The Times, They Are a-Changin’

While I understand people encounter writer’s block, I often laugh it off, like I’m knocking on wood. It doesn’t affect me, I won’t give it power.

Every time I have thought of picking up the laptop to write, post traumatic brain injury (TBI): my wife’s, not mine, I shudder. The last three posts were related to it, and I can’t seem to get beyond that. It was traumatic, not just to her, but also to me. I struggle to take/make time for myself and get out of constant caregiving [hibernation] mode. The injury made me hypersensitive to her needs, and getting out of that mode is more difficult an adjustment that I would have believed possible. Maybe it’s just age and an empty-nest syndrome without ever having had kids.

I’ve also resisted believing things are better. I feel if I acknowledge how much better she is, and she’s practically all better, something will slide and my expectations will be let down, instead of constantly amazed like they are now. The migraines are almost non-existent at this point; they were almost constant for 3 years. I can’t even imagine a world where my head hurt that much for that long. She’s starting to be able to handle places with people: coffee shops, restaurants; this is a gradual re-introduction. She can’t drive yet.

I Was … Delayed

Today is the second anniversary since Saumya’s traumatic brain injury (TBI). Two years ago she received an accidental bump to the head causing damage to the left side of her noggin. You may have noticed a lapse in regularity and frequency of my writing. I’m sorry, it’s not you; it’s me.

It has been a challenging two years. Not only has it had its share of health issues for us to deal with: constant migraines, nausea, seizures (thank God they’re over), various sensitivities, countless hospital visits, on and on; but it has changed the course of our lives. During that week two years ago in 2013 Saum was filling out her paperwork to Harvard Divinity School for a PhD program. We were to move to Boston this summer. Those plans are now scuttled. In the last two years we have: been out see to one movie, had two outings with our group of friends, been on one trip involving an airplane that didn’t go well and she’s been to restaurants maybe twice. My only regret: we were getting to know some new family in the Twin Cities which I haven’t seen much of since. But this has been more of a challenge for her as I have not had many of these restrictions.

Two Songs for Saumya

Saumya

People keep asking me how I’m doing dealing with my concussed wife. Thank you very much. I’m doing fine myself, really. Gone is the anger of the past, anger at the disease of Endo, which is particularly hard to deal with. Pain is tough, and it wears a person down, the person going through it and those around them.

That’s not to say it’s all love and roses. It is extremely difficult to see the woman I love, going through one of the most difficult times of her life: when her brain checks out. With that, I have two songs that help me cope: The Afghan Whigs: The Slide Song and The National: About Today. Both are likely about break ups or more specifically drifting apart, neither of which we are going through, but the distance is real. When Saum checks out, when the headache gets bad and confusion and amnesia set in, we are distant. I reach for her, I hold her – I love her, but she’s just – gone!

What’s my name?

What’s my name? It sounds like a philosophical question; something existential. It has taken on new meaning for me.

Where are we? I’m not asking because I don’t know, or am trying to divine a meaning, but it’s a repeated question.

Saum has a concussion. Sometimes she’s getting better; sometimes there is a slide backwards. She will forget events, names of people and pets, what room she’s in. This is scary, mostly for her, but anytime the memory goes it’s also scary for me. Today, she couldn’t remember the name of our dog, Barnabas. We made a sign for her to remember.

Feel the Pain

The best quote I heard last week, “this Vodou stuff isn’t for pussies.” Thanks Mambo, I needed that. My solace, the song that’s gotten me through this period is Dinosaur Jr’s Feel The Pain. (Best video ever.)

Dinosaur Jr.–Feel the Pain

On New Year’s Eve I had dinner with friends, and then we went to Heart of the Beast for an amazing New Year’s celebration. Everyone was having a great time, but something in me was off – amiss. I just couldn’t get into the festive mood. A feeling was there, something was going to happen and it wasn’t going to be good. A few days later the trouble began.

A path that Really Isn’t

by Mauricio Quintana, 昆游龍, a.k.a. cintain

Today’s guest post is by Mauricio Quintana. Mauricio works as a practitioner of various alternative medicine techniques, but considers himself above all an explorer and student of life and the human condition. He goes by the name Cintain on various online and offline social networks, and likes to travel almost a bit too much. He can be found by following the trail of endless rant on twitter, baited with single-malt scotch or the smile of a pretty woman, and persuaded to sing with nary an enticement. His blog can be found at thewanderingdragon.net.

I. Amongst the Host of the Pretenders

Photo courtesy of Mauricio Quintana

The hardest part about doing the kind of work I do is keeping it real. There is literally a horde of people out there who claim to see energy, work with subtler aspects, and be in contact with a host of incorporeal entities. It is annoying. Moreover, it is pretentious. The thing that used to really drive me up the wall is the fact that, if you're into this sort of thing, there really isn't anything that you can say to refute them. After all, subtle perceptions are what they are, right? If you can't hear what the spirits are saying to me, surely you can't hear them at all, and then you're the poser, the liar, and the quack.

Effectiveness is another one of those "objective" measurements that become tenuous with these people. There are so many "levels", that maybe your healing has already happened and you're just too dumb to notice, too "out of touch" for it to work on you. I am continuously amazed at the followers of some of the more charismatic healers out there. It isn't so much that they're getting "better" as that they are becoming more capable of aligning themselves with the vision and speech of their leader.

Photo courtesy of Mauricio Quintana

The trappings of this work are so alluring, too. Sometimes it seems that the more feathers, bones, medallions, wristbands, and stridently-coloured dress on a person, the more powerful and effective their mojo. The styles vary with lineage, teacher, and tradition, but "badges" are more important with some of these clowns than with the military.

Full-contact Religion

We mill about the peristyle (our temple) waiting for the ceremony. Some of us catch up on the past week, or the past weeks, since we’ve last seen each other.

At no time in particular, the ceremony begins. Assons are rattled, the sound of bells fill the air. The drummers take up their sticks and pound out a rhythm. The singing begins. I struggle to find the song.

At this point the Lwa (the spirits) have not come. The songs are sung the best we can. The ceremony begins like so many have begun before. We reach out.

In me, I feel their absence. My song is not its best. It feels dry, but I carry on, responding to the call of the verses. People are slowly starting to move, but even my movements feel dry.

We move to the rhythms.

My Muse Has Left the Building

Meditation in the North Woods From the ebook Encounters In Nature © 2011 B.T. Newberg

Last week I sat down to write and was struck by a horrible feeling. I didn’t like where my writing was going. Nothing seemed to work. My wife and best friend Saumya suggested I go back and re-read some of my earlier pieces (for completely different reasons) – I did. I began to feel that was the cause of my funk. I like to blame things on her, but really the blockage was all me. After writing The River is In Me, I longed to write more like it reaching for my departed muse; all my attempts failed.

There are some old pieces that moved me. I revisited: Crisis of Faith, There Is No Hell and My Other Family. Nothing seemed to work. I listened to Encounters In Nature, mainly because my friend Mauricio shared his feelings on it. Did it hold some kind of mojo I could tap into?

Replay complete: I’ve decided it’s time to take stock of how my life has changed over the past year.

The River Is In Me

Standing on the banks of the Mississippi River on the New Orleans shoreline, I stick my hand into the water to greet her. She is the Mississippi, and I know her well. After all, she’s my lover.

The scent of her fills my nostrils. I take her into myself, filling my lungs. It’s not a fresh smell, but one of mildew, decay and memory. Her warm humid breath comforts me. She welcomes me to her, my oldest friend.

There is a picture my mother has of me, at the age of months, less than one year old. I’m reaching for the throttle of our family boat, the Mimi III, named after my aunt. It was third in a tradition of five spanning three generations of our family. Not even old enough to speak, she was a part of my life. I grew up on boats, on her water, on the shores of Dubuque, IA. My weekdays might hold school or summer play, but she consumed my weekends. I spent countless hours riding her, swimming in her, swallowing her and eventually skiing upon her. On countless weekend nights, she would gently rock me to sleep and gently crash upon the sides of my bed.

Second Class Citizen: Thank You

My last post Second Class Citizen was a plea to vote no on the Minnesota constitutional amendments being proposed: a limiting of the definition of marriage and Voter ID. I’d like to say “Thank You” that both measures were defeated in Minnesota.

I truly believe both proposed amendments would be a limit on individual freedoms that I hold dear. Last Tuesday made me proud to be a citizen of this great state and our great nation. Minnesota, you made me proud.

Second Class Citizen

Our freedom and liberty are at risk. During this election, the biggest threat to America is not coming from outside the US in the guise of foreign terrorists or an invading army; it comes from within America itself. In Minnesota two amendments are proposed to change my state’s constitution, but this threat is also on the ballot in many other states across the US this year.

Both threats are an attempt to get an electoral majority to limit the rights and freedoms of a smaller group of Americans. In our brief history as a nation, through countless struggles by courageous people our democracy has learned how to protect the rights of certain minorities. Those struggles have led me to believe that an experienced democracy learns how to protect and value minority rights; a less mature democracy threatens and controls the rights of minority groups.

Conversion or Initiation

What do you believe in? Why do you believe it? Were you born into it or did you change your beliefs as you came upon it? Is it mutually exclusive of other viewpoints and beliefs, or is it inclusive and expansive with them? The two words: conversion and initiation used in a religious or spiritual context have subtle differences in meaning. They both usually refer to coming to a new religious system or belief, but they depart from there.

When I was first introduced to Hinduism, I was told it was something people can’t convert to. At the time my 20-something brain said to me, don’t tell me what I can and cannot do; I was put off. Whenever I’m told there is something I can’t do, my first reaction is gut-wrench abhorrence to the idea: why not? Whether the statement itself is true or not, the answer underlying it is rooted more in philosophy and perspective than mere facts. My current understanding is: you can’t convert to Hinduism, but you can initiate into it. The difference seems subtle, but the meaning is very important. (I’ll leave caste aside.)

Most of the dominant Western religions [Judaism, Catholicism, Islam] have a conversation aspect to them. You shed your previous beliefs and proclaim you now have taken on the new dogma. You are converted. You now believe what the others believe. Of course there are variances. Not all people from a religion are generic and believe the same things wholeheartedly, but the conversion takes place and in doing so you proclaim your faith in the new dogma and doctrines. The door closes on your past belief system. These systems are usually exclusive in their beliefs with the religion you converted into.

Missing The Point: White Privilege Part 1

I was deeply saddened and angry by the Sikh Gurdwara (temple) shooting. I wrote the post I Wear a Kara in its wake. In the discussion that followed I understood that I didn’t quite fully achieve what I was hoping to.

How did I go astray? I focused time and energy on how Sikh’s are different than Muslims, instead of focusing on the real problems: racism, hatred and misunderstanding. In my own case, I was stifled by my own blind spot: white privilege.

Twitter user @sikhknowledge sums it up for me

I spent time in my post on how Sikh’s are different. I never should have gone there. I’d like to say we’re all the same: people, families, trying to survive, trying to pray, celebrate life. I want everyone to be treated as equals to the point that I force myself to believe we are all equals – even though we’re not.

I wish the world where a place where all men were treated the same; all women were treated the same as men; all religions were seen as paths of love and a celebration of life with one another: but the world is not that place. Sometimes I want it so bad I try to believe that all men are equal (and all the rest above): but then I get my white privilege blind spot. The world is not an equal place. Further, I’m in the top dominant, privileged position.

Absence

I’ve been away from blogging and I have some posts that are backlogged. My personal life needed attention at the beginning of July. Most of these emergencies are behind me now. Work also demanded too much attention, I needed to really put the computer down and veg with the iPad.

I hope I haven’t lost too many of my readers. I know some people have reached out and asked why I haven’t written in a while.

There are a few posts that should be up in the next week or two. First, I readdress the temple shootings that I wrote about in I Wear a Kara, hoping to restate some things that, upon reflection, left me unhappy with the piece. Second, I hope to finally post on the difference between initiation and conversion. I feel in the west, we tend to think of things in absolutes: you are one thing or another. The rest of the world doesn’t always understand things this way.

Hopefully you’re still with me. I hope to see some exciting discussion raised.

Shiduri-Doo

Shiduri when she first came to us.

She came to us starved, neglected and abused. One of the first things we did was change her name: your old life is over; you are loved.

From the moment Saum saw her on the Great Dane rescue site, Saum knew she was ours. She was in the Dakotas (can’t remember which one), then she was gone from the site. Her name was A. J.

We were looking for a larger dog after Asha (aka Asha boo or Asha the boo). Our other rescue dog, Barnabas (aka B-dog) was morning her loss, deeply depressed. He needed her; she needed us.

We met her in a northern St. Paul suburb at a foster family. It was the same dog A. J.: delisted and moved to the Twin Cities to try and find a home here. She had come to us: we found each other.

I Wear a Kara

The Kara is a steel bracelet worn by warriors. I’ve worn mine non-stop for over 11 years.

I am deeply saddened by the tragedy at the Sikh Gurdwara outside of Milwaukee. I am also very angry. I’m trying to reconcile the two. My wife became an honorary Sikh in the 80s, but that is her story to tell when she is ready.

Eleven years ago my marriage was on the rocks. I’m not going to go into the details of how I almost derailed it, but I made an important decision: it was a marriage worth fighting for. In changing my attitude and strengthening myself to not give up, I started a long journey to repair the damage I had done. This was the longer difficult path, the shorter easier path would have been to dissolve the marriage. It has taken years to turn around.

After my struggles with our marriage, my wife gave me a gift: a Kara. It is a steel bracelet worn by warriors and one of the five items all Sikhs of faith must bear. In fighting for my own marriage, in the struggle and fight against myself and my own issues, she felt I deserved it. I have worn it every day since. It has replaced my wedding band as a constant reminder of my dedication, struggles and strength I put forth in my marriage. It is a stronger symbol of love than any gold band could give; it is a stronger piece of metal, harder to break.

Religious Intolerance

Respect is something I strive for in other people’s belief systems: if they’re different than my own or even within my own faith. I try to respect those of different faiths, as well as those who seem to have no faith, whether they be atheist or agnostic (it seems a growing number of people are).

Lately I’ve been bombarded by postings where people seem to degrade those who have faith in a religion or belief system. The underlying tone is people of faith are stupid (paraphrasing the inference). I have trouble with this. To me stupidity comes in degrading someone else’s beliefs, not from a person who believes something you don’t.

I understand there is a tremendous movement going on in backlash to the religious [often Christian] right (at least in the images being thrown at me). Maybe you find these belief systems oppressive to women, the poor, the lower classes. Maybe you think mankind has been fooled into belief systems through man-made power structures or in some way taking advantage of a human need to believe or belong to something. Maybe you believe in nothing but science.

Denigrating others however is not the way to live a life.

My Other Family

It wasn’t that long ago that I became a Vodou priest. Not so many years before that I joined a [Vodou] House in New Orleans. I have always been a spiritual person, but I haven’t always been a religious one.

Your own personal relationship to your mystical side is spirituality, whether that includes God, Spirit, the spirits, just plain nature or something else. You don’t need religion to be spiritual. Anyone can do it. For years I had spirituality without religion. Then I initiated into a Himalayan Vedic tradition, some might call it Hindu, others would object to that (great theological and philosophical debates have come out of those traditions trying to define religion). Still I wouldn’t say I was religious. To be religious is to have two things: common belief (you could call this dogma) and community.

When I joined my House I took these on: we had common belief in Vodou and our community was a family. Becoming a priest strengthened that bond; I felt closer to my family. I had taken another initiation, passed another cross-road.

The House is there to make it happen, experience it with you and bear witness. You are all much closer on the other side: transformed. It’s powerful, difficult, lonely and touching. The Lwa is at work providing a spiritually powerful transformation.

This I knew; this I had done. Then suddenly it was different.

Americans, Religion, My Brother, and Me

By Jen Foley. This is a guest post from a good friend of mine. It originally appeared on Facebook and is reprinted here with permission.

I guess I need to put a little background down as full disclosure: my baby brother is gay (I never suspected it growing up because I never thought about who my brother would love or find attractive.  Eww.  Gross. That's my BROTHER.) . My first experience in religion and spirituality was at our Episcopalian church (I've had the opportunity to explore both in many different places since then. I believe.).  And I despise confrontation (except with family - sorry, family).

There is a lot of painful dialogue going on in this country, and on Facebook, right now.  And name calling. I cannot understand how friends can be so hurtful to one another.  Perhaps my words forward will hurt some of my friends, but that is not my intent.  I only hope to explain why I get so emotional about this. Remember, I HATE confrontation, but sitting silently just makes me a coward.  I admire too many people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi to remain so. Anyway.  I'm breaking my rule.  I'm saying something political before this November's election is done.  If you want to discuss this with me - that's fantastic.  But if you become cruel, abusive, and will not civilly listen to another person's point of view, I will have to stop the discussion.

Does Our Intellect Detract From Spiritual Ecstasy?

This isn’t a plea for ignorance. No definitive conclusions have come to me. What I’m hoping for is open dialogue.

I have heard people say their heads get in the way of themselves. This leads me to wonder if we intellectualize ourselves out of the moment; the moment of being in the present and experiencing spiritual ecstasy, a mystical experience that requires a detachment of the intellectual self to be fully realized.

People have all kinds of spiritual experiences. Some may be sitting in meditation, experiencing nature, really good sex, playing music, making art, listening to music, appreciating art, swimming, flying, reading, writing, in a temple, riding a horse. Many experiences can be deemed as causing some transcendence to a much deeper meaning that comes with or without revelation – but you succinctly understand you were moved. You may not be able to explain how or the way you were moved – unless you’re explaining it to someone that has been there.

When these bouts of spiritual ecstasy come upon us, is it a removal of our intellect, our thinking that allows it to flow more freely? Do we need to detach our minds to open doorways to let that which is more than ourselves enter into us and course through us?