Waking To Ordinary Life - Softcover

Thomas, Lalitha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1935387219 ISBN 13: 9781935387213

Publisher: Hohm Press, 2011

The much needed message of this book is that spiritual practice is not something mysterious or alien to ordinary existence. Neither is it defined by difficult exercises or maintained by unruffled 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.

This courage, the author states, means squarely facing the unconscious or destructive habits we've used since childhood to keep us comforted, and to get us through the day. Lalitha challenges and guides her readers in how to work with this denial mechanism, and how to pay attention to the body's innate wisdom which consistently signals us, yet is consistently overridden. We do know what serves, she says, once we admit to lying to ourselves; we can take greater responsibility for what is...both at the personal and planetary level. "We can grow up! she exclaims, demonstrating what this means for the practitioner on any spiritual path.

Waking to Ordinary Life is derived from recent talks and conversations Lalitha has held with her students and those interested in spiritual practice, 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.

Overall, the book emphasizes that merely understanding the nature of mind, and how mind creates neurosis, does not dispel the neurosis. For that, consistent, accurately-directed effort (i.e., practice) is required. Paradoxically, the author asserts that such effort may actually consist in relaxing, especially the habits of self-hatred. Her wise counsel encourages simple daily practice for the purpose of infusing this knowledge into the body, and thus affecting one's behavior on every level. The bottom line is to rest in the unadorned truth. Waking to Ordinary Life points the way.

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About the Author:

Lalitha is a spiritual teacher residing in both Washington state and Canada. She has been a disciple of Western Baul master, Lee Lozowick, for the past 30 years, an apprenticeship which evolved naturally into her own uncompromising teaching style. Her work stands out with a fierce clarity that both transcends gender and yet remains powerfully rooted in femininity. Lalitha has extensive training as a master herbalist and healer, and is the author of several respected books in the field, including 10 Essential Herbs and 10 Essential Foods. She is the director of Kripa Mandir Ashram.

How can you even begin a serious spiritual practice if you don't know where you are going? It is not very useful to be flopping around with dreams, fantasies, distractions, a "spiritual shopping mall” mentality, indefinitely. You need to be able to define an aim for your spiritual work.

A vague impression of a direction won't cut it. You've got to know your aim well enough to name it in some way. Of course we can begin with a bodily mood, an intuition of our aim, but until you can articulate it, however clumsily, your aim will not be reliable. If you need to remember yourself, to reconnect with your inner drive, your inner inspiration, to rebalance yourself because you are reacting to something in your environment, then you must be able to remember your aim. You must be able to do this all day long, to answer your life questions as they arise in light of your aim.

At first the articulation of our aim might come from something we read in a book. It sounded good to us and so we adopted it. That's an okay place to start. Study of well articulated teaching is invaluable. It resonates with something inside of us. It confirms something. But eventually we have to take responsibility for it ourselves. Our aim must be true of us in our bodies, our cells, and not only our minds. Your aim must be at the front of your awareness, at the tip of your tongue, so that it shows up in your behavior no matter what the circumstance.

Anytime you have a decision to make, which of course happens all day long, you can ask yourself, "Does the decision I'm about to make serve my aim? Will it strengthen my practice or weaken my practice?” If you put your attention on your strengths you will increase your strength, and if you put your attention on your weakness you will increase your weakness. Energy follows attention.

Addictions are like this too. If we put our attention on our addictions it increases our addictions, and if we put our attention in a different direction it increases that direction. If we work on discovering and articulating an aim for ourselves rather than obsessing about our weaknesses we'll be far more likely to find one that works for us, even though it may seem unrefined at first. Don't worry about how refined it is. You can upscale it at any time, or change it at any time. The more we can remember an aim and make decisions based on that aim, the stronger that aim will become. Get specific about your aims.

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