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

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used to compare meditation with pulling the arrow back on the bow:  pulling the arrow in the  opposite direction prepared it for stronger, more focused action later.   My time in San Francisco was like that.  There was time spent with my powerful (and beloved!) daughter, Sophia, being an integral part of her life and budding art career (www.sacredmuse.com), but, other than that, it was time spent pulling the arrow back on the bow:  not much looked like it was happening.

Now, back in Washington, called back by the siren’s song of Seattle and, indeed, the entire Puget Sound (it’s quite a chorus!), I see the results of the apparent “nothing” I was doing in San Francisco.  During my last night there, spent in Sophia’s tiny studio apartment, I hardly slept. Blissful, divine energy pumped through me and a renewed life-focus strongly resurfaced, clarified and intense.  The frustration of San Francisco, the backward-seeming time spent there had resulted in a strenghtening of my resolve to be free, to spread freedom - - and to become a stronger beacon of darshan, which required a deeper surrender.  I gave it.  I gave it my all, and cried in bliss and gratitude.

Everything had been increasing in “juice”, in flow, as I had approached my return to Washington state.  The wind was perfectly positioned at my back; suddenly every move I made resulted in three steps forward instead of just one. The “backward” steps I’d been taking in SF, where every forward attempt resulted in the reverse direction, was suddenly paying off.

So - Don’t assume you know what is happening.  …And when you want to lock into judgement of what is - or is not - occuring, remember those times when, with the broader perspective of time and experience, you’ve been grateful for what, at the time, seemed like cold, hard knocks! God invented tough love!!

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

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 heard an interesting herbal talk on the radio a few days ago, naming herbs it would be good to take during this time of stress for all of us here amongst the wildfires of northern California. The speaker mentioned not just the damage to our lungs, but also the emotional and mental stress involved: Our senses are receiving the message, non-stop, that danger is present.

I heard this when the sky was finally beginning to show a little blue after weeks of the odd, unhealthy grey of distant wildfires, and when the stagnation I and those close to me had been experiencing for several weeks (all during the burning) had begun to lift, to shift. The sun was again visible, and my dreams had become very strong and clear. A gentle mist arrived, and it seemed to lift with it our life-gridlock. Decisions suddenly became obvious, seemed to nearly “make” themselves.

We forget, sometimes, to consider how external influences affect our day-to-day experiences emotionally. The ancients knew that they were intimately connected to their environment. In another place, another time, we would have had no question of whether it was “just me”, or whether it was the weather, the environment; there would have been no illusion of distinction or separation between the two!

And now, care to join me in a cup? Licorice root? Mullein, anyone?

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 cried last week in the doctor’s office. Really! I’d set myself up: Two and a half years of the same, consistent assumption, overriding the pain, overriding the stiffness, the relative immobility of that left joint. “Some day,” the crap in my head said, “I’ll get the big metal screw out of my ankle, and THEN…”

Well, Someday happened last week - remember back in the doctor’s office? - and what he told me had absolutely nothing to do with those assumptions I’d been making an ass out of myself with. He gave me a prescription for an ankle brace, personally fitted (though it seemed really far from a good thing, there in that back-to-reality moment.) He also suggested steroid shots, and that really did it. I had tears streaming down my cheeks, there in the office where many are told that they CAN be fitted for prosthetic LIMBS, and here I was, tearing up because I couldn’t have the magic-bullet surgery I’d been expecting!! Ah, non-attachment. Non-attachment… And not living for something to come at some future date!

When I was small, my favorite color was baby blue, a “Beam me up, Scotty” color, way before Mr. Scot was ever written into existence. I did not want to be on the planet. Over the years, I embraced the various colors one by one, falling in love with this one, then that one. During this decades-long process, I never had one favorite color; I was still in the process of my healing.

Approximately eight or nine years ago, I realized that I once again had a favorite color: green. The baby blue, out-of-my-body color of my early childhood had deepened in tone and strength - - and had combined with yellow, the color of the solar plexus, or 3^rd chakra, which to me is about owning personal power.

It had been a long (and, forgive me, colorful!) process.

It’s a whole new means of self-knowledge, and a playful one. Merely take a look at the colors you are drawn to, as well any colors you’re resistant to; it’s every bit as revealing as a Rorschach blot.

“Look at what you’re practicing, especially if it isn’t something you preach.”

The first statement is chiding, like shaking a finger, saying, “Aha! I caught you acting in discord with your own values.” And it’s hard to hear accusation. We all have goals, have touchstones for our behavior, and we all want to be in integrity with that.

When we watch our behavior, without judgement, but with honest, eagle eyes, we can begin to discern which beliefs – and their wedded emotions - are causing the discrepancy between our ideals, our values, and our behavior. Often our desire for what we perceive of as “safety” or “love” is stronger (and far less monitored!) than the thoughts and desires we believe to be “correct”.

So… the knee-jerk response that chooses our idea of safety, for example, is the one that gets acted on. Usually, year after year.  That noticing, and the resulting ability to make a better decision, is the beauty - and purpose - of Intuitive Counseling.