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Waking To Ordinary Life
Waking To Ordinary Life
Waking To Ordinary Life
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Waking To Ordinary Life

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Spiritual practice is never something mysterious or alien to ordinary existence. Neither is it defined by difficult exercises or maintained by perfect tranquility. Waking To Ordinary Life speaks directly to the false presumption that our relationship to the Divine, to Spirit, somehow precludes a simple life based in human maturity, dignity and kindness toward others. It casts unrelenting light on how clear-cut spiritual practice actually is, if only we have the courage to choose it. Lalitha is a spiritual teacher living in Washington state and Canada. Waking to Ordinary Life is derived from her recent talks and conversations with friends and students making its message fresh, accessible and real. Her many examples bypass heady concepts and pretty words, and bring the reader down to earth where messy relationships, greed and cancer must be handled. She speaks with compassion, yet is categorically unwilling to compromise the demands of committed, unsentimental work on self. Topics include: the necessity for articulating an aim, which may then be applied as a guiding principle in all one’s endeavors; the power of genuine forgiveness; the urgency inspired in the face of death, and the experience of delight in ordinary life. A Handbook for Sustainable Spiritual Practice. Fresh, wise female voice on the spiritual scene. Grounded and practical help for any serious practitioner.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHohm Press
Release dateMar 4, 2015
ISBN9780983845584
Waking To Ordinary Life

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    Waking To Ordinary Life - Lalitha Thomas

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    Introduction

    by James Capellini

    Awake. How often have we heard ourselves or someone else remark, Where did the time go? My, you’ve grown so fast! The years pass more and more quickly the older I get? Where were we while all this time was passing beneath our noses? Do we feel that life has somehow slipped through our fingers, or played itself out without our full participation or even consent? It’s a genuine concern. Have I been asleep as those years rushed by?

    Sometimes I forget that the heart of my spiritual practice is in the details surrounding me at this very moment. It’s in the presence I bring to handling myself and my relationships, to the people and circumstances in this world. Fortunately, something eventually triggers my recollection and suddenly the past ten minutes – or the past year – surfaces in my consciousness as a playing field upon which I was absent. Without realizing that I’m asleep at the wheel, the vehicle I call my life will be driven by unconscious forces. And, at the end of the day, I’ll be left wondering how on earth I ended up where I am.

    In Waking to Ordinary Life Lalitha takes us by the hand and guides us in building the strength necessary to jostle ourselves from sleep. Each chapter represents a transcript taken from talks and private conversations with her students, beginner and advanced, during 2009 and 2010. I sincerely hope my editing does not obscure her animated and playful disposition, the person beneath the words. If you find yourself chuckling, or even guffawing out loud, as you encounter her outlandish metaphors and uses of language, you’ll be right in sync with her original audience.

    Justifications for the status quo are difficult to uproot, even amongst those committed to serious spiritual practice, which is why Lalitha infuses the teaching with humor and funny anecdotes. Ever try coaxing a dangerous but clung-to object from the grasp of a small child? They’ll scream and flail as you pry their fingers from something you know could do serious harm or even kill them. As a caregiver, it’s crucial to develop skill with creating clever diversions – a talent in which Lalitha excels. With her extensive training in herbistry and healing, Lalitha is ever ready to provide alternatives to move us in the direction of building what she calls the sadhana body.

    Strong spiritual practice (sadhana) demands a finely tuned machine, with brain chemistry and hormonal activity that is uncompromised by drugs and food addictions. The challenge faced by those willing to follow her prescription is whether or not they can stand to feel that good, be that alert, that responsible. Most people literally cannot. A strong body and clear mind come with an implicit obligation to behave responsibly, as adults, leaving no room to indulge old habits and the impulse to curl up and feel sorry for ourselves.

    While an innate ability to heal the human machinery has served Lalitha well throughout her life, healing the body is not a meaningful objective in itself. Health does not reveal truth; it does not necessarily lead to what the Buddhists would call right view, moving us to live lives of dignity, generosity and compassion. In fact, it often takes a crisis in our health to shake us out of our complacency, to shock us into deeply questioning who we are, and what’s going on. Fixing people up may be no service at all if the healed individual then crawls back into a shell of denial and self-abuse.

    Lalitha has previously written three well-received books on nutrition and herbal medicine, but Waking to Ordinary Life is the first in which she openly speaks from her position as a devotee and teacher in her spiritual lineage. I’ll spend a little ink here in briefly telling her story.

    Meeting the Master

    May, 1981, Arizona, is when and where Lalitha first heard the name Lee Lozowick. She was thirty-two years old and had already completed her apprenticeship as a healer, had operated her own successful herb company, had seen every yogi schmogi and guru shmuru on the then-happening new-age scene, and didn’t think she would ever want to meet another one. Still, something compelled her to see this man.

    Visiting friends in Arizona at the time, she had a rare opportunity to meet Lee Lozowick, a relative newcomer to the world of spiritual teachers. Her friends arranged for her to join them in picking Lee up from the Phoenix airport. He was on his way to his community ashram in the mountainous north of the state, and she was invited to attend a teaching that he would give later that evening.

    Entering the baking heat of Phoenix in summer, Lee greeted his students and brightly beamed as he strode off purposefully toward the parking garage, conversing playfully the whole way. Lalitha kept a few paces back, observing this vibrant blue-eyed man with keen yet wary attention. Could a true guru be this simple and direct in his humor and manner? He seemed a study in contrasts: childlike yet cynical, energetic yet grounded, intense yet utterly relaxed. She felt a strong resonance from the instant they met. But, being incredulous by nature, she maintained a cautious attitude for the entire two-hour drive to their destination. Lee, meanwhile, sitting right beside her in the van, mischievously prodded her with questions about her lifestyle and background. What brings you to Arizona? How come you have so much time to travel around like this, don’t you have a job? A healer, eh? Are you any good?

    Yogi Ramsuratkumar, the beggar saint from Tiruvannamalai, South India, was Lee’s own spiritual master, but in 1981 this had not yet become common knowledge. Lalitha therefore was having to assess this rascally guru (as she later described him) on his own merits, free of the context of the greater lineage to which he actually belonged.

    When she returned to her friends’ home in Phoenix that night, she was glad for the experience but not yet moved to become Lee’s student. As these things go, it took a powerful inner experience to nudge her into placing more serious attention on Lee Lozowick. The morning after her visit, she awoke with an unshakeable certainty that this unlikely man was in fact to play a pivotal part in her life; and was in fact her guru, protector, friend and ally.

    Aching to penetrate more deeply into a life of practice, Lalitha quickly but responsibly removed herself from the healing center she had co-founded in Massachusetts and moved west to Arizona to engage her work with Lee. She offered her skills as a healer – and as a mature, capable adult – to his community, for use as he saw fit. And this same type of contribution of service remains uppermost in Lalitha’s mind as she works with people who approach spiritual work in a community setting. Rather than hoping (or even worse, expecting) to primarily take something from the relationship with a teacher or work group, a mature and wise person will instead offer something, knowing that things of value come with a price. In the case of spiritual work, the price is service, attention to detail, sacrifice of greed and self-hatred, a willingness to patiently bear the unpleasant manifestations of others – little things like that! Merely knowing the price, however, is not enough. It must be paid in order to get the goods. And so, over the next twenty years, Lalitha offered herself again and again as she became an integral part of Lee’s work and community. She participated in businesses and projects of all sorts, including gardening. With her expertise in maintaining the health of the body, she helped establish the community’s dietary recommendations. She used her skill as a lay midwife to assist in delivering many of the community babies.

    Focus and Grounding

    Lalitha’s attention, while available for all these myriad side projects within the community, remained one-pointedly focused on her teacher and the inner processes involved in the work of personal transformation. Eventually, Lee asked that she give public talks and seminars for the greater sangha all over the world, and encouraged others to pay close attention to what she had to say and teach.

    Due to the training she had received, Lalitha was adept at helping others manage the mind and explore unfamiliar inner territory. And because even the most esoteric spiritual practices begin with being grounded in the body and intimately familiar with one’s immediate situation, Lalitha would bring every consideration back to planet Earth. Very practical.

    Over the years her travels with Lee and in providing seminars for others took her to Mexico, Europe, India and Canada. But it was in Canada that her role as teacher with students of her own truly began, and since September 1998, Lalitha has been working here with a small group of dedicated men and women. Sage advice from her own teacher and others such as Arnaud Desjardins, the respected French spiritual teacher, has convinced her that growing the sangha body in a slow and attentive way would be far more fruitful than growing too large too fast. Now, more than thirteen years into her teaching work, a rich mood of intimacy remains. Readers of Waking to Ordinary Life get to share in this intimacy. She is speaking directly to you, the sincere student and investigator of truth. Imagine sitting with Lalitha in your living room on the sofa, perhaps a pot of steaming tea on the coffee table between you, as she tells the stories contained here. Such an image would be true to life.

    Lineage and Goal

    Papa Ramdas, Yogi Ramsuratkumar, Lee Lozowick – these spiritual masters comprise Lalitha’s lineage, the teaching and influence of which she aims to transmit to her students in Kripa Mandir (the name given by Lee for Lalitha’s community or church.) The acknowledgement of our roots and peers, plus the incalculable debt we owe to the source of wisdom and blessing in our lives, is an essential aspect of this Path. And the teacher’s primary job is to serve as an unobstructed conduit for the force of transmission available through the lineage that has come before.

    We call our tradition the Western Baul Path, not because the gurus in our lineage were Bauls – a sect that originated in Bengal, India in the fifteenth century – but because there are so many parallels between ours and the Baul’s sadhana. We are both tantric traditions, meaning that we do not reject the world or the body in an attempt to eliminate unspiritual temptation from our lives. Temptation is squarely faced in the midst of living an ordinary life; a life that is juicy and alive with healthy passion, unafraid to experience the heartache of longing for a love that is real and thoroughly penetrating. Music, dance and poetry are powerful means used to communicate the teaching.

    Enlightenment is not the goal in the Western Baul tradition. If it’s enlightenment you’re looking for, look somewhere else. And, while you’re at it … grow up, wrote Lee Lozowick. Lee disdained the casual and unconscious affair most people have with the Internet and these two sentences were the only words he allowed to be posted to a website created for him by one of his students.

    While radical shifts in context do occur for students in the process of engaging the practices and influence of this lineage, they are not sought after like some prize. They are more typically a side effect, sometimes even going unnoticed by others in the sangha as the practitioner’s outward appearance may change little. Once the foundation of practice is reliably laid, however, a life of maturity, radiance and responsibility becomes possible and evident. Without such a strong foundation, we may be talking the talk, but when we try to walk we’ll more likely sink up to our necks in quicksand.

    To be connected to a teacher and lineage, then, is invaluable to one who wishes to genuinely transform. The decision to trust another at the level demanded in the guru-disciple relationship is one of the most difficult choices any human being will ever face. Still, it is a powerful way to be pulled through and beyond what would otherwise be a half-baked realization. I’ve seen in my own case that a sharp mind can easily understand the fundamental teachings (like non-duality and the illusion of separation, ego projection) and that engaging yoga and pranayama can awaken powerful Kundalini energy, but that such understanding and experiences are not the equivalent of an abiding transformation. Quite the opposite. Arrogance, dogmatism and isolation are the common result of an understanding that goes no deeper than the mind, and of Kundalini experiences that have not been maturely digested in the body.

    Guru-yoga is the heart of this tradition, but it is the rare student who can access its potency. That’s why Waking to Ordinary Life focuses on what the student can do, in practical terms, to train the mind and build a body of practice to serve as a foundation for the long road ahead, regardless of whether or not involvement with a lineage ever comes into play. While you may encounter some esoteric-sounding principles here, the meat of this book is about climbing out of our self-made jails, our ruts, our mechanical and sleeping routines. It’s about growing up and saying YES to what we already know but are afraid to act upon. It’s about learning to observe ourselves closely, taking responsibility for what we feel and moving forward in life.

    As the guru’s work is never ending and ever increasing in weight, the relationship to a true guru and lineage endures forever. So it is that, despite Lalitha’s years of training and personal practice, Lee Lozowick is still and will always remain her guru. While the student may be weaned from conventional dependence on the teacher, the flow of grace available through any teacher is only as pure as that one’s transparency to his or her master – to the one who precedes them in the lineage. In this way, Lee is still and will always remain Yogi Ramsuratkumar’s little beggar and minister of praise. After the beggar-saint left his body in 2001, Lee relentlessly continued to deepen his surrender to his master, deconstructing himself publicly and privately in order to remove every trace of obstruction between himself and Yogi Ramsuratkumar. Similarly, although Lee left his body in November of 2010, Lalitha’s attention remains steadfast upon her guru.

    Jai Guru is a phrase that characterizes our tradition. It is used to both greet and say farewell and it means, Victory to the Guru! I learned this salutation from an elder in the Eastern Baul tradition from Bengal, named Sanatan Das Thakur Baul. He visited our Arizona ashram in 1991 and enthusiastically initiated all of Lee’s students into its use.

    Paradoxically, victory for the guru means victory for the disciple. They are one and the same, indistinguishable. But, as Lalitha explains in simple language throughout this book, victory is not won without work. Effort is always required. Resting on one’s laurels is never an option. And energy is a prerequisite for making effort. Wasting energy – for a serious practitioner – is never an option.

    New Language and Power

    Articulation of the teaching is one of Lalitha’s strong suits. She loves to coin terms and phrases to describe some facet of the dharma. Luxury suffering, majority vote, Always pay more than you think you owe, Be a four-season practitioner, and All obstacles are removed – no resistance remains: these are some of the phrases you’ll find elucidated in the following pages (and others you’ll have to wait for). For instance, a four-season practitioner is someone who doesn’t let the climate interfere with remembering who they are and what their aim is. Such a practitioner would not use the weather (or seasonal affective disorder) as an excuse for canceling meditation practice or abusing a spouse and children.

    One phrase in particular is central to Lalitha’s teaching. All obstacles are removed – no resistance remains was the working title of this book for nearly two years. It subtly yet powerfully embodies the condition of being that is our birthright and that simply awaits our recognition. The reader will encounter reference to it several times throughout Waking to Ordinary Life, approaching an understanding of its elusive communication from many angles.

    Lalitha’s idioms are good food, they stick to your ribs and so, if this book succeeds in conveying their meaning, you may find that they slip comfortably into your own vocabulary now and then.

    Life of Choice, Not Preference

    The principles of waking up in ordinary life involve courageous, moment to moment choices. As you will see from Lalitha’s orientation in this book, important decisions about one’s spiritual life should not be left in the hands of personality and preference. For example, she herself is a desert rat – she grew up in southern Arizona where temperatures reach 120 degrees (that’s Fahrenheit)! She would never have imagined herself living in Canada where the only thing reaching 120 is the depth of the snow (that’s centimeters)! Yet, this is where her work has taken her. Is it comfortable? Is it where she always dreamed of living? After twenty-five years I’ve learned that if a location doesn’t have coral reefs and require snorkel gear then it’s definitely not where she dreamed of living. But Lalitha has become ecstatic in Canada. Kripa Mandir’s 126-acre sanctuary in the verdant elevated interior of British Columbia fills her with excitement every day because it is the right place to be. There is no doubt. She is undivided. And this same potential for a life beyond preferences, a life dedicated to others, to practice, is what this book is about.

    Urgency in Everything

    Robert Svoboda, the eminent scholar, devotee, teacher, and master of Ayurveda was speaking to a gathering of Lee’s students a few years ago. We were sleepy from heat and a lengthy afternoon session when Dr. Svoboda slyly jolted the room awake by declaring, Hurry, there’s no time to delay. Death approaches! And this teaching reverberates throughout the chapters ahead. Lalitha implores that we ask ourselves, Where do I want to place my attention? How do I want to spend my days? How much time do I think I have? Her expertise in healing has brought her face to face with the realities of life and death, and so she does not flinch at having to share news if it happens to be bad. We live in precarious times, true, but this is not the bad news she feels compelled to share. Our spiritual work is the same regardless of the economic, political and environmental upheaval occurring all around us. Even if humanity’s woes and flirtation with self destruction were completely resolved tomorrow, the bad news would still hang over our heads like a noose. We are asleep, mechanical in our behavior, and this has always been the case. Returning to an imagined lost paradise will only recreate the conditions which pre-cursed our present plight, not deliver us from the inevitable should we fail to evolve beyond sleep. We should not kid ourselves into believing that saving the planet is the same as saving ourselves.

    This view may seem stark or void of joy, even impractical, but it is not. Bauls, both East and West, are incredibly practical people, walking gently on the earth. What you have in this book is a guide to a path of conservation, for gathering back those juicy parts of yourself – in mind, body and emotion – that you’ve allowed to be

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