Ben Ralston

The latest Yoga scandal? Or prefer to read about Truth?

30 or so years ago I lied to my Father and he caught me out. I remember being afraid, and tensing up in anticipation of a whack or a stern rebuke. But there was just a very long pause, a pause that felt like falling, falling through space – no roots, nothing to ground me. Then he warmly and simply said:

“There’s nothing I despise more than a lie”.

He looked at me kindly and left it at that.
He wasn’t always such a magnificent teacher, but that day, he nailed it.
I’ve spent my whole life since searching for Truth.
At school I sat in countless classrooms watching the parade of old men whose life-blood slipped away while they bullshitted themselves (and each other, and my parents) that they were teaching anything worthwhile. There was no truth to be found there.
On the television endless advertisements, people with too-white teeth and too-wide smiles, trying to persuade me that they were honest and good and that I needed what they were selling. No truth there.
On the streets and in the shops and buses and trains I saw everyone trying to convince themselves that they were alright, happy, safe. But I saw through their deception. No truth.
In Churches and in Synagogues I listened to readings from dusty old books and I felt the disconnect between what was being read, and the person reading it. There was no truth there, no true Faith, only blind, wishful-thinking, and the wise child that I was wasn’t fooled.
(When I finally realized that my parents weren’t superheroes) I saw my Father struggling to balance his dignity with the daily grind of trying to become – what? A millionaire? A billionaire? And I failed to see the truth in that.
I saw my Mother’s sense of unfulfilled, unrealized potential, and the emptiness inside that she occasionally tried to fill with wine, chewing gum, or television, and I knew that she hadn’t found the truth that I was looking for.
So I spent many years knowing only what I didn’t want. I didn’t want my life to be a lie. I knew that with all my heart. I yearned for a not-lie. But I had no idea what that was. I had no idea what the truth looked like, or how it felt, or even if I would recognize it if it were right in front of me, with a big flashing neon sign:

Herein lies TRUTH.

Actually, I would have turned away. When you are so conditioned by delusion and hypocrisy… when all you have ever known is deception… when the fabric of your society is woven with pretense… then the truth is something to be feared!
I have another, earlier memory. Mr Morton may have been a rare example in my life of a good school teacher. He seemed very old to me then, with grey whiskers and a stooped gait, and when he sat at the front of the class he would interlock his fingers, rotating one thumb around the other in what seemed like a frantic attempt to slow down time… I had the sense that there was a great energy about to bubble up in him, about to boil over… and if he didn’t keep on twiddling his thumbs like that he wouldn’t be able to stop it.
One of my peers must have lied to him one day, because he exploded, whiskers shaking, mouth foaming, eyes bulging. When he’d finished there were some nervous  sniggers, but we all – each and every one of us in that room that day knew that we’d seen and heard Truth directly:
“When you start to tell lies you enter a very dangerous arena, a grey world where black and white blur into one, and right and wrong lose their meaning. And one day you will find yourself an altogether grey person, because you will have started to believe your own lies.”
We live in a grey world. Our society is very, very grey – phone hacking, money-makes-money banking, countries invaded under the guise of WMD that were never there. Soap operas and adverts and MTV and internet-filters and rigged elections and Arms Fairs and Oil dependency and Global Warming and… on and on. One scandal, one controversy after another.
This is what happens when spiritual practice is used as a vehicle for fame and fortune, when personal gain trumps respect for lineage, when the student proclaims himself teacher of teachers. (The link is to a post I wrote the other day about the corruption of Eastern spirituality by Western materialism, specifically – yoga teachers training more yoga teachers).
Does our society support a quest for freedom and truth, or does it encourage us to rejoice in the illusion of gossip and malicious rumor like pigs rolling in mud?
There is only one solution to the problem, and that is to stop relying on that society. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be part of it. You can still play the game – but by your own rules.
Be aware that Truth is the gateway to freedom. And don’t compromise in your search for, and expression of, that truth.
Not long ago a student asked me the secret to happiness. I answered:

“Never compromise”.

She was somewhat surprised, because let’s face it, most of us grew up being taught the opposite – that compromise is an integral part of happiness!
How many times were you told:
“’You can’t have it all’… ‘choose one or the other’… ‘dreams don’t come true’… ‘better the devil you know’…”
or variations of the above?
But I’m here to tell you differently: by all means, compromise with your partner over which movie you watch, or what you have for dinner; compromise with a colleague over how you go about completing a task. Compromise on the little things. Compromise your desires.
But when it comes to something big – love, work, your aspirations and dreams: don’t compromise – not one iota. Don’t take a single step off the path of meaningful, intentional life. Know what you want, and go for it, with 110% of your energy. And when something gets in the way, either jump over, or go around, or wait patiently until it moves away again, because it will move if your intention is strong.
Don’t lose sight of what is important to you – your values – and don’t compromise on them. If you do, the day will come when you look back on your life and see only a lies. I can’t imagine anything worse.
Mr Morton was right.
One lie leads to another. What starts out as a simple excuse for why you stay with the partner who doesn’t totally rock your world leads to a whole world-wide-web of self-deceit. That’s just the beginning, because next you have to convince the rest of the world about it too!
Before you know it, life is grey and foggy.
It takes a great deal of courage to be really honest with yourself. The very reason we deceive ourselves is because we’re afraid. So to be honest means to be doubly courageous – you have to have the cojonesto confront your fears, and to then carry on in spite of them. You have to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’.
That might mean leaving a partner, or a job, or a home, or a college. It might mean coming out about your sexuality, or travelling the world, or learning a language, or whatever. These are big, scary things. But they are gateways – you can either go through that gateway to freedom, or you can stay hiding behind the door.
Hide behind that door and remain in a dark, shadowy, grey world where the search for love, peace, and freedom is utterly pointless. Death will come for you full of regrets.
But step through that door and be dazzled by full-spectrum multi-chromatic rainbow-colored Glory.
The choice is ours to make, and we are all making that choice, every moment of every day.

What do you choose?

If you’re feeling it, share it. ‘Like’ it up on FB, and leave a comment, please.

Why I had to leave Bangkok after just one night. Part 1 – The Girl with Black Eyes.

I cried a little writing this. Sometimes, I am ashamed to be a man…
I was 21 years old and I went to Thailand. A guy I knew who was very cool had been there, so I thought that perhaps if I went to Thailand, I’d be cool too. As far as I can remember that was my motivation… and I guess I wanted to grow up a little.
Well, I grew up a little.
It’s funny. Before I left, my Mum begged me to promise to call her every day. I thought she was insane and I assured her in no uncertain terms that I would not be giving her daily progress reports. As it turned out though, she had good reason to worry!
I’d planned to stay 3 nights in Bangkok, and then get on a train and go North. It didn’t work out that way…
When I arrived, I headed for the area where all the tourists usually stay. I forget the name (Khao San road?), but it’s very well know. And actually, the place I ended up staying is the place where Leonardo DiCaprio’s character stays in the movie The Beach. I was there first, but only for one night.
I was 21 years old and alone in a very strange land. I went down the steps into the sitting area below and ordered a beer. I remember feeling like a fish out of water. I don’t know what I was thinking, going to Thailand. I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin, let alone South East Asia. But there I was…
And there were a couple of old Thai Dudes playing chess, and I sat near them and plucked up the courage to watch. In the end, I had a game with one of them (my Dad taught me to play chess when I was about 5 years old, and by the time I was 15 I was beating him consistently. He was a very, very sore loser, and wouldn’t speak to me after we played. He’d just go to bed sulking. I never let him win though, even though my Mum asked me to when he was sick. I couldn’t do that to him. I loved him too much).
Anyway, here’s what happened in Bangkok:
I played a little chess with this old Thai Dude and he was a bit of a charmer. After our game, he invited me out for some “traditional Thai food and music”. I was really happy – I wanted to get to know the real Thailand, not just the Khao San road (or whatever it’s called). So off we went… and ended up in this fairly tacky looking restaurant. The manager was floating around us, wringing his hands and doing his best “I’m servile and I’ll do anything for a tip” act. The band played synthesized Western rock songs. It was awful. And the only other thing I remember from the evening was the girl with black eyes…
The Thai dude called over the manager and whispered in his ear, and the manager scuttled off somewhere and came back a few minutes later with a young Thai girl. I’d say she was 11 years old. I’m usually very good at guessing people’s ages. I usually get it spot on.
I’d say she was 11. But she had black eyes. I don’t mean the color – although, I think that the color of her eyes was black too. What I mean is that there was no light – no light, whatsoever – in her eyes. There was only darkness.
Can you imagine? Have you ever seen a child with no light in their eyes? It’s unimaginable. Her eyes weren’t eyes. They were black holes.
She stood in front of me, and looked through me. I could feel her discomfort, her total unease… no, her hate.
The Thai Dude told me that for a few dollars I could do whatever I wanted with her, and for a few dollars more I could have her for the night.
The charm, and the chit-chat, and the chess game, and the pretense, all fell away. I felt sick to my stomach.
I leaned forward to try to talk to this girl; to reassure her that I didn’t want anything from her. But she recoiled. She didn’t speak a word of English, and she trusted me as much as all the other men she’d ever known.
I wanted to rescue her. I wanted to pull out my Uzi and kill every motherfucker in there – the band, The Dude, the manager, and any other cunt who had any part in all of this. I wanted to throw this girl over my shoulder and get her the fuck out of there.
I didn’t have an Uzi, but I swear to God I would have killed those people with my bare hands there and then if there had been a chance of helping her. If she had seen me for who I was, and let me help her, I would have. But there was nothing I could do.
The feeling I had was like when you are in a restaurant, and you see a lobster being taken out of the tank and dropped into boiling water. This girl with black eyes was like an 11-year-old girl in boiling water, and I was powerless to help her.
In the end all I could do was stand up and walk out of there. I walked out into the night, no clue where I was, and somehow found my way back to the hotel. The next day I left Bangkok. I couldn’t stand to stay there any longer.
I’ll never forget that girl, and how she looked right through me.

Part 2

Part 3

COMMUNICATION, anger, and atheism

Recently, I read a very strong blog about atheism. I say strong because it’s well written, and the ideas put across are well thought out. But it’s also strong in another sense – there’s a lot of anger! In fact one of the key articles is: ‘Atheism and Anger’*.

As I read it I remembered something that Tony Samara once said:
“Anger is a lack of communication”.


Communication is CONTACT – contact between two separate centers of awareness; two minds. And through that contact, there is CONNECTION.
Feeling that connection is one of the most important things in life. Why? Because it’s REAL. We really are connected to everything around us!…

  • We are connected energetically through our solar plexus to the world around us.
  • We are connected through our actions – everything we do has an impact on our environment. Everything. Even taking a breath! Breathe in, and you accept the gift of oxygen that the trees constantly bestow. Breathe out and you give something back.
  • We are connected emotionally too – smile, and you spread a little warmth and happiness in the people who see your smile.
  • We are also connected psychically. Every thought you have sends a vibration out into the universe, like a radio signal. Think positively and the universe responds.
  • And you know what? We’re also intimately connected in a physical way as well – we NEED physical contact with other beings. We need to be touched, held, kissed, loved. It’s been proven that people who live alone die younger. Even if you only have a pet, statistically, you are more likely to live longer than someone who lives alone!

So we really are all connected in many ways that we usually don’t notice or give much thought to. It’s the truth. It’s reality. Truth and reality are what I’m interested in. I don’t care for anything as much as I care for getting closer to reality. And that, to me, is what communication is all about: getting closer to the truth.


(In case any skeptics are reading this, let me just say: my definition of truth is ‘something that I can prove through my own experience’. I put no faith in other people’s proof: whether they wear white coats or have letters before or after their name is of no interest to me whatsoever!)


When another being communicates with me, there is contact, and at the heart of that contact is something very real. Two minds meeting; two seemingly separate beings making contact and becoming more aware of the reality of the connection that underlies their existence. To me, that is what life is all about.


As I read that atheist’s blog, and I thought about all the anger that she feels, I understood her:  if I believed strongly that I was a totally separate being, with my consciousness created by my brain – locked away by skin and bone; with no possibility of ever having meaningful contact with another being – then hell, I’d be angry too!


But you know what? EVERY BELIEF YOU HAVE, IS A CHOICE YOU MAKE.
Beliefs are just habits.
It’s been demonstrated that they are very strong habits: many people would do anything, even die, to defend their beliefs. But they are just habits.
And we can drop habits anytime we like, as easily as dropping a glove, if we really choose to.


If you knew that, would you choose to defend a habit that makes you angry?Or would you re-evaluate what you consider to be ‘true’?
Because the truth of our beliefs is absolutely subjective! Truth, as we believe it to be, is subjective. It is relative. So why hold on to ANY belief?


I choose to believe in nothing. I choose to simply feel the world around me as it is.
I feel connected to the world around me through my solar plexus. I feel connected to other people and animals, and even rocks, and trees, and well, everything really, by the rhythmical flow through my veins; and the wind that I breathe; and the water that I drink; and by the planets’ orbits. I feel connected and that sense of oneness is blissful.
I choose to feel the bliss of that connection rather than the loneliness and fear of separation.


I choose to believe in everything. I see truth everywhere, and I know it to be at once both true and untrue. So how can I not believe it?!


Actually, I choose to believe that nothing is important: including, no, especially, my beliefs. The only thing that is at all important to me is how I feel. So I choose to feel good first, and to believe in what makes me feel good.


If I feel anger, I know that it is a sign that something in my life, in my environment, in my world, is wrong. Almost always it is because I have lost that feeling of connection. So I EXPRESS my anger; I communicate it, and immediately the sense of connection is restored.
Try it: next time you are angry, instead of just being angry, communicate the anger. Try saying out loud “this makes me angry because…”.
In that communication you begin to put right what is wrong. You begin to rebuild that delicate and subtle sense of connection that is so essential to your well-being and inner peace. It’s the only thing that really matters…


What do you believe? Do you feel angry about something?
Let’s communicate /make contact / connect – leave a comment!
With love…


*Thanks to Greta Christina and her blog for inspiring this article.

FREEDOM


What is real freedom?

Is it a physical condition (not being behind bars)?
Is it being free to do or say or think what ever you want, no matter what?

I created this blog today having never ‘blogged’ before, and had to choose from a range of ‘templates’. I chose the only black one. Why?

I used to have an aversion to the color black. I used to think that it is a negative, or ‘unspiritual’ (whatever that means!), color.
Then I realised something. Something very profound.
Nothing is negative!

Time for a great quote:
“Nothing is all good or all bad, except that we make it so“…
Whoever said that, and I’m not sure who it was – perhaps it was Shakespeare, or Abraham Lincoln? Like i said, no idea – but whoever it was, really understood that nothing is negative; nothing is bad.
For example: my aversion to black cut me off from a whole range of clothes and other choices. I was not FREE to choose. My choices were limited by the idea, ‘black is bad’.
So today, I chose the black template just to acknowledge and celebrate my freedom from a limiting idea.

What other kinds of things limit us?
The other day, I had a client whose Mother used to say, whenever sex was portrayed on television: “look what the pigs are doing”. I am sure that the Mother never enjoyed sex, or knew the beauty of meaningful physical contact with another human being. How sad.

So often, we judge the world around us. Those judgements limit us. They interrupt our freedom.
Given the choice: to be absolutely non-judgemental behind bars; or physically free but trapped in a cycle of judgement, I would choose the first option. Why? Because I know that, as Jesus said: “the truth will set you free“.
When we judge, we do not see things as they really are! We super-impose an idea onto what we are looking at. Actually, we don’t see at all – we just look.

When we stop judging, we stop looking for what we think we already know. Instead, we see things as they really are. We see the truth. And that is freedom, because in that moment of honest and open experience of truth, of reality, we know. We see, and we know, and we are free to choose.

That is real freedom.

ps – As you may have noticed, I changed the template from black to white – it was hard on the eye!