Where do you turn to when you have nowhere to turn to?

I have been in situations of having nowhere to turn to a few times in life and I don’t enjoy them. Fortunately, all those situations for me were clearly a direct consequence of certain choices I made and not of some inexplicable current of misfortune. As someone who puts fulfillment before security, taking big risks apparently is somewhat inevitable. And believe me, it’s not that I’m not afraid, I AM, I’m scared to death but as Ambrose Redmoon put it “Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”

So where do I turn to when things don’t work out as I expected and I find myself in a situation where I have nowhere to turn to? I turn to the same place that first set me in motion, the place where “the judgment that something else is more important” came from. Some call that place intuition, ambition, drive, passion or willpower.

I call that place God and here’s why. Unfortunately, I’m such a frightened person. Fear is a feeling I have known for a very long time. My fear is so much bigger than my intuition, ambition, drive and passion all combined and yet I always seem to find the strength to act despite all fear in favor of “that something else.” Then when things go wrong, which inevitably they sometimes do, it’s to God I turn to again. If it’s laughter and joy I have to give, I’ll offer that. If tears and desperation are all I have to give, I’ll offer that. I always offer what’s inside me to my God because I think the only real cul-de-sac in life is to live without hope.

How many lives have you lived?

A cat has seven lives in most Latin Cultures and nine in Anglo-Saxon cultures. Seven or nine, I think it’s a pretty good number that allows the cat to risk doing stuff knowing that it’s got a few more shots to try to get it right. But how many lives do we get?

Personally, I think in this round alone (which started in 1974), I have lived about 4 lives. I say that because there have been certain moments when the situation was so overwhelming that it would not suffice to try to solve it. It felt more like a version of me had to die so that a new one could come to existence. Life as I knew it no longer made sense and I had to start all over again.

The one variable that has remained constant throughout my four cat lives is the desire to emerge as an enhanced version of myself. So I’ll keep on walking from roof to roof and jumping from incredible heights to see what I can discover. Meow!!!

I’ve been practicing Hatha yoga since 2004 and in the course of eight years, I feel that this technique has done much to improve my life. The breathing exercises called “Pranayama” have given me a sense of focus and depth. I have gained flexibility, strength and an improved posture through the practice of the yoga positions called “Asanas”. But the best part for me has been about learning how to meditate which usually happens at the end of practice. It was during a yoga class that, for the first time in my life, I felt what it was like to be totally free from worries, stress and fear. What-a-relief!!!

A yoga class is like an oasis in the chaotic and often discouraging desert of life. However, as “nomads”, we get to renovate ourselves in the oasis but the trip must go on. Taking this renewed sense of self and center acquired during a yoga class to the world outside is, in my opinion, the most challenging and yet the most important aspect of the practice of yoga. After all these years, I can definitely feel when my breathing starts speeding up as tensions rise and I’m able to break the cycle and slow down my breath. As I feel depression creeping up, I remember to take deep breaths and that usually improves my emotional state. As I lie down in bed, I am conscious of the tension in certain parts of my body and I focus on them and seek to get to that stress-free place I became familiar with in class.

In my opinion, this increased awareness to act upon myself is mostly a result of the meditation practices. The postures and the breathing exercises are, in a way, a tool to prepare the mind to enter a meditative state which was almost unattainable to me before. I had always seen myself as an action person, a go-getter, a doer and sitting down to “do nothing” was close to torture. But as they say, most of human thought is repetitive and every action begins with a thought. Therefore, if I wanted to improve the course of my life and the quality of my actions, I would have to learn to take my mind to a different place. I found that place in the quiet of meditation.

At this stage in my life, I haven’t been able to attend regular classes so I practice on my own. Every morning, I do a sequence of positions called “Sun Salutation” followed by breathing exercises and a meditation session. I meditate two more times throughout the day. If I can brush my teeth three times a day to keep cavities away, I think I can afford to sit three times a day to keep my mind clean and free from “mental bacteria”, right?

Carranca - Keeping evil away

As I innocently leaned on this “carranca” sculpture at the age of nine, it surely didn’t occur to me what that terrifying wooden craft really stood for. In the Northeast of Brazil, the “carranca” was typically attached to a river craft to keep evil spirits away. As you can see from my fearless look on the picture, my “carranca” was just a friend to play leapfrog.

Evil was something that never really inhabited my thoughts. As most of you know by now, I believe in God. God to me is a form of supreme intelligence that governs our existence and I can only find a sense of meaning for my own existence believing in one such force. As a consequence, I have always been reluctant to even acknowledge the existence of evil. In other words, for me, evil was never really a force in itself but simply the absence of love, the absence of light, the absence of God.

Unfortunately, these days I have been led to question my previous view. In observing the world around me, I feel that things that are of a subtler nature like love, fulfillment and respect seem to find very little echo when compared to things of a denser nature like vulgarity, violence and competition. Our material world inhabited by material men and women is drawn like a magnet to bullets, murder, cheap sex, megalomaniac displays of wealth and arrogance. I’m starting to feel that the force behind those things could be called evil because while it successfully promotes the denser stuff, it cunningly keeps a veil on the lighter and brighter stuff.

I’m getting myself a “carranca”.

Skies upon Skies

Haikaa is a variation I made up for the German name “Heike”. I changed the spelling to Haikaa and looked it up on a Japanese dictionary to make sure it didn´t have some weird meaning. It turns out Haikaa was the Japanese pronunciation to the word “hiker”. Considering that my last name “Yamamoto” means at the foot of the mountain, I decided I would become Haikaa or she who seeks to reach skies upon skies.

How did you get your name?

Empirical Spirituality

Yes, I think it’s important to test spiritual concepts and see how they work out for me. Not because I don’t have faith but somehow I feel that outright acceptance can lead to a fake kind of spirituality. How often have you seen a pseudo spiritual person who thinks so highly of him/herself? I think arrogance is very common among so called “spiritual” authorities. I think this happens largely because there’s a gap between what these people may have studied and how much that knowledge has actually become a part of them. It’s fairly easy to appreciate and discuss spiritual concepts but it’s an entirely different thing to actually live them.

I just finished reading the Hindu poem “The Bhagavad Gita” the day before yesterday and I have already started reading it again. The concepts presented on the book were not entirely new to me because my parents were Buddhists and I had already read some Buddhist literature in my twenties. One of the concepts that stood out particularly for me now was the idea of embracing unity and recognizing that divine intelligence permeates everything.

This made so much sense to me now that I’m older. I have always believed in God but I definitely had a tendency to feel blessed when what I wanted happened and to feel cursed when something I didn’t want to happen happened. Thinking about it now, that sort of attitude was tiring, frustrating and pointless. Good things happen. Bad things happen. To live at the mercy of fortune is unstable. In addition, how many times have I witnessed seemingly good things turn out sour and vice-versa? I don’t even know that much about life to say for sure that something is good or bad. So, at this point in my life, I am more ready to perceive this deeper and more constant reality below the surface. I kind of like it!!!

Problem solved

There’s a saying that goes “When you have a problem that has no possible solution, consider it solved”. I’ve always found this saying pretty amusing but I confess that resignation is a very difficult place for me to be in.

For one thing, I have always seen myself as a doer, a go- getter. I suspect I may have even prided myself on this aspect of my personality. Granted, having a pro-active attitude towards life is important. I have a high level of energy and I’ve always channeled it towards doing things.

However, I’ve come to a point in life where I realize that there is a limit to what my humanly powers can achieve. There are things I don’t like, or “problems”, that I can do nothing about and I mean, NOTHING. If I have to choose between depression and resignation, I will go for resignation. Problem solved, period.

International Women’s Day

To guarantee the right for all citizens to be treated equally should be the ultimate goal of any civil rights movement. I am truly grateful to be a part of the first generation to reap some of the major benefits of the second wave of the feminist movement (1963-1982 according to Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-wave_feminism ). In the early 60s, women like my mother in Japan or my mother-in-law in Brazil really had no perspective in life other than getting married and having lots of children. In one generation, the changes brought about by the feminist movement have been significant. I grew up thinking and dreaming that I could be anything I wanted to be including being a wife and a mother. I hope to express my gratitude to all those involved in the feminist movement by making the most out of the freedom that they passed on to my generation. I do not take it for granted.

Needless to say, there’s still much progress to be made. Many women around the world do not enjoy any level of equality whether it be in terms of access to education, salaries and government policies that support working mothers. This brutal reality has given rise to a certain antagonism between men and women which is hardly going to help promote equality.

Obviously, men and women are different in many aspects but I believe the emphasis should be placed on what we have in common. For example, I don’t agree at all with remarks such as “having more women in government would lead to less corruption and a more peaceful world”. I think that more honest and sensible people in government would lead to less corruption and a more peaceful world. Honesty and good sense are values that transcend gender, age, social class, race or religion. In our tightly interconnected global world, it’s useless for any group to seek to live in isolation or through domination. Men and women need each other and with mutual respect, that interaction can be truly blissful.

Taking Control Over What I Can

I have felt pretty helpless many times in life, surrounded by circumstances over which I have little or no control over. During such times, I find some comfort by focusing on the things I actually have control over. This time, I chose to focus on one of my eating habits.

Over the past 30 days, I have embarked on an “eat two fresh fruit a day” challenge and I have successfully crossed the finish line today. We all know fresh fruit is good for us and eating more fruit had been an unimplemented “New Year’s Resolution” of mine for about 5 years. In order to succeed this time, I put the following strategy into practice:

-       Relying on friends: I made it public on Facebook that I would do this. Since I knew all my friends were aware of my challenge, I became more committed to it. Some friends were cheering me on, others joined me and others simply shared why they don’t eat fruit. Also, the routine of posting daily what I had eaten helped me as a reminder. If I hadn’t eaten any fruit by posting time, I would make myself eat them.

-       Avoiding routine: I realized how lousy my default fruit shopping habits were (apple and bananas) and I decided to take a few risks and buy other types of fruit. Since I bought some types of fruit that would go bad quickly, for example, I couldn’t afford to leave them on my fridge forever. I had to eat them if I didn’t want to end up throwing them all away which is something I hate doing. In addition, the different tastes (like mango or pineapples) actually made me look forward to eating the fruit.

Unlike the magic potions that abound in our hasty world, the health benefits are subtle and will be clearer in the long run and I will probably be thankful I started this when I’m a fit 70-year old lady with great skin. In addition, eating two fresh fruit a day did not make my problems go away.  However, it did help me feel better about myself and that might actually lead me to a better reality.

Yesterday, as I read about the death of journalist and war correspondent Marie Colvin in Syria, I realized that even dead, she was still “working” to promote the things she lived for.  I lament her death profoundly and I hope that the injustices suffered by Syrian people will not go by unnoticed. Marie worked hard so that you and I would know about it.

Reading some of Marie’s quotes, I can only be inspired by a person who had such a profound commitment to her passion.  I’m not saying that we have to die for what we believe in but I think that we are here to live a full life and that can only be if we do what we love.

With so many different standards to meet and external goals to achieve, I feel many of us don’t even know what we love. We know we love to be loved and we may do things because we think we will get love in return. But that’s not the same thing as doing what we love.

Yes, history will run its course no matter what because not one single person is that important to the world. But we all are “The Most Important Person in The World” for ourselves and when somebody lives as such, they do make a difference.

God bless Marie.