Reviews
“In Inspired Lives, the experiences of the many distinguished
contributors will stir readers to use their bodies, minds and
selves in service to others, with love and dedication.”
-BKS Iyengar
“I enjoyed reading the collection of stories, articles,
and interviews, which
I found very down-to-earth and inspiring. The collection was
very well-rounded in presenting a variety of real life spiritual
teachings and perspectives from both East and West, which both
transcended and united different religions like Buddhism, Christianity,
and Hinduism. I greatly appreciated that the topics presented
in the book examined divine qualities such as compassion, beauty,
and simplicity in the midst of real life suffering related
to poverty, despair, death and dying, and imprisonment. These
stories and articles fanned the flame of my desire to be more
socially active and more present in my daily life to embody
happiness and heart-centered understanding.”
-John Friend, Anusara Yoga
“Showing up for your life—I mean really showing
up—is the hardest part. But the
stories in this book, and the people behind them, reveal that
showing up is not
only possible, it is essential. Warm, wise, beautiful, and
deeply engaged,
Inspired Lives will transform the way you see the world, and
your life.”
-Karen Olson, author and former editor of Utne Magazine
Excerpts
From “Ascension” by Clea McDougall
ascent had its name before I ever came along as editor in
1999. It had been around for 30 years at that point, as a small
community newsletter for Yasodhara Ashram. We kept the name,
but expanded out into an international, full sized, grown up
magazine. I always liked the name ascent, because the first
jazz record I ever bought, and subsequently fell in love with,
was Ascension by John Coltrane. That record is said to be his
step to liberty, from a structured chord based jazz to free
jazz. It is a session of he and his musicians letting go in
one of their first experimentations of pure ecstatic improv.
It’s not an easy record to listen to but as you are
pulled into the pure chaos of it, you know these people are
in touch with something beyond themselves. They were totally
and absolutely, inspired.
I actually had no idea what the record would be like at the
time I bought it, I was just taken in by the story of the Ascension
session on the back of the record. I became a lover of free
jazz after that. I loved the spirit of it, the willingness
to let go, and the obvious devotion in the music.
I also had no idea what I was getting into when I took the
job of editor at ascent magazine. It definitely wasn’t
what I expected. I couldn’t have predicted the events
of the years ahead of me, how ascent would change me, that
the magazine would turn into what it is today, or how it could
inspire such a fierce loyalty in its readers.
We just had a vision of how to explore yoga, what it could
look like, how it could be lived, practiced, loved. We wanted
yoga to go beyond doctrine or a system of stretches, but be
about the way we live, how we encounter life. I wanted to find
that, and celebrate the yogis, the people who were trying to
live consciously, humbly, embracing everything that came to
them. It was this largeness that we aimed for, this step into
liberty, ascension, an aim towards inspiration, freedom. Idealists
maybe, but that was the beginning, that was the spirit in which
we entered in. The best of what came out of that are assembled
in this book. …
From “Blemish: David Sylvian Interviewed by Marcus
Boon”
David Sylvian: I often feel that there’s a greater
union between myself and my teacher when I’m not physically
in their presence. There’s a whole other level of experience
when I’m in their presence, but that sense of non-physical
merging, of intimacy, is profound.
Marcus Boon It’s surprising that you can
visit someone who’s been dead for 600 years and burst
into tears in their presence. That’s how I felt at Hazrat
Allaudin Sabri’s shrine in India. They say that he was
so fierce in his lifetime that the only person who could come
physically close to him was a musician, who would sit fifty
feet away and play for him. And you can still feel that fierceness
today!
DS That’s another element, isn’t it?
The element of ferocity in the proximity of the guru, People
talk about the experience of bliss, but the level of ferocity,
the fire that one has to walk through, live through – that
is also very intense. The degree of suffering increases as
the experience of sadhana deepens, for me, because at first
there’s less attachment to who one believes one is and
it’s easier to let go of all the things that need to
be let go of. As you move through different stages, the degree
of fear increases because ultimately you’re getting to
the root foundations of the ego which are unshakable. And there
is real fear because you see the death of the ego approaching,
and if you let go of that, what is there?
As you have to face your fears in the presence of your guru,
you witness other people going through their experiences. There’s
often this perception, “Why do I have to live through
this fear? I’ll take on anybody else’s obstacles,
but not this one!” [laughs]. It’s so pinpoint-perfect,
it’s precision-made, this laser-like intensity focusing
on just what needs to be focused on. Once you move beyond a
given level of fear, apprehension, there’s an enormous
release and a whole new world of possibility seems to open
up. You live and breathe that for a while until you come up
against that next obstacle.
MB A lot of people like to think that a spiritual
narrative consists in going from darkness and suffering to
peace and equanimity, but I think of your music, and in particular
of Blemish, which is so much darker than the records that came
before. It’s still a record about sadhana …
DS It’s darker than ever! But going through
that experience of darkness at this point in my life was very
different to before. First of all, there was a certain amount
of objectivity, of being able to step back and say, all of
this is just par for the course, it’s just part of the
learning process, whatever comes out of this is just to strengthen
me and help me to burn off whatever needs to be cleared away
so that I can see things clearly.
And a lot of things that I couldn’t face in my life
I could face in the studio environment. I would close that
door and start working and open myself to whatever came through.
And often it was very negative emotions. And I thought, well,
I’ll just look straight at them, and more than that,
I’ll take them even further than I feel them in my daily
life, because I wanted to go as far with them as I possibly
could. I felt very safe doing that. I felt that there was a
strength inside of me that would allow me to pull back at the
end of the day and be able to do away with those emotions.
So I was pushing myself deeper and deeper into the negativity
of the experience, wanting to know what that felt like, how
does that surface and how do you give that a voice? It was
a way of experiencing those experiences and giving them a new
vocabulary that was pertinent for now.
MB Now, as in our time?
DS Yes. I was also feeling that all the familiar
forms of popular song were no longer doing it for me. Even
those evergreen artists that you go back to time and time again
weren’t moving me anymore. The form had lost its potency;
it had been exhausted. I was beginning to feel: what next,
what do you do? And I felt that I personally had to find a
new form for what I was experiencing. I feel it’s true
of other arts, too: now is an important time to find vocabularies
that are pertinent to our time.
Everything becomes a commodity. We’re told that if we
understand someone’s taste in how they decorate their
home, then we can probably guess what kind of music will go
with that environment. Everything gets tied together in packages
so we can all have what’s known as “good taste.” We
can dress well, we have good taste in our cultural environment,
we can participate in it but without any commitment, no going
out on a limb, always tapping into something that’s termed “classic,” whether
it’s a couch or a Marvin Gaye record.
But when we find something that challenges all of that in
the culture, that’s when we discover who we are, and
our response isn’t preconditioned. We don’t have
the benefit of reading a review of this experience prior to
having it. We have to comprehend it on our own terms, ask: “Why
did I feel so irritated when I was provoked in that way?” I
want to have that kind of experience. The one that isn’t
scripted. The one that will throw you into the deep end of
an experience and you just have to work it out for yourself.
There is no right or wrong response, only your true response.
And that’s what I try to find in my work, that true response.
It doesn’t necessarily make it that comfortable an experience
to listen to, but that’s not the issue here. It’s
just trying to find a means to grapple with what it means to
be alive in the here and now, trying to find a vocabulary for
it, trying to press the right buttons in me, and hopefully
that will communicate to others.
From “My Visit to California” by
Sparrow
Because I live in a mountain town, I ride a bus into New York
City to board an airplane to California. On the bus from Phoenicia
to Manhattan, I wrote the following:
I enjoy watching a man read – it is often as engaging
as reading oneself. Nathaniel's Story by Anne Whitehead is
what the man in front of me holds in his hand.1
With his other hand (his right), he caresses his moustache.
Then at times he rests this hand on his lip.
He reads slowly, drawn into the imaginary story.
The way he touches his facial hair is almost seductive. My
wife touches my beard like that on certain nights.
Reading is self-romance. You believe two people in your chapter
kiss, but really you are falling in love with yourself.
I learned all this from watching a man with a moustache read.
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