttering quietly to themselves.  Cars and cabs drove by, honking, while people whooped and hollered, hugging strangers…. Then the same cabs came by again, with the same passengers, cheering, waving, over and over again.  I knew that the inhabitants of these cabs were racking up quite a tab, and that they weren’t the kind of people who could easily support such an expense.  But I also knew they would never regret their choice, this night.  TONIGHT.

A couple of my friends impressed me today. One of them was 845 miles away, yet managed to send me a Skype message by thinking about me.  Didn’t touch her Skype account, yet a message came in from her account! Okay, the “voice message” was very short, and had no voice, but she wasn’t even trying to send me a psychic message, or anything of the sort - just merely thinking about me. Interesting - and impressive.

The second friend called me as the bus I was on was at the stop at 9th and Mission (in SF), asking me if I wanted to go to the Asian Art Museum, saying that she had an extra ticket.  When she asked where I was, she said, “Get off!  Get off!”  So, trusting her, I did, and proceeded to call the Muni information number when I got off the bus at the next stop, 7th and Mission.

Muni said, “Walk up to 9th St. and turn right. It’s two blocks from that intersection.” She’d suddenly had a strong feeling that she should call me and ask if I wanted to go, and she did so JUST AS I WAS AT THE RIGHT BUS STOP.

From my side, I’d left the Zen Center (having never been there, and heading from there to an unfamiliar part of town), turned my phone on, and gotten on the very first bus I saw!  Then I called Muni info to ask if I was heading in the right direction… 

- And, as we have seen, I was!

We talked, then, about synchronicity, and her view is the same as mine:  That, if you’re in the moment, following the flow of the present moment, you are in the right place at the right time, you are the thread properly placed in the cloth on the loom, not the thread twisting around, running at cross purposes with the whole.

Like many of you, I’d felt that I’d lost this connectedness for a while. It was delightful and reassuring for it to begin all over again. THIS is the way I know Life to be.

Note  added July 28th:  I have good reason to believe that the problem mentioned below is being fixed at - or in the general vicinity of - this moment! So now on to the original post:

My blog entries are not showing up most-recent first, but in the order they were written in, so it looks like there is never anything new!  I haven’t been able to correct that yet…
SO: I would like to reward some people who ARE reading this nearly-invisible entry!

Three people will be given half-price sessions if they set up an appointment
this Monday - Thursday, July 21st - 24th. Call toll-free: 888-321-1981 or email shanti@shantimai.com

For information about my work, see http://www.shantimai.com/services.html

Fathers play with their children and their dogs, and talk with their neighbors’ children, all on a beautiful oval loop of large, rather grand, identical brick duplexes. Their wives share maids and baby sitters, one of whom is a lovely married neighbor, pregnant with her first child - she merely walks past one matching two-doored home to get to work.

Everything is peaceful and rather homogenous. The homes are strangely familiar to me, military brat that I am. I feel like I’m in a time warp, like I’ve gone back to the 50s and early 60s, a very disturbing and unsafe time for me.

So though it appears to be a lot like a 2008 version of Mayberry, I keep wondering about the Stepford Wives (and sons and husbands)…

It’s a good opportunity to be present with my thoughts, to watch my projections. And the environment, physically at least, is idyllic!

Sometimes I find myself being too accepting of whatever wants to come down the pike. Rather than taking the reins, I’ve recently been a little too busy listening, too busy waiting for guidance…. I guess it’s like trying to help someone who seems to be okay with everything - - it’d be easier to help them if you had a clear idea of what they did and didn’t want!

So I’ve been a little too acquiescent. There’s surrender, but there’s also a definite need for co-creation. This week I grabbed the reins and set about to make a bit more structure in my free-wheeling life. And incredible and rather instant results is what I’ve gotten in return. So now I’ll dance!

I clearly see the “Good Girl / Good Boy” complex in some clients. It’s easy, as I was so very attached to it, myself!

I often got away with things, in elementary school, that other kids were punished for. Strangely, I could chat while the teacher was talking, write letters in my desk, chew gum. I even once slapped an annoying boy placed next to me because I was seen as his antithesis: He was a Trouble Maker, I was a very Good Girl. Because of this labeling, my slap was seen as appropriate, which I found a little disturbing, but in no way did I want to threaten my GG status.

At home, we were regularly punished for things we hadn’t done, and other, frightening and dangerous things happened to us, as well. It was like I lived in two diametrically opposed realities. I held on to my school identity for Dear Life.

One day, my school reality stood my world on its ear: I was caught talking in class - - and sent out, with my two chatterbox-conspirators, into the hallway. I was appearing as a Bad Girl, and the other sixth grade class was about to witness my - our - disgrace. I may have been the one responsible for the brilliant cover we spontaneously developed, or I may have merely been the grateful recipient of a brilliant serve. Anyway, picking up the long, black stapler that still lay on the floor where we’d SO recently finished our Good Girl task of helping the teacher by putting up her bulletin board, one of us saved the day.
As Mrs. Wilson’s class rounded the corner - dangerously close to our disgrace - one of us “held” a previously-stapled poster board item, asking the others, “Does this look straight?” to which her Good Girl friends replied, “It’s a little too high on the right”. Mrs. Wilson’s kids never knew the difference. Some part of me wondered, though, a little about myself… though I would never have known to call it Indentification.

I received an email today, a visit from 1978 Dublin: Ger O’Connell, my round-eyed Rathmines housemate, found me synchronistically through my blog. (I’d looked for her nine or ten years ago, and had no luck.)

Now we’re catching up through Skype. Small, wonderful World!