Yesterday my Mom and two of my best friends went to a presentation at the Art of Living Fundation about breathing techniques to reduce stress. Well, it was supposed to be that, but as we found out, it was actually a sales pitch to get you enrolling to Breathing Lessons. So far so good, except that I kind of expected more. The Foundation brought aboard a lady from the India - clad in sari and all, which do interesting it seemed a bit over the top for me. The point shouldn't have been that she's from the India and that validates what she says. It was like she was put on display for us - Westerners - to admire her ancient primitivism.
The presentation started with a video promoting the Fundation and its creator, stressing what a exceptional, illuminated child he was. This already sounded fishy to me. Don't get me wrong, I believe in miracles, and I believe in children far ahead their age, who learn to speak, write and read much, much earlier than others, but for a grown man to brag about this - or the man's followers to brag about how a 60 year old geezer used to be a miracle child - is less than appealing. It's much like pulling out your grade school card and brag about your grades to pretend and sell everybody the idea that you are so smart.
There was a hint, a passing mention about how breathing affects us, how our emotions affect our breathing, but the promised techniques were safely tucked under the promise of a Breathing Course - composed of several levels - to which we had to enroll. She gleamed before us as a beacon of absolute happiness, bragging about traveling around the world for ten years now, never spending more than ten days at each destination, and yet not feeling ever jetlag or tired, and being able to pull an all nighter with people from the courses she gives. Sorry, am I supposed to be impressed? Here's my take on this:
First of all let's tackle childhood. No, childhood isn't a time of bliss. Sure, in retrospective your mind might have erased all the worries and bad memories, but childhood wasn't a continuum of happiness at every step. Petty or not with our adult eyes, our days were plagued with concerns and worries. Bullies we had to face, abusive teachers, the strain of not being taken seriously and always being brushed away for being kids, the anguish of being mocked for not having the same toys as other children, or not spending vacations at cool places. The fear breathed into us from the unknown, the people who steal children, and we were made feel powerless. With few exceptions, I believe all of us - at least I did - dreamed about the day we will become adults and have the power in our hands. When we wouldn't have to clean our rooms if we didn't want to, when we could eat anything we wanted, when we wanted, when we would pick our clothes, have our own money and buy anything we wanted. So, were we that happy when held in dependance of adults? Shouldn't we be happy now when we can make our dreams come true? When we are independent and empowered? From childhood to adulthood we didn't lost "inocence", we lost dependence. Of course, if in adulthood we traded our independence for dependance for whatever cheap trinket like "marriage", "religion" or any other thing we could have actually entered while keeping our independence, then that's not because "childhood was so beautiful", but because "we are such stupid asses".
Yes, it's a matter of attitude, a matter of how you face yourself and everything about and around you. Is past regretful and guilt-packed? Do you dwell on your old mistakes? Do you grief for the good times that are gone? Well, that's YOUR FAULT. Other people choose to learn from their mistakes instead of punish themselves for them, and they rejoice on their good memories, visiting them only for a hearty smile or a good laugh. IF you choose to use your past as a whip to skin your back, then don't blame it on adulthood, the times we are living or the met you eat. It's all in your wicked, twisted, screwed up attitude.
My past is full of stuff, good and bad. The bad I keep and visit to get reminders. They are my "been there, done that and I know it was stupid, so let's not do it again". Do I regret doing or saying or leaving out those things? Hell yes, but I don't lash myself about them! I like them, because thanks to them I grew wiser. Those mistakes are my Crone Badges. They give me the RIGHT to admonish others about the evils of this and that. Would I avoid them if I could? I don't know, because if I were to erase them from my memory, I would also loose the wisdom gathered from them. I came out scarred from those, but those scars paid for the treasure of knowledge I gained. But not all my memories are regretful. I have LOADS of good memories. Each time my friends or my cousins and I sit down to take a stroll down memory lane, we usually end up falling off our chairs laughing. Some of those memories are so good that once called upon I keep laughing about them for weeks. (Once I spent over a year giggling at the same joke. Really.)
Regarding the future, do you really find it scary and anxiety ridden? If you do, stop reading Nostradamus. The future hasn't happened yet, so you can make out of it whatever you want. It's not late and it's never late. Up until the moment you die, you are not late, and most likely, after you die, you still have a future to plan into. Future is possibilities. Why would you be scared of possibilities? Specially when you are an adult and you can choose any possibility you want? Who's to stop you? I mean, aside from your stupid self, of course.
The way I see it, the future is a huge candy shop, and you are standing at the entrance. You will enter, that's were you are heading, and as you take steps and make the candyshop your present, all you have to do is plan which candies will you take and in which order. With the present you reach for the candy and make it possible for yourself to pay for it. Of course, if you petrify at the door, do nothing to reach the candy, do nothing to have the money and convince yourself that all candy is tainted, then sure, your outlook is bleak.
I have had many plans that didn't come up the way I had originally planned them, but I'm still in the candyshop and not giving up, and that's the point, so why would th future have a choking hold on you? Why do you transform the nice candyshop into the Gingerbread house that killed Hansel and Grettel?
Further imparting on partying that leaves you feeling ill and sad, and food (namely meat) that tramples your happiness, was getting out of hand with me. I'm a happy person, I feel happy and no one can judge my feelings about it. I don't suffer jetlag, and I'm known for crossing the Atlantic ocean and half Europe only to rush from the airport to the movies. I travel well. I also get stressed out, I cry and feel frustrated, I bitch, rant, rage, kick, scream and curse like a sailor. It doesn't make me less happy, it makes me human. However, if I'm not willing to admit a lie - namely the lie that "I'm unhappy" - the I can't benefit from a technique devised to reduce stress?
It's not that I don't believe in the power of breathing or the benefits of meditation, it's that I naturally distrust anything that doesn't come forth clearly and openly, or starts by manipulating people into falling into a false down, to then offer a cure for the induced damage. Why do they need us to be unhappy? Doesn't their technique work on unmanipulated, perfectly happy people who wish to learn a breathing technique to perfect further their comfort?
Then again, like the rest of the marketing-arrested world, us, happy people, have no space in it.
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