Benjy Wertheimer, Author at LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health

In Wild Mercy, Mirabai Starr Shares the Transformational Path of the Female Mystic

Benjy Wertheimer — Sun, 26 May 2019 23:36:40 +0000

Wild Mercy: Living The Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Wisdom Mystics

Every so often, we come across a work so perfectly timely that it seems truly divinely inspired, and the recent release of Mirabai Starr’s book Wild Mercy: Living The Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics is a perfect case in point. As we look out at a world that is often characterized by #MeToo, open racism, and extreme divisiveness, we find a healing balm in Mirabai’s exquisitely articulate and insightful invitation to all of us to explore – and ultimately to embody – the fierce compassion and timeless wisdom of women mystics throughout history.

Wild Mercy is, in a word, extraordinary. It draws upon the power of story, spiritual practice, and myriad mystical and philosophical traditions. The words are crafted by an author with a rare gift for weaving these traditions together masterfully and making them effortlessly accessible to 21st century seekers.

The Stories of the Mystics

As readers, we’re guided expertly on a journey that introduces us to inspiring mystics including the author’s namesake Mirabai, the Indian saint Anandamayi Ma, Saint Teresa of Ávila, the Sufi ecstatic Rabia of Basra, the Christian yogi Hildegard of Bingen, and the 18th-century Japanese poet (and Basho protégé) Chiyo-ni.

Delving just as deeply into our own time, we also meet remarkable contemporary mystics, healers, and activists. We are introduced to Zen traumatic bereavement specialist and feminine mystic exemplar Dr. Joanne Cacciatore (“Dr. Jo”). We hear from Christena Cleveland, an African-American social scientist, educator, and theologian who explores the realms of privilege and marginalization from a spiritual perspective. In the pages, we meet Syrian-American Muslim rapper, peacemaker and poet Mona Haydar, as well as forgiveness facilitator Ondrea Levine.

Men are Welcome Here

A quick note to any men who might feel that this book is not addressed to them: Mirabai offers a clear, concise invitation to fully engage with and respect the realm of this deep feminine wisdom. She says, “Men are welcome here. You just don’t get to boss us around or grab our breasts or solve our problems.”

The Unifying Thread of Feminine Wisdom

It has often been said that mystics from any tradition usually share more in common with one another than they do with more orthodox practitioners of their source tradition. Nowhere have I found this to be more true than in the all-too-rarely-elucidated realm of the women mystics. The unifying thrust of the sacred feminine inquiry extends far beyond the tenets of any one religion or cosmology.

Inclusivity and the Divine

Wild Mercy shows us pathways and perspectives that reconcile radically different ideological and spiritual divides. This can include the nurturing inclusivity of the Mother holding the wounded child who has hurt others, weaving together the paths of the “householder” with that of the ascetic, and a radical simultaneous holding of dualistic and non-dualistic spiritual worldviews. For example, how many of us have heard the dualistic Bhakti adage, “I don’t want to BE the sugar, I want to TASTE the sugar?” Here we find an invitation large enough to allow us to embrace both sides of this apparent paradox.

Spiritual Solutions for the Modern Age

Throughout Wild Mercy, Mirabai makes a clear case that the solutions to some of the most seemingly intractable issues of our time lie in embracing and embodying the skillful response of the feminine mystic. These issues include the vitriolic polarization so ascendant in this era, or the blatant, tragic disrespect and contempt that fuel racism, sexism, xenophobia, or even the environmental crises that threaten to eradicate life itself. As the author writes, “Rather than delineate perpetrators and victims, sacred and profane, physical and metaphysical, the feminine welcomes everyone to the table. Like the Great Mother herself, the feminine mystic does not view creation as a damaged object in need of repair but rather as a beloved child in need of care.”

Walking the Path of the Feminine Mystic

Mirabai continues, “To walk as a feminine mystic in this world is to recognize that our lives are interpenetrated with the lives of all sentient beings and that the One we love shines from every nexus in that web of interbeing. Whenever we tend to a single strand, we are participating in the care of the whole. When we turn our face from the suffering of any being and walk away, we are exiling ourselves from our Beloved.”

The path of the woman mystic is one on which we fully engage with all aspects of life. Following this path means that we find a way to simultaneously hold the worlds of devotion and non-duality, avoiding the “trap that sets up devotion and non-dualism as mutually exclusive.” We are invited into a peaceful coexistence of the devotional and non-dual paths arising from “moments of rapture in the face of the most ordinary phenomena, in which our particular embodied experience gives way to an undifferentiated melding with All That Is.”

Mirabai says that the path of the woman mystic “…is about becoming as fully present as possible to the realities of the human experience… Instead of engaging spiritual practice as a contraption to catapult us up and out of this relative world, the feminine mystic shows up right here, in the center of the incarnational experience. We bless the messy wonder of it all, the experience of being human… It is by showing up for the full encounter with reality that we discover our hidden wholeness, which was, of course, present all along.”

Lessons from the Vast Spiritual Terrain

It is nearly impossible to convey the vastness of the spiritual terrain Mirabai so expertly elucidates in this work. And it is coupled with one of the most authentic, vulnerable and eloquent voices I’ve had the pleasure to read. In only 264 pages, we are brought fully into the realm of the sacred feminine in so many forms: Quan Yin, Tara, Sophia, Shekinah, Mary, Fatima, Kali, Durga, Saraswati, Sita, Shakti, Gaia, Spider Grandmother (cocreator and sustainer of the world), Pachamama, and Demeter (the Greek goddess of the harvest and fertility).

Perhaps Demeter is one of the most significant characters in this work, as her story is so archetypally connected to the tragic death of the author’s fourteen-year-old daughter Jenny. Demeter was able to negotiate having her beloved daughter Persephone returned from the underworld for half of the year, but in spite of all of Mirabai Starr’s excruciating grief and “rowing my boat across the waters of death, calling her name,” Mirabai received no such dispensation.

Yet even here we find a hidden gift and revelation. “Sometimes it appears as if it is when we are most radically shattered that the boundless grace of divine Love comes pouring in…We are conditioned to see death and painful longing as problems to be solved rather than as sacred landscapes to be revered.”

Footsteps for the Grief-Stricken

Following the courageous path that she expertly elucidates throughout the book, Mirabai Starr opted to transform the excruciating lifelong pain of losing her daughter Jenny into the creative endeavor of writing this book.

She provides footsteps for the grief-stricken to follow. “The only thing that helped me make sense of what happened to me was to show up for others as they showed up for the immensity of what had happened to them…This alchemy could not have occurred had I not taken the journey of descent.”

As Mirabai makes abundantly clear, this loss that will live forever in her heart also alchemically became the impetus for creating Wild Mercy. And, inevitably, all of us face grief, loss, and the reality that everything in the material domain changes and ends. Rather than attempting to distract and disengage ourselves, the author reminds us that, “The path of the feminine mystic invites us into direct connection with the heart of our pain, where we may harness the power of our loss to create intimacy with the sacred.”

Wild Mercy as a Guiding Light

Wild Mercy is simply one of the most important and relevant spiritual books of our time. I invite you to follow the lead of Mirabai Starr and countless women sages throughout history, and to use this masterful exploration of the sacred Feminine as a guiding light for your unique voyage of spiritual transformation and healing service to this world. Isn’t it the other way around? Rather than tasting the sugar we can be the sugar?

Benjy Wertheimer

An award-winning musician, composer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist equally accomplished on tabla, percussion, esraj, guitar, and keyboards, Benjy Wertheimer has performed and recorded with such artists as Krishna Das, Deva Premal and Miten, Jai Uttal, Walter Becker of Steely Dan, virtuoso guitarist Michael Mandrell, tabla master Zakir Hussain, and renowned bamboo flute master G. S. Sachdev.

He has also opened for such well-known artists as Carlos Santana, Paul Winter, and Narada Michael Walden. Benjy is a founding member of the internationally acclaimed world fusion ensemble Ancient Future.

He began his musical studies at age five, starting with piano and later violin, flamenco guitar, and Afro-Cuban percussion. Benjy has been a student of Indian classical music for over 35 years, sitting with some of the greatest masters of that tradition, including Alla Rakha, Zakir Hussain, Ali Akbar Khan and Z. M. Dagar. Along with the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart, he was a contributing composer and member of the Zakir Hussain Rhythm Experience.

Trained in audio engineering at San Francisco State University, Benjy is also very much in demand as a producer, engineer and studio session musician. For over five years, Benjy scored music for the internationally syndicated NBC series Santa Barbara, and his CD Circle of Fire went to #1 on the international New Age radio charts.

Making his home in Portland, Oregon, he now tours internationally in the kirtan group Shantala (with his wife Heather) and as part of the kirtan “supergroup” The Hanumen.

www.benjymusic.com

The post In Wild Mercy, Mirabai Starr Shares the Transformational Path of the Female Mystic appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Compassion in Action: Finding Hanuman’s Heart in a San Diego Gym

Benjy Wertheimer — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 17:30:03 +0000

There are times when a chance interaction offers us lessons in compassion and in truly seeing the heart of a stranger. I had one of those moments on a road trip and it is a story that exemplifies why I do what I do — traveling the world sharing sacred music.

Whenever I drive from the desert to the San Diego Coast, I experience the descent into what feels like a blessed realm of abundant water and resplendent greenery. I feel as though I could drink the air itself.

As is often the case when I’m on the road, on this route I find myself seeking out a gym. Sometimes it’s to satisfy the primal desire to throw heavy things around. Other times, the steam room beckons from the back of the temple of sweat and iron where, it would seem, many of us test ourselves against the tyranny of gravity.

I needed to hydrate after having spent weeks on a musical tour throughout the arid Southwest – culminating in our arrival at Shakti Fest in the hot and incomparably dry Joshua Tree.

One of the other reasons I go to the gym is that it brings me in contact with a milieu distinct from my daily world of yoga, meditation, and kirtan. This cross-cultural journey has often brought me into contact with people who shatter my preconceived stereotypes.

Finding Compassion in a SoCal Gym

At the SoCal gym’s steam room that day, Jesse’s bright eyes, easy smile, and gregarious demeanor made me feel immediately at ease. You may know what I’m talking about when I speak of how some people strike you with their internal brightness.

“Best part of any workout, isn’t it?” he said, reaching out to shake my hand, “My name’s Jesse.”

“No doubt about it, Jesse. I’m Benjy.”

“There’s always something about coming in here that feels like it reconnects me,” Jesse said. “I can let the rest of my world fall away for a while.” The openness of his tone made me feel even more grateful that he had come in at that moment.

“Absolutely! Especially now. . . I just got back from the desert, near Joshua Tree, and the moisture is a godsend!”

“Oh yeah – I know what you mean . . . I spent a lot of time out that way,” Jesse replied. “Twentynine Palms, actually.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I was in the Marines,” Jesse went on, “and I guess you could say it helped me get ready . . .” He paused for a moment, “I served two tours of duty in Iraq. Came back when I was wounded.” His eyes briefly reflected a level of pain that was outside the realm of anything I had ever experienced.

“I’m so sorry to hear that, Jesse.” Somehow I wished that I could find a deeper way to reach out to him.

He looked away for a moment then looking me straight in the eye, he said, “In many ways it was a gift to me -– put me on the path I’m meant to be on.” I nodded, even though it was nearly impossible for me to see how being wounded in battle could ever be experienced as a gift.

“I’m grateful, because it inspired me to reach out in ways I’ve always wanted to. You see, I’m a Catholic, a Christian who was raised to believe that we are all here to serve this world in the best way we can.” Threads of my own life – my Quaker upbringing, my love of Hanuman and the selfless service that he represents, and deep desire to serve the world through kirtan and music – wove themselves into a sense of kinship and connection with this man I had just met.

“When I got back, I became aware that many wounded soldiers were suffering far more from PTSD than their physical wounds,” he said. “Most of the time, therapists working with them were getting nowhere. These soldiers knew that the psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers had no idea what they had actually been through, and in many cases, their efforts seemed to do more harm than good. Many of these guys who had been like my brothers on the battlefield, were acting out like crazy . . . drinking, shooting up, winding up in jail for battery . . .”

He paused, “I knew these guys would listen to me, because I had been there.”

Jesse went on to tell me how he was now spending 20 hours each week communing with his “Battleground Brothers” on top of his full-time job. He made it clear that it didn’t feel like an option for him to do otherwise. The paradoxical blessing of his suffering revealed itself in his unique gift for connecting with veterans whose mental health prognoses appeared hopeless.

Humbled, I said, “I can’t thank you enough for making that choice, Jesse. Wow . . . you inspire me . . .” I trailed off, not finding adequate words.

He shrugged, “Looking out for each other doesn’t stop when the shooting stops. It’s just another part of my duty, nothing more. I know they’d do the same for me.”

We stared into the steam; it was the kind of easy silence usually reserved for time shared with close friends. “Well, Benjy, it’s been great talking with you,” he said. “I’ve got a friend in the hospital waiting for me.” Taking my hand in a brotherly handshake, he flashed the same easy smile that started our unexpected communion.

“Take good care of yourself. Thanks again, brother.”

The Heart of Hanuman

I realized that the compassion I had just seen was the heart of Hanuman — this commitment to selfless service — in a Catholic Marine. Here was a man whose life circumstances could hardly have been more different from mine, who reminded me that extreme hardship becomes a blessing when we use our experience of such pain to help others find their way through it.

The door closed behind him, leaving me alone with an epiphany. Had we met otherwise, I might never have heard his story. My own preconceived ideas about what Marines are like would have kept me from receiving an utterly timeless lesson in what it really means to live as a karma yogi and be committed to skillful action in everyday life.

As we navigate these times – when so many of us have become deeply polarized along political or cosmological lines – may we be given the ability to cultivate compassion, and may we have the courage, wisdom, and gentle strength to open our hearts, open our minds, and open ourselves to the infinite possibilities of what we can give one another in service.

Benjy Wertheimer

Making his home in Portland, Oregon, he now tours internationally in the kirtan group Shantala (with his wife Heather) and as part of the kirtan “supergroup” The Hanumen.

www.benjymusic.com

The post Compassion in Action: Finding Hanuman’s Heart in a San Diego Gym appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Sometimes Brilliant Book Review

Benjy Wertheimer — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 19:48:36 +0000

Dr Larry Brilliant, author of Sometimes Brilliant

I have long been a seeker yearning to find connection between the realms of science and spirit, between heart-centered devotion and humanitarian activism. While reading Sometimes Brilliant, I got to hang out with a living example of this confluence – the aptly named physician, epidemiologist, philanthropist, and tech innovator Dr Larry Brilliant. With disarming humility and authenticity, Larry beautifully embodies a sacred meeting of compassion, focused action, scientific genius, and inclusive spirituality – all of which are urgently needed at this time in our history.

Forty years in the writing, Sometimes Brilliant details the arc of a young hippie doctor from Detroit who began living his dharma marching with Martin Luther King Jr in 1963, engaging deeply with the social movements of the time. He traveled overland from Western Europe to India with Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm Commune in an unsuccessful attempt to bring aid to the cyclone-devastated Bangladeshi island of Bhola. A year later, he was dragged unwillingly back to India by his wife Girija to meet the great saint Neem Karoli Baba, at whose feet Larry realized his destiny to become a key player in the eradication of smallpox, an ancient disease that killed more than half a billion people in the twentieth century alone.

Larry Brilliant and Girija in India

With a cast of characters that includes the Dalai Lama, the Grateful Dead, Ken Kesey, Ram Dass, Steve Jobs, Mikhail Gorbachev, and several US presidents, Sometimes Brilliant is absolutely riveting. In addition to the famous names, the lives of the largely unsung heroes involved in the eradication of smallpox are no less gripping; this is in part because Larry’s brilliance clearly extends to storytelling. One passage that had me rolling on the floor was when he recounted the tale of when a large WHO contingent pitched their tents on what turned out to be elephant mating grounds in the middle of the jungle.

The central part of Larry’s story occurs during a time of global tension when the US and the Soviet Union had more than 40,000 individual nuclear weapons pointed at each other, yet 170 nations around the world came together in a spirit of unprecedented unity to eradicate smallpox. Part of Larry’s impetus to release his book now is to remind us how we can cooperate in this period of our history that is suffused with fear and an atmosphere of hateful divisiveness. In this gift to the world – truly a book for people from all walks of life – Larry Brilliant clearly demonstrates just how much can be accomplished when we live in deep attunement with our dharma. I encourage you to give yourself this gift … and to share it as widely as you can.

Benjy Wertheimer

Making his home in Portland, Oregon, he now tours internationally in the kirtan group Shantala (with his wife Heather) and as part of the kirtan “supergroup” The Hanumen.

www.benjymusic.com

The post Sometimes Brilliant Book Review appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.