Challenge for Growth Prompt #2: Looking for the Good in Others

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Looking for the good

This week’s challenge is:

“Today I look for the good qualities in others.”

When we are in a bad mood, we may find ourselves focusing on someone else’s faults. When we focus on the negative, we are likely to see negativity all around us. From time to time, Amma reminds us that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

People often get triggered into negative thinking when they are with someone who reminds them of a person that hurt them in the past. In the psychotherapy model I use, we refer to that as “putting someone else’s face” on the present day person. That process is also referred to as projection.

Clients in therapy frequently project their parents’ faces on their therapists. I remember a time in the mid 90’s when a client was always angry with the male co-therapist in one of my therapy groups. He knew that the therapist reminded him of his father, but he was having a hard time “getting his dad’s face” off of the therapist.

This therapist had some unusual characteristics so I said to the client, “Did your dad ever wear an earring?” and “Did your dad sometimes wear red toenail polish?” The client started laughing. His father would NEVER have considered doing either of those things. Seeing the differences really helped him separate the therapist from his father.

This week, for one, two, three days or longer, focus on looking for the good in others. If you have trouble finding anything positive about a person, consider whose face you might have on them. If you decide it is a parent, or a boss, or someone else from your past, identify ways the current day person is different from the one in your past. Then “de-role” the present day person by saying to yourself, “You are not (insert the name or role of person from the past), you are (insert the name or role of the person in the present).” After you de-role the current day person, you may be better able to identify some of their good qualities.

Also consider making lists of the positive qualities of anyone you have negative thoughts about, whether they be from your past or present.

Sometime during the week, write a post about some aspect of this topic or about your experience when focusing on seeing the good in others. Feel free to use whatever form you desire: i.e., prose, story, poem, photograph, etc.

I look forward to seeing where this challenge takes you.

The article that you link to this prompt should be a new post written specifically for this challenge.

General Prompt Information:

Since it is easier to make behavioral changes if we focus on them one day at a time, each of the weekly challenges will start with “Today, I focus on…….” It will be up to you to decide how long you want to focus on a particular challenge— one, two, three days or even longer. At some point during the week, publish a post that relates in some way to the subject of the week.

Link your post back to this prompt post. If the pingback doesn’t work, then leave the link to your post in the comment section of this post. Be sure to include “Challenge for Growth Prompts” as one of your tags.

Throughout the week, I will publish the links for the posts that were created as the result of this prompt. I will also post the links from those who participated the previous week. That way they will be seen by anyone who comes to the this page.

If you don’t have a blog, please feel free to submit your contribution to the prompt in the comment section below.

This week’s contributors to Looking for the Good challenge:

On Humans and Humanity- The Seeker’s Dungeon

Today I look for the good qualities in others- Journey of a Warrior Womyn

There is No “Other”- Living, Learning and Letting Go

Khuśiyōm Kī Bahār- Living, Learning and Letting Go

Through the Shadows- Nik’s Place

finding the light side (free verse)- Traces of the Soul

Challenge for Growth Prompt #2- Annette’s Place

Last week’s contributors to Needs vs Wants challenge:

The Bliss We Seek- The Seeker’s Dungeon

2016 Needs- Self Therapy

Needs vs Wants (Haibun)- Traces of the Soul

Resolve- Dream Cloud Diaries

Compassion’s Desires (Haibun)- Tournesol dans un Jardin

Are My Trips to Amritapuri Fulfilling a Need or a Want?- Living, Learning and Letting Go

The Needing Want- Nik’s Place

Needs vs Wants- Journey of a Warrior Womyn

My thanks goes to each of the bloggers listed above and to those of you who wrote your response to the challenge in the comments section of the challenge post.

To see the most recent Challenge for Growth Prompts Click Here

Wordless Wednesday

Kuzhitura Farm in Amritapuri

One of my goals for the last week of my trip was to visit the garden/farm south of the ashram as well as the one across the bridge near Amma’s Amrita School of Ayurveda. The land in both places is very dry, and water is scarce, so developing the gardens has been a process of trial and error over many years. This year the change was mind-boggling. In both places, I felt like I was walking into paradise. This post will be dedicated to the garden south of the ashram which is now called Kuzhitura Farm.

When I visited this farm last year, I had learned that they were focusing on using permaculture techniques. One of those techniques was the banana circle. I still remember how shocked I was when I researched bananas and banana circles later and learned that banana palms are not trees, they are actually considered a grass! (Banana Circles in Amritapuri).

When Premarupa and I arrived at the farm this year, I was struck by how different it looked. It is amazing how fast trees and plants grow in the tropics. While there are vegetables growing throughout the area, the big vegetable garden I remembered from the previous year wasn’t even in the same place. My guess is the trees and banana palms had grown so big that there was no longer enough sunlight in the original area. There is now a garden that is about triple the size of the previous one a distance away.

Here are pictures of the farm this year.

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water retention pond

tulasi plant

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(Click to enlarge pictures)

This property is also now home to Amritapuri’s food composting and vermi-composting (worm composting) centers. I will share more about those projects in the next post.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Weightless

This is one of my favorite photos. It came to mind when I thought of weightless.

hummingbird in bee balm Weekly Photo Challenge: Weightless

Are My Trips to Amritapuri Fulfilling a Need or a Want?

Since I wrote the “Needs vs Wants” prompt, I have been reflecting on my own relationship to that subject. Sitting here in my flat at Amma’s ashram in Amritapuri, India, it occurred to me that the reason I have been able to come here 26 times since January 1990 is because I have made that trip a major priority in my life. I value experience over material possessions so I have never been pulled into the world of consumerism and accumulation. There have only been two years when I was not able to save enough money to allow me to make that sojourn.

Is going to India a need or a want? At first I thought it was a want, but then I remembered there were many years I went to India even though I felt a lot of resistance to going. Continue reading “Are My Trips to Amritapuri Fulfilling a Need or a Want?” →

Living and Learning in Amritapuri: Jan 3-5, 2016

Swami Ramakrishna

I saw Swami Ramakrishna a few days ago for the first time on this trip. He is the swami that oversees Amma groups in North and South America and in Chennai, India. He may be responsible for other areas of the world too.

The reason I hadn’t seen him in Amritapuri was that he has been in Chennai helping with the flood relief efforts. If I understood him to say that the water had hit as high as 23 feet on the outside of the buildings and that there had been 8 to 9 feet of water inside the houses. Amma sent 500 volunteers to help. They rescued people from their homes, provided medical aid, food, clothes, blankets, cooking stoves, etc. Amma also donated $749,000 to the government for use in their ongoing relief efforts.

Swami Ramakrishna

Amma

Many people in the ashram spent the days after New Year’s getting ready for Amma’s North Kerala tour. The caravan consisted of 11 buses of ashramites as well as numerous supply trucks. The crowds are huge at these programs and there is a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done during them. Take a look at the size of one of the many cooking pots.

Kanji Making

The tour group left the ashram at 4:00 a.m. on the 5^th. There are still a lot of people in the ashram but so many fewer than when Amma is here. It is nice to have some days of comparative quiet before I leave India.

Sadhus

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I really enjoy seeing sadhus when they come to Amritapuri. Sadhus ascetics/holy people who wear saffron and often wander from place to place. They dress in different ways. The sadhu in this picture reminds me of some of the sadhus I see here, even though he is wearing clothes that are primarily yellow

(Photo Credit: “People of Varanasi 005” by Antoine Taveneaux – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -)

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One difference this year is that I have seen two female sadhus. I found them even more intriguing. This picture reminds me of them. The color and type of cloth she is wearing is more typical of what sadhus wear than the man in the picture above.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia.

Seva (volunteer work)

Prior to the Christmas play, I helped sew and iron costumes. On and off throughout the trip, I have also helped Chaitanya in the café by doing some of the prep work for dinner. My job has been to butter stacks of bread and cut buns. I also chop up capsicum for salads and other menu items.

I had worked in the café as a cashier for 15 years, or more. I stopped doing that job three years ago when I was having so much trouble with my blood pressure. This week, I decided I wanted to work at the café once again. Nowadays, people receive a token when they order their food. My job is to get the food from the kitchen window and then call out the token number. When the person comes to the counter I take their token and give them the food.

Each night, we serve so many people in a short amount of time. It’s fun! I think I will do that job again next year.

A couple of times this week, I also helped with processing the Matruvani magazines. Matruvani is one of the magazines published by the ashram that goes to devotees all over the world. If I remember right, when I first came here in January of 1990, they were sending out 40,000 copies a month. The pages came on big pieces of paper and had to be folded by hand. At some point, each publication would be checked to make sure every page was present and in order. After they were cut and stapled together, we would then fold a piece of paper around them that served as a mailing envelope. Next we would paste on the address labels, using our finger and some watery paste. There weren’t that many people living here in those days, so a mailing of 40,000 was a major endeavor. I remember working on them past midnight.

Now the ashram publishes about 350,000 Matruvani magazines as well as many other publications each month! The work is still a major endeavor and much of it is still done by hand. In addition to all of the components that had to be done in the past, they now have zip codes (called pin numbers here) to contend with. My job this week was to paste on checking labels that verified that the zip codes in each packet had been properly sorted.

Flexibility, Ingenuity

There was one story that I debated about sharing. After all, I don’t want you to think I’m crazy. I’ve decided to share it anyway. My hair grows really fast in India. My bangs had been getting longer and longer and were at the point where they were really annoying me. Two days ago, I had just had it. I had forgotten to bring scissors this year so didn’t know what I was going to cut it with, but I was going to find a way.

I could have found someone who had scissors but that would have taken effort and the scissors probably would have been dull anyway. Regardless, I didn’t want to look for scissors, I wanted it fixed NOW. I thought about the items I had in my room that could cut my hair. I realized the only thing that could cut anything was a pair of nail clippers. That seemed absurd but I used them anyway. While it isn’t a good cut, I have to say it ended up looking way better than when I use scissors! If someone would have told me I would be using nail clippers to cut my hair, I wouldn’t have believed them.

Photos

I will end this post with some photos.

The man in the boat was fishing

Sunrises and sunsets

(Click gallery to make pictures bigger.)

To read the earlier posts in this series go to: https://livinglearningandlettinggo.wordpress.com/india/

Challenge for Growth Prompt #1: Needs vs Wants

20150726_193656 Needs vs Wants

Welcome to the first “Challenge for Growth” Prompt! I look forward to posting a new challenge for you every Wednesday at 5 a.m. PST. I am also eager to see the posts you create in response.

General Prompt Information:

Link your post back to this prompt post. If the pingback doesn’t work, then leave the link to your post in the comment section. Be sure to include “Challenge for Growth Prompts” as one of your tags.

Throughout the week, I will publish the links for the posts that were created as the result of this prompt. That way they will be seen by anyone who comes to the Challenge page.

If you don’t have a blog, please feel free to join the discussion in the comment section below.

This week’s challenge is:

“Today I focus on my needs rather than my wants.”

The nature of the mind is that as soon as one desire is met, it is off to the next one, often without taking any time to appreciate the desire that was just realized. An endless stream of wants leads to the experience of scarcity; we never feel full, we never think we have or are enough.

One way to create a sense of abundance in our lives is to decrease the number of our desires. We can do that by putting our primary focus on meeting our needs and then prioritizing our wants. The first step for many people is to learn to differentiate their needs from their wants. Some examples: We need water – We want a soda; We need food – We want a big restaurant meal; We need shelter – We want a new house.

This week practice identifying which of your desires are needs and which are wants. When looking at your list of wants, decide which are the most important to you. On the day or days you focus on this week’s challenge, give priority to meeting your needs. If you put energy into obtaining any of your wants, be sure they are ones you have determined to be of significant importance.

Sometime during the week, write a post about Needs vs Wants. It may be a general post regarding some aspect of the topic or it may be about an experience you had when focusing on your needs instead of your wants.

I look forward to seeing where this challenge takes you.

This Week’s Prompt Contributors:

The Bliss We Seek- The Seeker’s Dungeon

2016 Needs- Self Therapy

Needs vs Wants (Haibun)- Traces of the Soul

Resolve- Dream Cloud Diaries

Compassion’s Desires (Haibun)- Tournesol dans un Jardin

Are My Trips to Amritapuri Fulfilling a Need or a Want?- Living, Learning and Letting Go

The Needing Want- Nik’s Place

Needs vs Wants- Journey of a Warrior Womyn

Wordless Wednesday

Living and Learning in Amritapuri (December 27, 2015 to January 2, 2016)

2015Dec24-ukn-9387 — Musicians with vocalists standing behind

In an earlier post, I shared pictures of the actors and scenes from this year’s Amritapuri Christmas play, “Blessed Art Thou.” In this one, I will focus more on the musicians and vocalists. Their work was magnificent.

In many, if not most, of the plays in Amritapuri, the musicians and vocalists are off stage. The actors are actually lip syncing when they appear to be speaking. They do such a good job of lip syncing many who watch the play don’t realize that they aren’t speaking, unless they know that this practice is traditional in Indian dramas.

Sreejit coordinates the group of musicians and vocalists. He and his musician friends start writing tunes as soon as one year’s play is over; long before they know what the next year’s play will be about. They write many tunes during the year but only a small fraction of them become part of the production.

Here are some of my favorite songs from this year’s play. Two of the tunes are original and two aren’t.

Part of this song is in Hebrew. It is traditionally sung in Jewish homes on the Sabbath. I think it is so beautiful.

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2015Dec24-dvd-201512241346 — Mary yearning for Jesus to return home

My favorite song in this play is “Each and Every Night.” Mary, mother of Jesus, is singing about how hard it is for her, as a mother, to wait for Jesus to come home again.

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The John the Baptist song was written and sung by Puneet Gabriel McCorrison. He is the person on the right side of the photo at the top of the post.

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This music and song is about the 40 days and 40 nights that Satan tempted Jesus. If you listen closely you will hear both the voice of Satan and the voice of Jesus. Sreejit is the voice of Satan! He is also in the photo at the top of the post, sitting on the left side. During the play, Sreejit played the harmonium and was the voice for both Goliath and Satan.

While there were many other songs in the performance, I believe these four will give you a good sense of how much the musicians and vocalists contributed to the play’s success!

New Year’s Eve

I was super busy on December 31. I left my room at 7:30 a.m. and didn’t make it back there, except for a few minutes, until 8:30 p.m. By then, I was so sleepy I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I knew the New Year’s Eve events would last until around 1:30 a.m., so decided to get some rest.

I slept from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m. When I woke up, I could tell that the entertainment portion of the evening program had already begun. I arrived at the auditorium in time to see a group led by Sashwat, an Amrita TV camera man. Two or three years ago he had surprised so many ashram residents by doing a rap performance on New Year’s Eve. This year, I sat on a table to the side of the hall and was able to see well. The singers and musicians were all sitting on the floor, as is typical in India. At one point a member of the group stood up and led several rap songs. He was the same man I mentioned in an earlier post, the one who practices Kung Fu moves on the beach! I was so surprised.

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That group’s performance turned out to be the end of the entertainment program. Thursday was a darshan day and Amma continued to give hugs until just before midnight. She then led a meditation and a Lokah Samastha Sukhino Bhavantu (May all beings in the world be happy) chant. Next came her New Year’s message. Amma talked about a variety of topics. Among them were 1) welcoming the new year with joy and alertness, 2) compassion, 3) facing obstacles and 4) protecting nature’s harmony. You can read excerpts from her speech at: http://www.amritapuri.org/50825/16-newyear.aum.

Afterwards, Amma led several beautiful bhajans (devotional songs) and then did a Badaga dance. The crowd loved it all. The picture below was taken after one of the more rousing songs.

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Following the bhajans, Amma served payasam (sweet pudding) to the thousands of people in the hall. She poured the pudding into cups and they were handed down from the stage on trays. Devotees then passed the cups of pudding to the people behind them until everyone had one. (Some of the brahmacharis also helped pour the payasam.)

After that, Amma left the hall and the devotees began to clean up. What a wonderful New Year’s Eve it had been.

New Year’s Day

Each year, about a week after the play, the cast get together to watch the newly created play video. It is always so much fun to watch it as a group. This year the viewing was on New Year’s Day and, as always, there was lots of laughter and applause.

That evening I went to the beach to meditate with Amma. On the way, I noticed one of the devotees who often represents the ashram was escorting a man and woman to the meditation. A young woman was walking nearby and when she saw the male visitor her jaw dropped in amazement. She came up to him and said she was a BIG fan of his. She turned around saying she couldn’t wait to tell her mother he was there.

I had no idea who he was but was definitely intrigued. Later I found out it was Russell Brand. I rarely see movies or watch other kinds of shows so I didn’t know anything about him. When I did an internet search, I discovered he is a British comedian, actor, and activist. I also learned he wrote an article about Amma last year so I looked that up as well. I was impressed with what he wrote. Many of his words were funny, but a lot of the things he wrote about Amma were profound. If you want to read his article you can find it at: https://web.facebook.com/RussellBrand/posts/10152650768708177

Time with Amma

In my last post, I had said I was going to make being with Amma a major priority for myself during the following week since she would be leaving on her North Kerala tour soon. While I did not always keep that commitment, I did make my decisions around use of time carefully. I think that was the life lesson, i.e. to make plans but be willing to let them go when it seems important to do so.

I received my last hug from Amma (for this trip) on December 30. I love it when Amma laughs while she hugs me. This time, it seemed like she held me for a long time while talking and laughing with the people who were nearby! What a great ending for that part of my trip

Celebration

One of the two elevators in our building has been out of service for a week or so. On New Year’s day there were so many people waiting for the elevator, I decided to walk up the stairs. There are fifteen flights of stairs to climb in order to get to my room on the fifth floor.

As I trudged up the stairs, I remembered I was carrying something for a friend living on the NINETH floor! I would have waited for the next elevator if I had remembered that, but I decided to just keep going. The celebration is that when I reached the eighth floor my pulse was 103 beats per minute (per Fitbit). On the nineth floor it was 105. A few months ago my pulse was 150 when I leisurely walked around a flat track at a park near Seattle. As far as I was concerned, for it to stay that low after climbing up 27 flights of stairs was worthy of a big celebration! I am so much healthier than I was when I arrived in India five weeks ago.

There is more I could say, but I will save it for another post. I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season and wish you a very happy new year.

To read the earlier posts in this series go to: https://livinglearningandlettinggo.wordpress.com/india/

Weekly Photo Challenge: Circle

I have been fascinated by this photo ever since I took it. Not only is the sun a circle, but so is the reddish area around it. I had wondered if it was some kind of an orb, or if it was something the camera created.

If anyone knows what caused the circle around the sun, please tell me!