Islands of Sanity

We are living through historically difficult times. There is tremendous turmoil, seas of suffering, and hateful behavior from people in power. I'm alarmed by images of children shivering while trying to start a fire with their family's furniture. I'm unnerved to see the bones of babies through their paper thin skin. My heart grips when hearing that young people are killed while attending school. I imagine myself, my children in these circumstances, and shake my head, unable to take it in.

On top of this, the amount of information and opinion coming at us feels overwhelming. And much of the information itself is suspect. It takes more and more discernment to sort out what is potentially true from what is blatantly false. And yet — these are the times we are living through.

History tells us that civilizations move in cycles. Like everything in this universe, they experience a beginning, a period of expansion, a period of contraction, and an end. This is not new. We have been here before.

The great Indian epic the Mahabharata tells the story of a civilization not unlike our own. Over the span of three generations, greed grew stronger and more widespread until society could no longer bear the terrible injustices — and war erupted. The war itself lasted only eighteen days, but at the end of that short time every weapon-bearing human had perished. Those left behind cleared the battlefield. And a new cycle began.

Many of you who have taken classes with me know that Margaret Wheatley has influenced me profoundly. She's been writing and teaching about the times we're living through now for years — because they are predictable. In her book Who Do We Choose to Be: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity, Wheatley references the work of historian Sir John Glubb to help us understand where we are now. In his 1976 book The Fate of Empires, Glubb described six ages that all human civilizations experience. The United States is currently in the final of those six — the cycle of decadence, the time of collapse.

It's not the apocalypse. It's not the end. It's collapse — a time of radical reorganization. Something new will emerge, for sure. But as we move through this time, it's messy. It's scary. And the suffering we are causing others will find its way back to us — that is the nature of karma. But there will be a future.

So — what are we going to do?

History offers guidance here too. Throughout time, during eras of great turmoil, there have always been humans who — in small and large ways — act to preserve the humanity in themselves and others. Wheatley calls these people warriors for the human spirit.

But what does it mean to be a warrior for the human spirit?

A warrior for the human spirit is someone who, in spite of contradictory evidence and personal peril, remembers that people are inherently kind, generous, and creative — and holds that truth for others when they can't hold it for themselves.

And it begins on the mat.

We step onto our rectangle of experimentation and enter a pose. Take Vrksasana — one leg lifted and resting on the other, arms raised overhead, eyes soft and focused. Lovely. But then — a wobble. Perhaps a fall.

That moment of imbalance is the moment that matters. Before you've even fully landed, the mind is already responding. And what it says will surprise you — because it happens so fast you almost miss it. Lightning fast, a habit, a samskara — a seed planted so long ago you've forgotten it's there.

Notice: was that thought kind? Or was it critical, judgmental, harsh?

Sit with that for a moment. That thought — the critical one, the harsh one — isn't the truth about you. It's a habit. A very old one, perhaps. And here's what's important: the simple act of noticing is the beginning of change. Without noticing, nothing can shift. But in the moment we see the thought clearly — really see it — we are no longer completely in its grip. You've just discovered a place where you've forgotten your own true nature. And now — you get to choose something different.

Slowly, with regular practice, the critical thoughts soften and transform. You come to know yourself — really know yourself — as kind, generous, and creative. And as you come to know yourself this way, you begin to see others this way too. This is how we become warriors for the human spirit.

There's an idea in the wellness community that we should treat ourselves the way we treat other people — the assumption being that we treat others better than we treat ourselves. It sounds right, doesn't it?

But I thoroughly disagree.

We can't treat others better than we treat ourselves. We can't give what we don't have — it's simply not possible. My teacher Kim would say we could promise someone a million dollars, but if we don't have it, we can't give it. In the same way, we might appear kind or generous toward someone else — but if we can't extend that same kindness and generosity toward ourselves, we're drawing from an empty well. And the moment will come — it always does — when someone we love makes a choice we don't understand, or disappoints us, or needs more from us than we feel we have. In that moment, we discover exactly how deep our well goes.

And from that place, we begin to see the goodness in others too. And then we can do something Wheatley calls creating islands of sanity — places where people come together to practice remembering who they are. Kind, generous, and creative. In community, together.

From its inception, Yoga Together Lincoln was intended to be one of those islands. That's still the aspiration. And let's be honest — we're going to pursue it imperfectly. We will make mistakes. We will bump up against the limits of our capacity for kindness, for patience, for generosity. But that's not a reason to stop — it's the whole point. We don't come to community because we have it all figured out. We come because we don't. Jack Kornfield says it better than I can, in After the Ecstasy, The Laundry:

"If we go to spiritual community in search of perfect peace, we will inevitably meet failure. But if we understand community as a place to mature our practice of steadiness, patience, and compassion, to become conscious together with others, then we have the fertile soil of awakening."

Perfectly imperfect. Let's clear away the ways we are at war with ourselves — and then perhaps we can do that for each other too.

And because this got a little serious — after all, I'm a Scorpio — I want to leave you with something light. Years ago on Saturday Night Live, Al Franken played Stuart Smalley, a gentle and goofy character who practiced affirmations. Here's one of my favorite Stuart Smalley skits. It never fails to make me smile. I hope it does the same for you.