I may be a teacher to you.  I may be just nobody.  All I know is that through the blessings of my master, I am able to serve some people.  I have been trained to do that, and for that privilege I am extremely grateful. 

An ordinary rusty spigot in a hot, parching desert is all I am.  There is nothing special about me.  There just happens to be some water flowing through me, and in this desert people take comfort and revive themselves through that water.  The spigot is not great.  It is the water.  Don't break your teeth on this old spigot.  Just please, if you have a mind to, drink the water.

If you want someone to initiate you, there are lots of places you can go and plenty of swamis and gurus who will take your money.  But if you want to initiate yourself on a path of truth and excellence, you may come to me.  I will give you a hard discipline so you can grow and refine your habits, your attitudes and your inner self.  Then you may serve others from that point of excellence.

A teacher is known by his students.  I am not looking for thousands.  I don't need followers at all.  I am looking for just one, maybe two, excellent students to become tomorrow's masters and shine a light of inspiration for people everywhere.  That will be more than enough for me.

Blessings abound. In all my letters, I conclude with "Blessings abound".  Count your blessings.  Even hardships may count as blessings if you leverage them to your advantage.  Yesterday's heavy smoker is the best authority to help today's heavy smoker quit their habit.  Yesterday's hopeless case can provide faith and inspiration to today's down and out.  Every ugly, negative experience you have ever had can be turned to positive if you just get over it, purify yourself, and make yourself available as a teacher and an inspiring force for others.  There is nothing without hope.  This Kundalini Yoga taught to me by Yogi Bhajan is the pure discipline of hope and hopefulness.

Poems

Who

Who knows where we come from.
Who knows where we go.
Who is always with us.
This I know.

Who is in the sunshine.
Who is in the rain.
Who designs our fortunes.
Who complains.

Who is in the mountains.
Who is in the sea.
Who's in everybody,
Just like me.

Of all the whos before us,
And whos yet still to be,
The best is ever with us,
Fast and free.

Lawn Slaves

Come and see my lawn today!
See it straight and narrow.
Take a little off the top!
Sprinkler, wheel and barrow.

Forest Hill, you beckon us.
Your lawns are wide and willing.
I see the graves of all your slaves
Still yawning for fulfilling.

Who could ever picture such
Abject enormity?
A monument to summers spent
In crass conformity.

The Time

Now is the time we've been waiting for
     to ferry across to the farther shore.

Now is the time to give up blame.
     These times will never be the same.

Now is the time to leave behind
     the stuffy strictures of a closet mind.

Now is the time for outer space,
     to give our courage and live in our grace.

Now is to do what's never been done,
     to show our wisdom and freedom and fun.

All the wonder and all delight
     await the one who comes to light.

Now is the time.

ECO-YOGA

Practical Ecology From Within

Environmental ecology is a BIG issue for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the simple fact that the whole known universe outside our bodies is, in fact, our environment. Contemplating the job of healing the outer ecology, one might easily throw up one's hands at the scope and immensity of it all.

"What can just one person do?" we might ask.

Plenty, as it turns out. As a person who has always taken an activist approach to life, whether in larger issues of peace, justice and human rights, or in issues closer to home, such as my own health and well-being, I have always found that every real empowerment comes first from within. Every respect, every trust, every strength, must first be found inside before we can dance and play and work with it in the so-called "outside world."

Inside is where it all starts. The outer world is simply a mirror of our inner world. If we take care to restore and harmonize the components of our inner ecology, we will find our caring consciousness is certain to show in the environment we share. If we truly wish to make a change outside, the natural place to begin is within.

The following are a number of simple tips which have guided me in the course of my own empowerment. I hope you will find them as helpful as I have in establishing inner and outer ecologies which are balanced, uplifting and whole.

1. Don't store toxic wastes in inhabited areas: Drink 8 glasses of water daily and get plenty of physical exercise. Be sure to clear your bowels regularly. If they are functioning well, solids should take no more than a day to be eliminated. Check this by eating a meal of beets and seeing how long it takes before the red stool arrives. Eating beets is also beneficial for your body since they work to gently detoxify your body's main toxic waste disposal system, based in your liver.
2. Use energy-efficient, nonpolluting fuels. a) Eat a vegetarian diet. b) Breathe fully. Make a daily practice of breathing exercises. c) Treat your body to solar energy daily. The rays of the sun can energize, heal and uplift, when proper precautions are taken.
3. Don't generate a greenhouse effect. Wear natural fibres (cotton, linen, wool, silk, hemp, ramie and natural rayon). Your skin will breathe easier, and you will feel more relaxed.
4. Preserve your "Amazon rain forest". Keep your hair long and beautiful. It enhances our ecology in ways we have yet to fully understand.
5. Promote biodiversity. Give Mother Earth your very best - which is you, of course! (What did you think, silly?) Appreciate your own exquisite uniqueness. Relax with it. Cherish it. Be creative with it. Let go of fear. Love all beings. Live in truth.

Thinking BIG

One day, I was thinking if I could change the world politically, what would I do? It was an interesting exercise, creating a wish list of things of things that could be done if only enough of us agree they must be done. You can make your own list, if you like. Here is what came to my mind:

1. Eliminate gross inequalities of wealth. A handful of people own more wealth than the poorest third of the Earth's population, and the gap between rich and poor everywhere is widening. Less people are starving that 50 years ago, it is true, but this creates strange and unprecedented situations such as hundreds of millions of hard-working people around the globe who feel they cannot afford to marry. Is being financially able to marry and start a family a human right? It is not, what kind of inhumane excuse for an economy (from the Greek word "Oikonomia" meaning household management) is it that allows for this kind of cruel inequity?
2. Eliminate the cloak of anonymity in all kinds of work, investment, and research and development. Those who make great things happen should be publicly acknowledged, while the anonymous geniuses hired by profit-driven corporations who come up with new weapons of mass destruction and polluting or dehumanizing technologies should be de-cloaked and called to account. Shareholders in these enterprises should also be made to bear a share of the responsibility.
3. Communities everywhere need to be nurtured. The average Canadian moves every seventh year, usually for job promotions and transfers. Let's figure a way to cool the hot real estate market and rebuild our neighborhoods.
4. Let us take the example of Sao Paolo, Brazil and ban the bane of excessive advertising. In an age of conservation, we don't need a mental environment that encourages endless consumption.
5. Reduce the workweek and increase holidays. Life is more than work. It is time government, people, company heads and everyone else recognized it in law and in practice.
6. By and large, the public school system everywhere is too big, too alienating, too impersonal for human habitation. It creates interchangeable human widgets for the global corporate machinery. Let's design a human scale system that focuses on developing the human spirit first, and learning technology second.
7. Let's make a sound education a right for everyone everywhere. Why not make education the number one industry?
8. Nobody likes banning anything, but how about encouraging the creation of more family entertainment, the kind everybody can enjoy? Movies in North America were first graded "Restricted" and "Adult Entertainment" in the 1970s. What did we gain?
9. Let's decentralize governments around the globe, putting the emphasis on much smaller units, closer to the community level.
10. Let's follow the Swiss example and widen the usage of referendums in deciding matter of state. In Switzerland, legislators merely frame questions to be decided in referendums by the citizens three times yearly.
11. How about developing an integrative network of twin cities and cultural exchanges around the globe? Join up Basra and Baltimore, Lhasa and London, Tehran and Tel Aviv, Pyongyang and Pittsburgh, Havana and Houston. Make friends, cross divides, and dispel delusions.
12. Finally, let's focus on verifiable nuclear disarmament as a first stage of a worldwide de-escalation of arms stockpiles, arms industries and big armies in general.

Unrealistic? Well, maybe. But if you don't name a problem, nothing is likely to be done about it. If you like any of these ideas, please pass them on.