Creating a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, 
from the Inside Out

We don’t see the world as it is but as we are and as we see the world, we create the world.  

(A basic teaching of tantra and physics)

“Everything flowers from within, of self-blessing.” Galway Kinnell (full poem below)

One of my neighbors has a problem with every other neighbor in our neighborhood. He does not like my cats wandering into his yard. The other neighbor’s kids make too much noise playing in their yard. A third neighbor has too many relatives coming and going, clogging up the parking space. And on it goes. He has created a neighborhood that is a different world than the neighborhood I live in, though anybody would say we live in the same neighborhood. We each see the neighborhood not as it is but as we are, and as we see the neighborhood, we create it.

When I open my eyes in the morning the world reappears, is recreated by my brain. It will appear dark or light, a beautiful day in the neighborhood or problematic neighbors on every side.  Everything opens from within. 

I don’t always wake up inside the beautiful neighborhood part of my brain. It is oftentimes – daily in fact –necessary for me to light a candle within and place it at the altar of my heart. This simple gesture is how I self-bless, retelling myself it’s OK, I am not an accident on the earth, amidst other accidents; retelling myself I am lovely, until the candle at the altar of my heart catches the flame and the glow opens outward, from within, of self-blessing. Not waiting for the outer world to affirm me, to bless me. This is an inside lighting job.

I am lucky to have practices that reliably reteach me my goodness, that light a candle within, creating a brighter vision from the inside out

Practices to help light a candle at the altar of your heart

To create light, you need friction – complementary complements – like the positive and negative poles of electricity or like the friction of striking a match. This is the basis of Yoga – yoking opposites together to generate a Light from within.

In Yoga asana practice I yoke mind to body, inhale to exhale, flexion to extension, muscular energy to organic energy, front body to back body, earth and feet to fingertips and sky. The flame begins to kindle.

In meditation practice I also yoke mind to body, outward moving mind to inwardly vibrating energy, outward going distraction to inward moving remembrance.

The flame becomes steady. The light brightens.

Off the mat and into the world, I can bless the mess I sometimes find myself in – the mess of feeling isolated or “not part of the neighborhood,” by connecting with others, heart forward. In Yoga classes at Garden Street this is easy to do and happens naturally as we move and breathe, sing and meditate together. But other times it takes a stronger effort as, for example, walking across the street to chat with the difficult neighbor even though he is not friendly and will not meet my eye. Stay with the friction. This is yoga. Slowly the candle of our neighborhood connection catches. He meets my eye and smiles, a bit tightly, but still a smile.

Phew!

This technology – Yoga – works.  Reliably. But not everybody has access to it. Due to life circumstances, broken brains, and challenging neurochemistry, so many remain locked in their downstairs brains surrounded by bad neighborhoods. Anybody that does, by grace of god(dess), know how to self-bless, to set a light within, to create the world anew from the light within, of self-blessing, has a great responsibility to do so.

I have a responsibility to set a light, to the best of my ability, to use the tools and practices of Yoga, at the altar of my heart, of self-blessing, so that gradually but inevitably the light extends outward – as an outward moving blessing, probably without my awareness. Its not about me. Blessing Force just works that way.

Here is some poetry that inspires my contemplation and practice of Self-Blessing

Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell

The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don't flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on the brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing; as Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow, and told her in words and in touch blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow began remembering all down her thick length, from the earthen snout all the way through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine down through the great broken heart to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them: the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Sweet Darkness by David Whyte

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own.

There you can be sure you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb tonight.

The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness to learn

anything or anyone that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, by Fred Rogers

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood,

A beautiful day for a neighbor,

Would you be mine?

Could you be mine?

It's a neighborly day in this beautywood,

A neighborly day for a beauty,

Would you be mine?

Could you be mine?

I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you,

I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.

So let's make the most of this beautiful day,

Since we're together, we might as well say,

Would you be mine?

Could you be mine?

Won't you be my neighbor?

Won't you please,

Won't you please,

Please won't you be my neighbor?

Living and Dying with Grace: Counsels of Hadrat Ali (a sufi Master) Translated by Thomas Cleary

"There are servants of God whom God favors with blessings for the service of others and whom God keeps supplied as long as they are generous with what they have. For if they refuse or withhold, God takes those favors away from them and transfers them to others.”

What to Remember When Waking by David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,

coming back to this life from the other

more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,

there is a small opening into the new day

which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible

while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world

is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,

you are not an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window

toward the mountain presence of everything that can be

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?

In the trees beyond the house?

In the life you can imagine for yourself?

In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?