Santosha: Contentment 5

This is the weekend of the Cornerstone Men’s Retreat.  Cornerstone is an organization that I helped organize and build at St. Monica’s Parish in Santa Monica, CA.  A group of around 100 men get together for 28 hours and learn to communicate, to relate, to worship life, to feel our feelings.  This year marks the fourth annual retreat, so it was 5 years ago that Sr. Catherine called me and asked me if I would be willing to go to American Martyrs in Manhattan Beach and attend a men’s retreat with the possibility to bring it back to St. Monica.  There would be 3 other men from St. Monica at the retreat, and we could have the experience and see if it was something that we though St. Monica would benefit from.  When she asked the first thought that raced through my mind was “NOOOO”, but Sr. Catherine is truly a saint, and to say no to a saint is like giving up on life.  I had learned in program that unless we have a prior commitment, to always say yes.  Yet this was so far out of my comfort zone.  I am not a devout Catholic by any means, I participate at times because I love the spirituality of this particular parish, and there are beautiful things about Catholicism that I adore, but over all we all know it has its problems. So I showed up, not because I wanted to, but because I have learned that that is what we do, we show up.  To this day I am a grateful member of Cornerstone, and the deep level of spiritual fellowship that it has taught me.  I have learned to love and respect men, something that was deeply lacking in my life.  I have learned that if I am willing to step out of my comfort zone and say yes, marvelous miracles can occur.

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Santosha: Contentment 4

I got to use one of my favorite sayings yesterday; I got to remind a loved one that “what other people think about you is none of your business.”  This phrase really opened my eyes to a whole new world once I discovered it, when someone blessed me with this little reminder.  I remember literally spending weeks in states of depression because I thought that someone, someone I barely knew, was mad at me.  There was no reason for this person to actually be upset with me.  It was more likely a case of their having a bad day and not responding in the manner that I had grown accustomed.  One of my faults is the need to have people like me.  While this may seem to be an admirable quality on the surface, it can actually be emotionally crippling because, while I do want to be a kind and loving person, I am powerless over other peoples wants, needs and feelings, and it is really none of my business.  If a person is actually upset with me, then it is their responsibility to let me know so that we can sort it out.  I do not want to carry the guilt of actually hurting others, and I must make amends for the wrongs that I do; but I no longer need to attach myself to the personal growth of others, I have my own growing to do.

Gregorysgardner.com

Santosha: Contentment 3

It is raining today, such a rare occasion in Los Angeles that many of us enjoy the rain and are grateful.  Think about the poor folks in Texas and New Mexico that haven’t seen much rain these past few years and are suffering. There are those of us that just see the rain as an inconvenience to their plans, spoiling their picnic, so to speak.  Understandable; my oldest son is a bicycle messenger in downtown Los Angeles. Rain for him is not only miserable but potentially life threatening.  The point is that it is all a matter of perspective, some things fall into the category of “makes me happy” and there are those things that fall into that other category. When my plans fall through, I can become quite frustrated, perhaps even angry.  They say that God is laughing at our plans.  Is God really that mean spirited, or does God perhaps have other plans for us, maybe even better.  At least I am being set up to learn something.  If I keep doing the same doing, feeling the same feeling, liking the same stuff and disliking that crap that I don’t like, what I am I really learning?  If I am not learning, I am not living.

Gregorysgardner.com

Santosha: Contentment 2

I can be happy now.  I don’t have to wait.  Happiness is a state of mind, it is a perspective.  It is an attitude.  I can be worried, and still be happy.  I can actually be angry, and still be happy.  The underlying foundation of our emotional being is joy.  When we are at joy we are home.  There are so many layers of discontent that cover our joy, but it is always there, ready to be uncovered, ready to shine. I have created prisons in my mind that have kept me from contentment because I believed that I needed that relationship, that income, that event to occur, and I was on pins and needles waiting for it.  But joy was always there, breathing, living, being.  I get back to that place of joy each day when I sit in Sadhana. I take that joy with me throughout the rest of the day.  When there is a disturbance in the force, it does not become me, it is what it is.  I am joy, and the expression of that joy, which is love.

Gregorysgardner.com

Santosha: Contentment

The Yamas are like the Ten Commandments; thou shalt not harm or kill, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not be a greedy pig, etc.  The Niyamas, on the other hand, are the thou shalts, or thou shall. (I don’t think shalt is a word, and thou shall has a funny rhyme to it). Santosha is thou shall be content.  If Yahweh had directly given Moses and his people the thou shalls, rather than implying them, it may have been easier for people to understand that the implication of the Ten Commandments is thou shall be content with what I, the Lord your God, has provided for you.  Rejoice in your manna.  Live an attitude of gratitude for the abundance that I bestow upon you, the rich bounty of this world.  And we say, but we are living in a desert without a home, and people are chasing us that want to enslave or kill us, and there really isn’t much to this manna really, can’t we have a good steak?  And God might say, sure, but then who would carry your luggage? It is because we are so worried about the moment that is not now.  Right now, we can be content that God is even speaking to us.

gregorysgardner.com

Saucha: Purity 5

So many of us are looking for pure water, pure food, and pure air; clean, organic, unpolluted.  It really is a shame that we do not have easy access to such things.  We end up paying more and having to look harder for food that has not been doused in poison, water that has not been contaminated.  I settle for the air in Los Angeles only because this darling city of ours has more options for me than rural Montana.  In my daily practice of yoga and meditation I have added an hour of chanting the Aquarian Sadhana.  There is such a beauty and purity to chanting kirtan, it seems as if all of the toxins in the world cannot penetrate it. I know that the world is changing, it is becoming a consciously pure and holy place, as I witness the growth of the kirtan movement, the yoga movement, the occupy movement.  We are becoming a conscious people, aware of the toxins in our environment, working to eradicate to toxic eating, toxic breathing, toxic thinking and toxic behavior.  

Gregorysgardner.com

Saucha: Purity 4

To live fully in the moment is the only lesson that I really need to learn.  To be completely present in the here and now, the purity of what that means, to be here, now, to be here with you, is all I must do. In meditation each morning, this is all that I am doing, being still and present.  Is my mind working on all of its thoughts, facts, figures, decisions and demands?  For the most part my mind won’t shut the fuck up; yet those glorious short sweet moments of ecstasy, when I am so present that I can taste God, are worth every moment of struggle that I endure to be still, here, now.

Gregorysgardner.com