Whole Self Studies, Rensselaerville, NY (2025)

02/17/2025

My high school choir director, Pat White, died recently, and the fates aligned so that I could attend her funeral. I was grateful to be present in the congregation to sing in her honor and bear witness to a remarkable woman who touched thousands of lives with her music. And to silently offer an apology for a selfish decision I made thirty-seven years ago.

I spent my senior year of high school at the local community college, but had agreed to return for the high school musical. I can’t remember my thought process when the show was announced that January - except that it boiled down to a strong “I don’t want to!!” that was intense enough that I somehow found the nerve to renege on my promise. I didn’t regret it at the time, but I do now.

The Pirates of Penzance had been selected for me. Mabel is perfect for my voice, and I left the production in a difficult place by withdrawing. My friend who ended up doing the role is a great singer, but an alto, so I must have created quite a bit of agita and extra work for the music director, Mrs. White. As an adult I am horrified.

As a teenager, I took it for granted that I would have a chorus to sing in, with a director capable of extracting four-part harmony from a group of fifty not necessarily cooperative adolescents. And to conduct us while playing the piano. And that she’d spend every afternoon for months preparing for the musical. Also that she would happily accompany me at solo competitions, es**rt us to All-County and All-State weekends, and chaperone us to Syracuse Stage once a month - a couple hours’ drive on a school bus, late on a school night. In the same way I took her for granted, I think I also took for granted my voice, a high and agile coloratura soprano that always turned heads - but maybe a gift that came too easily for me to be able to appreciate it.

Pat White had a musical gift, and also the gift of knowing who she was. That’s the part I didn’t fully understand as a teen, and it was my loss. She should have been my role model, but I didn’t catch on. By some grace, I was granted a second chance. In my early thirties, I met Jan Bishop, another strong and talented woman on a musical mission, who helped me rediscover my voice. I even finally sang Mabel. It was my redemption.

The Bhagavad Gita says it is dangerous not to do one’s dharma, that which one is born into this life to do. Both Pat White and Jan Bishop understood theirs, and supported me in the direction of understanding my own, which must include singing so my soul doesn’t shrivel up. They both died within the last year, and though I am prone to weep at funerals, the best way to honor them now is to collect myself and lift my voice in their memories. The subtitle of “The Pirates of Penzance” is “A Slave of Duty.” This time I will rise to the occasion.

If you’re in Rensselaerville, please join us as we honor Jan Bishop’s memory on Sunday, March 9, 2-5 pm at Conkling Hall. I’ll be singing the “Pie Jesu” from Fauré’s Requiem and “The Sun Whose Rays” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, both pieces Jan loved. I’ll also be thinking of Pat, who offered me Lloyd Webber’s “Pie Jesu” as a teen, and that missed opportunity to sing Gilbert and Sullivan, for which I hope I’ve now atoned.

02/03/2025

The dog woke me up at 4 am, crying in his crate. Sobbing. I rushed him out, but not fast enough - desperate, he lost it, diarrhea on the doormat and my slipper. We went out into the cold dark; in his remorse, he squatted and strained for fifteen minutes before we retreated back into the house. That afternoon, rugs and bedding washed, ice storm expected but not arriving, I sat on the couch with him, hand on his warm curly back, rising and falling with the breath of this fellow creature who has so little control over his life, and this morning lost control of the one thing he usually does control. We are tired together. Compassion flows through me.

Zappa is my step-dog, the dog of my children and their father. But for the past six months, he’s been my constant companion. Here are the things he likes about me: I go for a long walk everyday; I spend time in the kitchen working with food; I share my fireside chair; I am calm and attentive.

Zappa is not overly trained, but he is the sweetest soul, and has one trick - if you put a treat in front of him and tell him, “Zappa, Wait,” he will. When I’m going out the door without him, I say it, hoping he’ll understand “Zappa, Wait” indicates a temporary situation, followed by a treat. Honestly, I say it anytime I leave the room, to mean “I will be back.” But usually he follows me.

Zappa - and my son - are about to move to Fiji. When he lives in Fiji, whether I face east or west, the distance to my son will be vast, to the other side of the globe. Too far to comprehend. It’s excruciating to think about, and for the foreseeable future, I will be excavating the emotions surrounding this separation, as my kid leaves for the adventure of a lifetime, and I stay here.

When I was seven or eight, I arrived home on a warm June afternoon from Brownies to discover we had a visitor - a fluff ball of a puppy. Actually, he’d been abandoned on our dirt road and my parents heard him crying. We called him Visitor, but he was there to stay. The first time I was consumed by grief was when he was hit by a car a couple years later. I watched him heaving final breaths on a bloody blanket in the back of the car before my father drove off to the vet. He turned around partway there when he realized the dying was done. We buried our Visitor on the hill in the woods, where over time, more small wooden crosses cropped up, resting place for the many cats and dogs who shared our lives, teaching us to love and lose.

Part of the unfathomable truth about the great mystery we’re living is this cruel contradiction that the more we love, the more we mourn. My son is not dying, only moving half a world away, but the departure looms large, and I’ve been crying a lot. My father recalls crying as he watched my brother board a plane to Nepal, entering the Peace Corps. My great-grandmother got on a boat in Sweden when she was eighteen or nineteen and never went back. I don’t know about the parents she left behind, but even those stoic Swedes must have shed a tear.

Sting sings, “If you love someone, set them free.” The teaching is clear - it’s our attachments that cause our suffering. But I’ve never heard a spiritual teacher suggesting to love less. What does it mean to love outside the confines of time and space, a love free of attachments? Well, I don’t know. But that’s the thing I’m grappling with every morning on my mat and my cushion, and making my imperfect attempts to bring to life. What if every dog is my step-dog, every person someone’s child, far from home?

01/28/2025

I’ve been walking on the frozen lake. Even after several weeks of winter, I wait for the ice fishers to appear. They pull their heavy sleds across the ice, set up a shelter, drill holes (by hand - no motors allowed on our lake), and set their tip ups in the holes. And wait. What a fantastic sport. I’ve never done it, and I assume it often includes a fair amount of day-drinking, but I also think it must be a meditation practice, out there on the smooth open surface of the lake in freezing temperatures, mostly waiting.

I once asked a fisher how to know when the ice is thick enough. The pointer I remember is that it should be frozen solid right to the edge. Some guys put planks over the slushy shoreline to reach the ice - he thought that was a bad idea. I was hoping for some dowser-type secret, but basically he said it has to be cold.

I am tentative at first, not testing the ice the very first day I see people out there, but waiting through many frigid days. And then I follow in their footsteps. I had a friend with me for the first foray this year - she stuck her hand into the slushy ice water of one of the holes. The ice was nine inches thick. That was encouraging. We came back the next day and forged our own trail. The wind was blowing, the ice bare enough between drifts to reveal endless crystalline designs. We were exultant.

We’ve had several nights in a row below zero, so I’m feeling more and more confident. It snowed a few inches so the ice is hidden, but the trails of all who pass there are revealed. The first day after the snow mine were the only human footprints. At the north end of the lake I skirted the shore, following the tracks of a single deer, which veered periodically to the willows at the lake’s edge. I returned to those tracks the next day and was thrilled to see that a coyote had walked in my footsteps… we are all following each other. I felt like I was in some kind of special communication with the wild creatures. I walk where you walk, we walk the same trails, we are here together.

Yoga is a tradition of walking in the footsteps of those who’ve come before. There’s a word I love, anumana, which describes one of the ways we can know things - to be told about them. The word means “to follow the mind.” We can also know things by drawing inferences - there is a coyote track here, that means a coyote was walking here. Most profoundly, Yoga is about the supreme form of knowing, having a personal experience of the thing. But thank goodness we have some footsteps to point us in the right direction.

As I approached the lake this afternoon, an acquaintance from town was also arriving. He’d come to look at the lake, and I told him it was safe to go out on the ice. He was nervous at first. We parted ways, and I took off across the ice. Eventually I saw him venturing out, timidly at first - but soon enough all the way out to the center. And when I came around the other side, he was there. Amazed to have walked across the lake! It’s an indescribable experience. You have to do it yourself to feel it.

It’s the same with Yoga, by which I ultimately mean meditation. The teachers and the texts provide a map and tell us how it is. We infer that it is something special, something worth trying. And then we sit down and try it. The opportunities to walk on the frozen lake are rare, and we have to show up at the right time. But every now and then, following in the footsteps, overcoming our trepidation and self-doubt, there comes a day when we experience a taste of what the mystics call bliss.

01/22/2025

Moon, Mind, Me and Mine

It was cold and I was on my way to bed when I stepped outside to see the full Wolf Moon last week. It was not occulting Mars at that moment, but something else fantastic was happening… la luna stood bright in the sky, surrounded by a glowing halo. Behind her, the clouds scudded by. Behind.

That cannot be. And yet it’s what I saw.

I wasn’t dressed to be outside, but I stood transfixed. My rational mind knew the clouds could not be behind the moon. But my eyes saw the moon in front of the clouds and would not be convinced otherwise.

For the past five weeks, both my kids have been home with me. I haven’t lived with them for five weeks straight since the divorce when they were eight and eleven, so it’s been a very special time. The three of us sat by the door, downcast, tears sliding down cheeks, as the older prepared to return to college yesterday. In two weeks, the younger leaves for Fiji. The leave-taking is more painful this time - more time and space will separate us, and the future feels utterly unknown. It’s pretty easy to be consumed by all the feelings.

There is a story of an Indian saint whose husband has died, and her disciples, deep in mourning, wail to her, “Ma - why are you not grieving?” She replies that he has only gone into the next room, and there’s no need to cry over that. This kind of saintly non-attachment does not indicate less love. It is the expression of true understanding that not only is my true Self immortal and eternal, so is yours. And all shall be well.

Avidya, which means Not-Knowing, describes the reality the rest of us live, we who experience the strange phenomenon of not knowing our true Self. Yoga posits an eternal, unchanging principle, the purusha - aka atman, Seer, Consciousness, soul, the Indweller, “that of god” - the thing that enlivens the body/mind complex that makes up “me” and “mine.” It’s not hard to grasp that the body without its animating principle is a co**se. It’s a little harder to conceive that the mind, too, is inert without it. And that I will continue to Be even after my mind is terminated.

The mind is like the moon, constantly changing, constantly on the move, and though it appears to light up the world it has no light of its own. The full moon illuminates the sky and is bright enough to cast shadows on the earth, but it’s just a cold barren lump of rock out there caught in our orbit. Without the sun, the moon is nothing more than that. But with the sun, the moon becomes our most dynamic heavenly body. So it is with the mind, which, illumined by the purusha’s light, becomes such a remarkable instrument that like Descartes, many of us mistake it for our deepest nature. Descartes declared, “I think, therefore I am.” Yoga says simply, “I am.”

When my mind gets trapped in thoughts or my heart is gripped by emotions, I often turn to the mantra So ‘hum: “I Am”… I Am the bright inner light, an awareness looking out through my experience; I am not my feelings, my thoughts, my preferences. The thoughts and feelings will change. The Self remains unsullied. When it’s difficult to sense the difference between my thoughts and my Self, it’s like I’m looking at the clouds behind the moon and believing it’s true because it seems so

01/15/2025

I went to my first Yoga class in January, 1997. I was teaching middle-school at the Woodstock Children’s Center, a small independent school with a good heart but an uncertain, fluctuating sense of self. Like a middle-schooler. Not so easy. It was only my second year in the classroom, and I shared a group of 5th and 6th graders with a co-teacher who lost control of the students. I tried really hard, and by spring my co-teacher had been replaced, but it was too much for me. I was working 50-60 hours a week, and the stress was manifesting in my body, my neck and shoulders spasming, my breath tight. I knew I had to do something.

Sitting in the teacher’s lounge eating lunch one day, a small ad in the back of the Woodstock Times caught my eye. Unlimited Yoga classes for a month, only $30. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, and had no idea what to expect, but luckily my boyfriend wanted to go too, so we signed up.

We walked up three flights of stairs in an old industrial building on the Rondout in Kingston. A mirror hung outside the studio entrance, bearing the message “The Real Teacher Is You” in stick-on letters. Inside, Jonji Provenzano greeted us with his broad smile. Life would never be the same again.

Everything we did in that studio made sense to me. I’d never been particularly athletic or coordinated, but the positions Jonji suggested felt like old friends, and that was only the beginning. He read to us from Swami Satchitananda’s Yoga Sutras: “The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga.” “Then the Seer [Self] abides in His/Her own nature.” It felt like I was returning to, rather than discovering, the teachings. Physical exercise, philosophical fodder, antidote to angst, sustenance for my soul.

After stumbling along for most of my twenties, a path opened before me. I quit my teaching job at the end of the following school year, and in several leaps of faith, spent a month at an ashram getting certified to teach Yoga, broke up with my boyfriend, went to Nepal, then landed a job teaching Yoga and Pilates.

I practiced every morning - in those days I got up at 6 and felt myself virtuous. Then marriage, pregnancy, babies… things got erratic. But when my youngest was two, I rededicated myself to the daily commitment. That meant getting up at 4:45. I no longer felt virtuous, more like desperate! These days the desperation has given way to certainty - I will do my practice. Everyday - and I do mean every day. The toddler is now eighteen, and I haven’t missed a day for the past sixteen years. Usually that means getting on my mat. But even if I’m sick, or away from home sharing space with others, I can always lengthen my breath, focus my mind, expand my heart. Yoga Sutra 1.14 says, “Practice is firmly grounded when it is undertaken for a long time, without interruptions, with reverence and respect.” This is what I do.

Desikachar said “There is an ocean of Yoga.” That ocean is broad and deep. It was my body that prompted me to dive in, but it is the connection with something that will outlast this physical form that keeps me immersed. Every January, I am especially acutely aware of this gift.

01/01/2025

In the midst of the revelry last night, someone mentioned the random timing of the New Year. I, too, used to find it strange that this point in the round of the year should be considered its start - why not begin with spring, when life bursts forth, or autumn as the Jewish calendar does, when the harvest is in, efforts bear fruit and mistakes are atoned for? The barren time right after the holidays, when we hunker down to survive the cold and dark of winter, seems like an odd starting point.

Last month as I meditated on the solstice, I finally found some answers to a question I’ve been wondering about for years (which I first puzzled over trying to reconcile why A Midsummer’s Night Dream takes place on the summer solstice): why are the solstices referred to as “midwinter” and “midsummer”? Two answers suggest themselves. First, in Old English “mid” meant “with.” Second, the ancients perceived the year in two long arcs - a summer season beginning at the vernal equinox and a winter season starting with the autumnal equinox, which would place the solstices at the midpoints.

As I thought about those two long arcs, I pondered all the many cycles that accompany our lives - the daily sun, the monthly moon, the seasons of birth, growth, and death. And also the constant ebb and flow of the breath.

Our first act as an independent being is to draw breath in; our final act will be to release a breath and leave it at that. When we practice conscious breathing in yoga, we become aware of a pause between the inhale and exhale, the exhale and inhale, and sometimes cultivate it so it lingers several seconds. I have long asked my students to visualize a swing, which before it reverses direction, must hover ever so briefly at its highest point. So it is with the breath.

And perhaps so it is too with the wheel of the year. Solstice means “the sun stands still.” It was explained to me once that Christmas takes place on December 25 because on the solstice the sun appears to stall in its most southerly position for a few days, but that by December 25, its progress back to the north is finally perceptible (the priest exclaimed “the Sun/the Son is (re)born!”). Nice metaphor, says I.

I’m thinking of the week or so after the solstice as the pause after a long exhale - ideally a time for some quiet and reflection, which certainly doesn’t seem to take place during the week after Christmas in my current reality. But my birthday in early January allows me to stretch the time before my new year actually starts, and I will definitely take time for introspection and solitude before then.

All of this is to say that the timing of the New Year now makes perfect sense to me. After winter solstice, the stationary sun suggests a pause for stillness - like the pause after exhale. Then begins the new cycle - a long slow inhale, building as the light increases all the way to the summer solstice. The height of the light on June 21 is like the energized, lifted feeling that accompanies a hold after inhale. And then we’ll begin the pattern again, slowly releasing all that accumulated energy throughout the fall and early winter, which brings us back around to the longest night. Which is followed by the renewal of the light… and the new year. The rhythm keeps on repeating.

Let the year, like the breath, begin slowly, gently.

Peace be to you.

12/20/2024

The December palette is stark and dark - and beautiful, I think. We’re headed for the longest night of the year, and if we pay attention to the natural world, this is a time for deep rest and interiority. In yoga classes this week we have been chanting vishoka va jyotishmati (Yoga Sutra 1.36), a reminder that the thing we are drawing inward toward is a place that is full of light and free from all sorrow.

The early church made a smart choice when they decided to celebrate Jesus’ birth at midwinter, the shortest day of the year. Apparently, he was actually born in March or September, but ancient people were already celebrating around the winter solstice - Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, the Romans’ Saturnalia and the Celts’ Yule - and it was easier to incorporate existing practices than to eradicate them. Thus we have greenery, gift giving, feasting, singing, and candlelight to go with the story of the humble birth in a barn, or perhaps more accurately, a grotto.

I was primed to notice the sacred moment in the garage that I mentioned last week by a picture that’s recorded deep in my memory. A Northern Nativity by William Kurelek showed up in a stack of library books my dad brought home forty-some years ago, and I’ve been captivated by it ever since, especially the picture of a garage standing in for the cattle shed of the Christmas story.

The Bible’s version of the Nativity - the u***d teenage mother, refugee family, rustic birthplace, working-class witnesses, and foreign astrologers - is compelling and poignant, a reminder that divinity need not be grandiose and majestic, but may in fact be as quiet and private, as commonplace and miraculous, as the birth of every creature is.

When I walk in the mid-afternoon these days, it is nearly sunset, and I’m grateful that the earth is frozen solid, the lake is ice-covered, the light is low, with perhaps the glowing smear of the obscured sun shining through the grey sky. Sound is as muted as light, and it’s easy to sense that life’s energy has pulled in, resources gathered, systems slowed, surrendering to the rest that is called for in this season.

May there be space in your celebrations for silence, for stillness, for contemplation. May the light of the season lift your heart. And may winter’s rest be profound and restorative.

12/11/2024

I’ve never liked roller coasters, not that I’ve ridden many of them. I remember the torturous clanking ascent after being secured into the car on our eighth grade trip to Darien Lake, suspense building on that slow and noisy climb, no escape at that point, followed by the horrifying but mercifully brief falling and twisting. I got into the spirit of it with my bunch of screaming friends, but it’s not entertainment I would have sought out on my own. Space Mountain at Disney was less bad - not seeing what was coming made surrendering to the wild ride easier. But fast and swerving descents are not my thing.

Early on in my yoga training, it was suggested to me that the usual condition of the mind is rather like a roller coaster, rising to states of elation and excitement, then plummeting to despair, careening chaotically and frequently from lows to highs and back again, all at the whim of external events. Yoga teaches us how to maintain a steadier course, a life in which the extremes of emotion are less dramatic and we experience less whiplash, softer peaks and valleys - a gentle curve rather than a sharp zigzag.

I am a conscientious person - I pay my bills early, fill up the gas tank when it’s half empty, file my taxes in March. My car inspection was due in November, so I made an appointment during the first week. My check engine light turns on and off periodically, but it was off when I took my car in, so I was surprised to hear it didn’t pass - because it needed a new left control arm. I took the car back to my regular mechanic, who doesn’t do inspections. He rolled his eyes - it looked to him like the other shop was fishing for a repair job.

I won’t bore you with all the details of the ups and downs that ensued, but the check engine light’s been on and off a couple times, and I drove uninspected for the first ten days of December - not tragic, but not in my comfort zone. The worst moment was when I thought I was going to need a new catalytic converter - that’s a couple thousand dollar repair, exactly what I was wishing would not happen. I had moments of hope when the light went off, and was deflated when it came back on while driving to the inspection; and then I received the bad news about the expensive problem. But through it all, my distress was pretty mild, my faith that it would all work out was strong, and it was more like a slightly bumpy ride than a roller coaster.

The happy ending to the story is that there’s a new mechanic in town who, after he shook his head and said “this isn’t good” when he read the car code, told me to try a $30 bottle of catalytic converter cleaner… which worked! I drove straight to his garage as soon as the light turned off, after 6 pm, thinking I’d leave my car there for him to look at in the next day or two. But he was still working, and he insisted on inspecting it right then and there, and also replaced my windshield wiper. We chatted as he worked and had an interesting, human-level conversation about climate change, which in his opinion may or may not be human-caused. In any case, he believes the planet can heal itself. I agree (although I’m afraid that planetary purging of humans may be the path to that healing). We talked about the paradox that EVs are extremely energy-intensive to produce, and concluded that the “greenest” course for me is to keep driving my car for a while longer. I liked his take on having an opinion, which was more about listening than convincing. We were finding common ground, each humbly accepting that our individual point of view is limited.

When obstacles arise, that limited perspective is important to keep in mind. Maybe the saga of the month-long quest to pass inspection has no meaning, and was just a random collection of circumstances. Even if that’s so, I did get my control arm fixed, my catalytic converter cleaned out, my windshield cleared. And I had a couple convivial exchanges with my kid and guys at auto parts stores, one of whom crawled on the cold ground to get under my steering wheel. But maybe there’s some bigger picture meaning I can only see after the fact. The interaction in the after-hours garage on a dark and rainy evening at the end of the mechanic’s long day, when he went out of his way to help me out, and we had twenty minutes of connective communication, felt like grace.

12/04/2024

I am pretty diligent about not letting this blog deteriorate into an ongoing endorsement of whatever I’m currently reading. But this week I can’t resist the urge, having just finished Richard Powers’ Playground, nearly wrapped up listening to Why Buddhism Is True by Robert Wright, and recently having read Shannon Hayes’ Redefining Rich. My mental circuits are blazing, my heart is singing, and I may be a step closer to understanding my place in the universe after taking in this literary triad.

It’s easy to fall prey to doom thinking - I actually have a plan for when all the systems break down. Since I don’t have a hand pump or a bunker full of canned food, it involves walking some distance to be with people I love - to figure it out together, or die trying. I also have an outsized capacity for feeling awe and hope. I am surrounded by beauty, and the more I learn about evolution and all it has wrought, the more astounded, devastated, and optimistic I am, all at the same time.

Shannon Hayes is a local farmer, chef, writer, and all-around powerhouse, who has found a way to live a life she loves, which is planet-friendly and community-building. This is a great example of dharma - living in a way that honors one’s particular gifts, and which is in harmony with ṛtam, the cosmic order. That kind of work enlivens and uplifts everyone, and makes the world a better place. Hayes’ redefinition of rich is in line with mine, and her book is both inspiration and practical guide towards a more fulfilling existence.

I’ve been listening to Why Buddhism Is True while I drive and wash dishes, but if I had a paper copy, it would have pencil marks all over it. Robert Wright is an evolutionary psychologist and meditator who studies Buddhist teachings and practices mindfulness meditation, writing about their efficacy from both a personal and scientific perspective. Wright backs up his observation that meditation can make you a happier person, and his hypothesis that it may have the power to save life on earth, with scientific data. If you have a feeling you should start meditating, read this book - it will help convince you. If you’re already giving it a go, read the book - it will support you.

I was lucky the library delivered Playground when I had a little time off for Thanksgiving. When I read Richard Powers, I don’t want to put the book down - the intertwining stories unfurl in an uninterrupted cascade, without any good stopping points. This book, about the powers of AI, the degradation of the ocean, and several damaged humans, could be mightily depressing. But Powers creates beauty and gives hope. His description of a strobing cuttlefish, and a matching dementia-induced hallucination, leave me with the same sense of “wow” that listening to Bach does. Somehow, against all odds, there seems a glimmer of a chance that humanity will prevail.

Wright refers to William James’ idea of “an unseen order.” My guess is this is similar to the Vedic idea of ṛtam I mentioned earlier, and it offers an alternative phrase to “cosmic order,” which may sound a little too cosmic for some people’s taste. To me, these three very different books all contain evidence of an unseen order, a truth that cuts through the chaos and pain that define so much of usual existence. A truth that offers a sense of possibility.

Whole Self Studies

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