Living and To Be Alive
07/03/09 22:14
Time Enough
Having seemingly pondered ponderously this topic for what has seemed an age, I now have a pretension to write about what is means to be alive. In the spirit of pretense, I think of an excellent and deep quote in an excellent article about Sting (of The Police) who said:
"What is wrong with being pretentious?" ponders Sting. "I think you only achieve anything by pretending to achieve it in the first place. I pretended to be a musician and by that process became a musician. I pretended to be a grown-up and by that process grew up. I pretended to be a dad and then I became a dad."
I think that I have pretended to be many things over time also, and that this is also what being alive is- becoming mature in outlook. The old maxim “fake it til you make it” applies here, and I think even Swami Sivananda would agree: “Dear friends, what reason, then, is there for despair? Nil desperandum. Be up and doing. Struggle. Exert. Practise. Plod on. March courageously. Do sincere Sadhana. The all-merciful Lord will surely crown your efforts with success. Even the vilest of us can attain salvation.”
I see ‘alive-ness’ everywhere now. I have started to grasp more fully the depth of wisdom of some of Swami Sivananda’s maxims:
“Serve, Love, Give, Purify, Meditate, Realize, Be Good, Do Good, Be Kind, Be Compassionate”.
He even wrote a bhajan that follows that, the second verse of which is:
“Adapt, Adjust, Accommodate, Bear Insult Bear Injury, Highest Yoga, Bear Insult Bear Injury, Highest Sadhana, Enquire 'Who am I ?', Know the Self and be Free”
The beginning of the second verse is where we come to what I think of regularly. As I have observed life, how it’s lived, and who is in fact living it and what principles are followed in so doing. My participation in a Non-Violent Communication, or Compassionate Communication Practice Group at my house on Thursday nights has furthered my understanding of it in a way I am only now beginning to grasp.
From what I can tell, Life and Living ARE DEFINED by Adapting, Adjusting and Accommodating. One can see this played out in all areas of thought from physics, to physiology, to psychology, to interpersonal relationships, health and I am finding it more and more as I look about me. This growing sense of “alive-ness” is what has prompted me to write about it here. I this post, I would like to examine some of them.
With these three simple axioms as my template, I think all other positive skills and philosophy can be tied to these- everything ranging from the ethical principle of ahimsa (non-injury) and merging cars to the yogic cleansing practices can be seen in this light.
As I conceive it now, I can see that the three key axioms I am speaking about now fall into a five tiered heirarchy:
Non-violence or ahimsa providing the ground floor, and the internal development that results from this, or the maturation we spoke about earlier, becomes a willingness to Triple A. Triple A is a more passive role or voicing of non-violence, whereas Be Good, Do Good is a more active role. Even more active and in fact the highest and most difficult of tasks is to bear insult and bear injury- where one can be insulted and attacked even physically (as Swami Sivananda was once) and still have perfect equanimity and mental/emotional poise.
I will refer to these as the Five Laws of Non-Violence or The Five Laws.
Non-Violence In Modern Life
In Marshall Rosenberg’s books and practice principles, he refers us, among other things, to think about whether or not our actions are specifically “serving life” or “making life wonderful” for someone. He also encourages us to speak about “what is alive in us” and hear what is alive in others. This has really turned my attention to seeing how alive we in fact are.
Thinking further about this, I saw that non-violence is a principle that many other actions turn upon. Still, I wondered what principles, therefore, non-violence turned upon, or rather what attitudes allow one to practically express non-violence.
The decision to become non-violent has many practical implications. It REQUIRES one to Adapt, Adjust and Accommodate others constantly and as wisdom grows in the practice of this massive and far-reaching ethic, one can see it further both into one’s Self and into one’s relations with others.
The Five Laws
So, if we take these axioms of Swami Sivananda to heart, and begin to examine other areas of life in their light, it becomes very interesting, deep and far-reaching.
Physiology
Leaving behind the Western ideal of a simple mechanical body, we move into a vaster realm of much more subtle and therefore more powerful ways of treating apparent illnesses. I would like to illustrate that our physical health has much more to do with our ability to adapt, adjust and accommodate.
Swami Sivananda himself was a medical doctor, although before the advent of this new view of medicine I am presenting here. Still, I believe he would have agreed with the viewpoint presented here. Most of this information is taken from:
In the body, there are structures called matrisomes. They make up what is called the ground substance of the body. The ground substance has a function and this is to regulate and distribute 4 main systems of communication:
All variety and enormous quantity of internal and external information is coded and exchanged in only these four ways. For survival, the organism must be able to rapidly construct, destroy and reconstruct the constituents of the ground substance.
This simplification is needed for the creation and maintenance of living systems. Given such a small number, this also can provide challenges when the structure of the matrisome itself is altered through environmental or genetic factors, altering the information transmitted.
The implication of this is that since both environmental and genetic factors influence how the matrisome functions, then they must be considered networked not simply additive nor separate, they are inextricably linked via the ground substance of the body.
This combined factor is the foundation of what is known as biological medicine. Biological medicine considers the systemic functional relationships between the DNA and the complete environment surrounding it, including the mechanisms of the cell, the ground substance, the circulatory system, and the totality of the mental, emotional, and physical environment resided in.
In other words, the primary mechanism between one’s internal genetic environment and the external world is the matrisome. It’s PRIMARY function is essentially to ‘Triple A’ information in and out of the body. The body must then ‘Triple A’ the ground substance itself to regulate it’s ability to survive, react to stimulus, harm, injury, stress, and a huge variety of other input. So, when someone says “it’s my genes”, this is only partially correct. It’s the reaction and creation of the ground substance of the body that really determines most of what gets through and out of us in these four primary ways.
Traffic
What does driving and dealing with traffic have to do with ‘Triple A’? Here, I would like to point out some cultural differences between Western methods of driving and Eastern. In most Eastern cultures, there is not nearly the sort of strictness followed by drivers here, nor is safety the ego-centric thing it is here. From what I can tell Eastern drivers really rely on each other’s really paying attention. They leave the tiniest of gaps between cars, scooters and even in the heaviest traffic, any old man will wade right into it to cross the road at a slow walk- and everyone deals with it.
Of course, we aren’t likely to have large cows sitting in the middle of the road, nor elephants crossing.
Driving is about space management, attentiveness and mostly the dangers of the road are other cars. Having said this, I have traveled to Indonesia where the traffic is quite different in nature than our traffic. Here is a good example:
The next time you are driving here in the US, Canada or Europe, notice when you go to merge, and the attitude of the people around you whom are either allowing you in, or instead cut it so close that you must both slow down to a very stop-start method in order to merge.
I have noticed that in being so controlled about who can merge where, and by only giving a tiny little space to insert your car, even when allowed to merge, one wouldn’t appear to be “serving life” or “making life wonderful” for anyone, and I wondered why this might be so. How is it we have become so petty that we conduct ourselves in this way. I then realized that non-violence was a real commitment to reversing the effects of this kind of restricted and narrow thinking both in ourselves and in others. It applied to all areas of life, even driving.
Alternately, often when you put on your signal to change lanes, the person in that lane speeds up to prevent it, or to be sure they are in front of you. Similarly, drivers will often slow down as they pass a large truck (which is far more dangerous than passing it quickly) then speed up a great deal after passing a vehicle, so as to prevent being passed in the space between vehicles. These kinds of really short sighted methods of gaining some ‘upper hand’ in the daily business of driving just seemed violent to me, and has bothered me for some time.
We also then have ‘road rage’, where people are somehow angry at any perceived violation of their personal ‘car space’ boundary and seem hyper-vigilant at taking all conceivable threats to their safety or even slight perceived impediments to their progress personally. In general, driving in the West is a passive-aggressive affair; constantly in cars and yelling, and generally spew hate upon others while driving. It’s happened quite a bit to me, and I am no longer the fast driver I used to be. I am quite saddened by these things and have made a pact to myself to drive in a non-violent way.
So, ‘Triple A’- adapting, adjusting, and accommodating others while driving is key to remain peaceful during transits and to bring non-violence into an arena where many of us in the West spend a lot of time. I believe that this contributes a great deal to modern life by driving peacefully, and I think we would do well to look at what it takes to drive in other lands where one must really adapt, adjust and accommodate in an extremely skillful and mindful fashion just to drive anywhere.
Speech
Be Kind, Be Compassionate. This is a heck of a mandate. Speaking kindly is a wonderful and rewarding thing and improves greatly over time.
Our culture is very based in fear, a constant sense of lack in some form or fashion and in competition. Non-violence in speech is often merely a social nicety or a way “just to get along”. People then seem to complain, gossip, rankle and talk behind the backs of others and generally hemorrhage at the mouth. Just look at the number of words we have in our language for people who speak ill of others. Our very language is an indictment of our lack of “Triple A’.
Television is a constant reminder of this. People without any real perspective or wisdom talk constantly on TV shows, political channels and radio stations. They all seem to say the same thing: the person there is an idiot or is too much of this/too little of that. It’s a constant war to push one’s mind through some sensual/sexual urge, to some extreme viewpoint, to talk about others in ways that our own culture just imposes upon another culture, whether true or not; makes assumptions about other cultures and the motivations of people through the cynical lens almost like a jaded traffic cop. And this is beamed at us constantly- bad news.
There is no time to adapt, adjust or accommodate on television, as it itself, by it’s very mechanism, is essentially dictatorial and at the same time contemptuous of authority. It’s a means to constantly swing between desires/wants and apathy/‘entertainment’. We learn quickly to accept the simple, moralistic tales endlessly repeated and therefore give up much of what can help us in dealing with real relationships, most of which means adapting, adjusting and accommodating.
Thus, we lose our way to our intelligence by watching such things. This applies to both our emotional intelligence and our discriminative capacity. Since our intellect is what we will use to
When I was young I was told that “people only want to hear about themselves, and so to be socially acceptable, you should only listen to others and draw them out. Only then will they think you are intelligent.” This is a cynical and manipulative viewpoint that I reject.
Having seemingly pondered ponderously this topic for what has seemed an age, I now have a pretension to write about what is means to be alive. In the spirit of pretense, I think of an excellent and deep quote in an excellent article about Sting (of The Police) who said:
"What is wrong with being pretentious?" ponders Sting. "I think you only achieve anything by pretending to achieve it in the first place. I pretended to be a musician and by that process became a musician. I pretended to be a grown-up and by that process grew up. I pretended to be a dad and then I became a dad."
I think that I have pretended to be many things over time also, and that this is also what being alive is- becoming mature in outlook. The old maxim “fake it til you make it” applies here, and I think even Swami Sivananda would agree: “Dear friends, what reason, then, is there for despair? Nil desperandum. Be up and doing. Struggle. Exert. Practise. Plod on. March courageously. Do sincere Sadhana. The all-merciful Lord will surely crown your efforts with success. Even the vilest of us can attain salvation.”
I see ‘alive-ness’ everywhere now. I have started to grasp more fully the depth of wisdom of some of Swami Sivananda’s maxims:
“Serve, Love, Give, Purify, Meditate, Realize, Be Good, Do Good, Be Kind, Be Compassionate”.
He even wrote a bhajan that follows that, the second verse of which is:
“Adapt, Adjust, Accommodate, Bear Insult Bear Injury, Highest Yoga, Bear Insult Bear Injury, Highest Sadhana, Enquire 'Who am I ?', Know the Self and be Free”
The beginning of the second verse is where we come to what I think of regularly. As I have observed life, how it’s lived, and who is in fact living it and what principles are followed in so doing. My participation in a Non-Violent Communication, or Compassionate Communication Practice Group at my house on Thursday nights has furthered my understanding of it in a way I am only now beginning to grasp.
From what I can tell, Life and Living ARE DEFINED by Adapting, Adjusting and Accommodating. One can see this played out in all areas of thought from physics, to physiology, to psychology, to interpersonal relationships, health and I am finding it more and more as I look about me. This growing sense of “alive-ness” is what has prompted me to write about it here. I this post, I would like to examine some of them.
With these three simple axioms as my template, I think all other positive skills and philosophy can be tied to these- everything ranging from the ethical principle of ahimsa (non-injury) and merging cars to the yogic cleansing practices can be seen in this light.
As I conceive it now, I can see that the three key axioms I am speaking about now fall into a five tiered heirarchy:
Non-violence or ahimsa providing the ground floor, and the internal development that results from this, or the maturation we spoke about earlier, becomes a willingness to Triple A. Triple A is a more passive role or voicing of non-violence, whereas Be Good, Do Good is a more active role. Even more active and in fact the highest and most difficult of tasks is to bear insult and bear injury- where one can be insulted and attacked even physically (as Swami Sivananda was once) and still have perfect equanimity and mental/emotional poise.
I will refer to these as the Five Laws of Non-Violence or The Five Laws.
Non-Violence In Modern Life
In Marshall Rosenberg’s books and practice principles, he refers us, among other things, to think about whether or not our actions are specifically “serving life” or “making life wonderful” for someone. He also encourages us to speak about “what is alive in us” and hear what is alive in others. This has really turned my attention to seeing how alive we in fact are.
Thinking further about this, I saw that non-violence is a principle that many other actions turn upon. Still, I wondered what principles, therefore, non-violence turned upon, or rather what attitudes allow one to practically express non-violence.
The decision to become non-violent has many practical implications. It REQUIRES one to Adapt, Adjust and Accommodate others constantly and as wisdom grows in the practice of this massive and far-reaching ethic, one can see it further both into one’s Self and into one’s relations with others.
The Five Laws
So, if we take these axioms of Swami Sivananda to heart, and begin to examine other areas of life in their light, it becomes very interesting, deep and far-reaching.
Physiology
Leaving behind the Western ideal of a simple mechanical body, we move into a vaster realm of much more subtle and therefore more powerful ways of treating apparent illnesses. I would like to illustrate that our physical health has much more to do with our ability to adapt, adjust and accommodate.
Swami Sivananda himself was a medical doctor, although before the advent of this new view of medicine I am presenting here. Still, I believe he would have agreed with the viewpoint presented here. Most of this information is taken from:
In the body, there are structures called matrisomes. They make up what is called the ground substance of the body. The ground substance has a function and this is to regulate and distribute 4 main systems of communication:
- Chemical
- Electrical
- Electrochemical
- Electromagnetic vibrations
All variety and enormous quantity of internal and external information is coded and exchanged in only these four ways. For survival, the organism must be able to rapidly construct, destroy and reconstruct the constituents of the ground substance.
This simplification is needed for the creation and maintenance of living systems. Given such a small number, this also can provide challenges when the structure of the matrisome itself is altered through environmental or genetic factors, altering the information transmitted.
The implication of this is that since both environmental and genetic factors influence how the matrisome functions, then they must be considered networked not simply additive nor separate, they are inextricably linked via the ground substance of the body.
This combined factor is the foundation of what is known as biological medicine. Biological medicine considers the systemic functional relationships between the DNA and the complete environment surrounding it, including the mechanisms of the cell, the ground substance, the circulatory system, and the totality of the mental, emotional, and physical environment resided in.
In other words, the primary mechanism between one’s internal genetic environment and the external world is the matrisome. It’s PRIMARY function is essentially to ‘Triple A’ information in and out of the body. The body must then ‘Triple A’ the ground substance itself to regulate it’s ability to survive, react to stimulus, harm, injury, stress, and a huge variety of other input. So, when someone says “it’s my genes”, this is only partially correct. It’s the reaction and creation of the ground substance of the body that really determines most of what gets through and out of us in these four primary ways.
Traffic
What does driving and dealing with traffic have to do with ‘Triple A’? Here, I would like to point out some cultural differences between Western methods of driving and Eastern. In most Eastern cultures, there is not nearly the sort of strictness followed by drivers here, nor is safety the ego-centric thing it is here. From what I can tell Eastern drivers really rely on each other’s really paying attention. They leave the tiniest of gaps between cars, scooters and even in the heaviest traffic, any old man will wade right into it to cross the road at a slow walk- and everyone deals with it.
Of course, we aren’t likely to have large cows sitting in the middle of the road, nor elephants crossing.
Driving is about space management, attentiveness and mostly the dangers of the road are other cars. Having said this, I have traveled to Indonesia where the traffic is quite different in nature than our traffic. Here is a good example:
The next time you are driving here in the US, Canada or Europe, notice when you go to merge, and the attitude of the people around you whom are either allowing you in, or instead cut it so close that you must both slow down to a very stop-start method in order to merge.
I have noticed that in being so controlled about who can merge where, and by only giving a tiny little space to insert your car, even when allowed to merge, one wouldn’t appear to be “serving life” or “making life wonderful” for anyone, and I wondered why this might be so. How is it we have become so petty that we conduct ourselves in this way. I then realized that non-violence was a real commitment to reversing the effects of this kind of restricted and narrow thinking both in ourselves and in others. It applied to all areas of life, even driving.
Alternately, often when you put on your signal to change lanes, the person in that lane speeds up to prevent it, or to be sure they are in front of you. Similarly, drivers will often slow down as they pass a large truck (which is far more dangerous than passing it quickly) then speed up a great deal after passing a vehicle, so as to prevent being passed in the space between vehicles. These kinds of really short sighted methods of gaining some ‘upper hand’ in the daily business of driving just seemed violent to me, and has bothered me for some time.
We also then have ‘road rage’, where people are somehow angry at any perceived violation of their personal ‘car space’ boundary and seem hyper-vigilant at taking all conceivable threats to their safety or even slight perceived impediments to their progress personally. In general, driving in the West is a passive-aggressive affair; constantly in cars and yelling, and generally spew hate upon others while driving. It’s happened quite a bit to me, and I am no longer the fast driver I used to be. I am quite saddened by these things and have made a pact to myself to drive in a non-violent way.
So, ‘Triple A’- adapting, adjusting, and accommodating others while driving is key to remain peaceful during transits and to bring non-violence into an arena where many of us in the West spend a lot of time. I believe that this contributes a great deal to modern life by driving peacefully, and I think we would do well to look at what it takes to drive in other lands where one must really adapt, adjust and accommodate in an extremely skillful and mindful fashion just to drive anywhere.
Speech
Be Kind, Be Compassionate. This is a heck of a mandate. Speaking kindly is a wonderful and rewarding thing and improves greatly over time.
Our culture is very based in fear, a constant sense of lack in some form or fashion and in competition. Non-violence in speech is often merely a social nicety or a way “just to get along”. People then seem to complain, gossip, rankle and talk behind the backs of others and generally hemorrhage at the mouth. Just look at the number of words we have in our language for people who speak ill of others. Our very language is an indictment of our lack of “Triple A’.
Television is a constant reminder of this. People without any real perspective or wisdom talk constantly on TV shows, political channels and radio stations. They all seem to say the same thing: the person there is an idiot or is too much of this/too little of that. It’s a constant war to push one’s mind through some sensual/sexual urge, to some extreme viewpoint, to talk about others in ways that our own culture just imposes upon another culture, whether true or not; makes assumptions about other cultures and the motivations of people through the cynical lens almost like a jaded traffic cop. And this is beamed at us constantly- bad news.
There is no time to adapt, adjust or accommodate on television, as it itself, by it’s very mechanism, is essentially dictatorial and at the same time contemptuous of authority. It’s a means to constantly swing between desires/wants and apathy/‘entertainment’. We learn quickly to accept the simple, moralistic tales endlessly repeated and therefore give up much of what can help us in dealing with real relationships, most of which means adapting, adjusting and accommodating.
Thus, we lose our way to our intelligence by watching such things. This applies to both our emotional intelligence and our discriminative capacity. Since our intellect is what we will use to
When I was young I was told that “people only want to hear about themselves, and so to be socially acceptable, you should only listen to others and draw them out. Only then will they think you are intelligent.” This is a cynical and manipulative viewpoint that I reject.
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