Blog

In the timeless tale of the “Battle of Kurukshetra,” as described in India’s ancient scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna serves as the charioteer of his beloved disciple Arjuna. He counsels, “Oh, Arjuna, be thou a yogi.” What more perfect advice is there to give the warrior facing an opposing army of thousands of soldiers armed for battle!

Were we to convert this counsel to modern-day parlance, it might read, “Oh, Arjuna, man up!” In essence, Krishna advised his soldier-disciple to accept, if not embrace, his dharma (divine duty) and plunge headlong into battle against his “inner enemies” that must be annihilated to assure victory for himself and his righteous armies.  At the heart of this symbolic story, we see that Arjuna’s greatest adversaries were his own attachments, personified by his enemy-cousins.

“Be thou a yogi,” in this context, means to play the role of conqueror, not victim. Arjuna’s example encourages us to own and embrace with joy every test in our lifetime that it may be vanquished by our good qualities, with divine assistance, and thus become unnecessary to repeat.

Liz came for a consult just yesterday. An attractive woman, she arrived at my office, dressed for the business world, her makeup and jewelry as flawless as her skin. Liz admitted that she harbored a mixture of anger, grief, and resentment that, as the director of a team of 30 co-workers in a prestigious Chicago marketing firm—everyone had been let go without warning. She and each of her colleagues—well-educated, talented in their professions, and all-round good people—felt blindsided. The dismissal, as they perceived it, seemed unjust and undeserved. What had they done to receive such treatment, they asked each other in stunned incredulity.

“I seem to have this pattern,” Liz said. I get into a great company and then my division is killed. This scenario is a major paradigm in my life. It’s the fourth time it’s repeated itself, down to the smallest detail.”

Here’s how our conversation went:

Me: Do you know the story of the battle in the Bhagavad-Gita?

Liz: Yes.

Me: In this work situation you described, do you feel like a victim?

Liz: Yes.

Me: Is your spiritual path the most important part of your life?

Liz: Yes.

Me: Would you rather be a yogi, meaning one who takes responsibility for the events that come to you, such as this—or a victim, living in a state of powerlessness and blame of others?

Liz: I get it. I’d rather be a yogi-warrior!

Me: When do you want to start?

Liz: (Big smile.)

In “From Bagels to Curry,” I wrote about the conflicted yet loving relationship between my father and myself, and my acceptance of taking responsibility for the lessons I needed to learn in drawing him into my life as my parent:

“The yogic doctrine of karma and reincarnation has helped me to understand that I chose him as my father, not the other way around—nor by some random cosmic coincidence, the tenets of karma being too vast to delve into here.”

It can be very helpful to perceive our major challenges and obstacles in this world as neither punishment nor coincidence. They are not random, unfair, or undeserved events. In truth, these situations are our opportunities, even gifts, according to the Indian scriptures. If we to try to wriggle out of them, the very people playing the roles of villains and enemies in the drama of our lives will most likely be replaced with carbon copies – people just like them. This serves to ensure that we are not yet released from the opportunity to do battle with our life’s challenges that allow us to emerge stronger and closer to our final victory.

The choice is ours: victim – or yogi. What will you choose?

India is a complex country, and so are its many languages. With 420 million inhabitants, 22 major languages and well over 720 dialects are spoken.

My first visit in the fall of 1987 to the country formerly called Hindustan was life-changing. To call the trip eye-opening would be an understatement. A land of paradoxes, perplexities, and extremes, I remember having a talk there with an acquaintance, who explained its essence by saying simply, “The Indians know how to live.” This verity is expressed through the country’s many languages that sprawl across the vast landscape of its ancient soil.

Languages have always been a fascination for me, including the native tongues of India. Most intriguing to me is the way in which a language encapsulates the subtleties of it culture, reflecting its nuances in the sounds particular to its people. The placement in the head and nasal cavity, the unique use of the lips and tongue, the glottal stops and the elongated phrases, the pronunciation of consonants and vowels – all reflect and convey the basic personality of the country, if one listens astutely.

One significant idiosyncrasy of the Hindi language is that it doesn’t express the concept, “I have.” Instead of saying, for example, “I am,” one says, “To me, this happens.” The standard structure of a sentence is subject/object/verb. In Hindi, most verbs are placed identically to English. However, the verb to be is often replaced with there is or, in the case of a question, is there.

For example, instead of saying, “I am willing,” an Indian might say, “Willingness is there.” Rather than saying, “I am hungry,” the phrase would be, “Hunger is there.”

In some not-so-obscure way, this sentence structure and choice of words seem to capture the impersonal, non-attached nature of the Indian consciousness. As my friend noted about Indians who said that they “know how to live,” perhaps a part of that knowing is an understanding that we are “events for which we are responsible,” as explained about the Banana Flower Essence for humility, in Chapter 36 of The Essential Flower Essence Handbook:

“Be little in your greatness and goodness. Always be willing to step out of the way and view yourself as a mere passing event for which you are responsible.”

In other words, even in saying, “I am hungry,” it is the self, the “I,” that comes first and receives the emphasis of that sentence. Perhaps somehow the great wisdom of the Indian culture to not claim ownership is conveyed in their unusual syntax, “Hunger is there.”

This level of detachment is explained in the metaphor of a lotus flower in the glossary of my book, From Bagels to Curry, where the Indian name of one of my friends, Nalini, is defined: “Spiritual name meaning ‘lotus, a flower which is a symbol of illumination and detachment, since it rises above the mud of its origins.’”

We too can rise above the mud of our origins, or the mundane nature of this world, to the greatest heights of our uniquely individual spiritual possibilities – that place where there is no hunger but only the nourishing joy of the soul.

There’s a true story about a revered Tibetan lama who’d been held in prison for many years by the Chinese Communists. Some time after his release, he met with the Dalai Lama, who asked him, “Being a prisoner for all those years must have been difficult. Were you ever afraid?”

“Oh, yes,” the lama replied. “There were times when this situation was very dangerous.”

“Are you saying you were afraid the guards might kill you?”

“No,” he explained. “It was dangerous because at times I came very close to losing my compassion for them.”

Kim is an attorney in a San Francisco-based law firm. The manager in her department has not treated her, or several of her co-workers, with respect. Her standing up to him by notifying the firm’s Human Resources Department only added fuel to the fire of his harassing behavior. Kim would be demoted, he told her. She would be reporting to someone else, as he would no longer be acting as her manager. This meant she’d have more responsibility along with a pay cut. His treatment of these employees is currently under investigation, one that might take a long time to complete fully.

Much like the lama’s story above, Kim had the spiritual integrity to realize that (1) even though she was being treated poorly, she wasn’t a victim in this situation; and (2) her sense of victory was defined by her attitude, not by any outer circumstances.

To explain the first point further: playing the role of victim means that we hand over the respon- sibility of our well-being to another. Hence the title of this blog, “The Ball’s in Your Court,” meaning the accountability for your well-being belongs to you, and to you alone. No one can take it from you, unless you willingly relinquish it.

The second point is also an important one and complementary to the first. In Kim’s situation, her victory is expressed through her ability to get up, get dressed, get out the door every morning, and drive herself to a job that has become less than thankless. As others in managerial positions at the firm have observed, Kim’s job performance continues to be stellar. She’s bright, innovative, and not afraid to shoulder the work load of several people. Despite having a boss who demeans and minimizes her efforts, she remains untouched by his criticisms that reign down without relent – clearly creating a work environment that leaves much to be desired!

There’s a third point to consider as well. No matter how poorly Kim has been treated by this person – whom she suspects had a very difficult childhood and thus lacked healthy role models in how to treat others – she has held fast to her compassion toward him. Much like the stalwart lama who was imprisoned for years but whose spirit remained untouched and free.

Where is this situation going for Kim? We’ll have to see. But for her, inwardly, the battle is already won.

From the moment of conception, according to the East Indian scriptures, our physical bodies begin to grow by expanding from a single cell in the medulla oblongata section of the brain, forming a human being who is eventually comprised of 60 trillion cells. Arms, legs, a head, and a torso soon begin to manifest.

The directional flow of our energy as well begins to take shape, leading us outward into our 5 senses and into experiencing the world through them. From the very beginning of our development, we expand and extend ourselves outward, and sometimes downward, to engage in the world, to be involved in it, and to actively participate in it.

Meditation moves energy in opposite directions: inward and upward. It removes us from the many outward pulls to take care of ourselves, to enjoy the world, and to actively participate in it.

Is it any wonder that even our ability to love is expressed more outwardly? Thus we see others as separate individuals, apart from ourselves. We extend that love outward to meet them.

The world’s job description, we might say, is to keep us engaged in outer activities while the “job” of meditation is to return us to inward states where we can realize that separation from our loved ones is an illusion. Loss of loved ones is perhaps one of the greatest of all tests in this world – and yet one that nearly everyone, sooner or later, will have to bear.

What if we could experience our love for others within ourselves, to the point of not needing to live outside ourselves to love them? What if we could embrace them as a part of ourselves, inwardly? In that way, it would be impossible ever to lose them or to be separated from them. There would be no distance between the lover and the beloved.

Kahlil Gibran touches on this subject in his classic book, The Prophet: “Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.”

In loving others, it’s very common for us to perceive them as separate from ourselves. It’s then almost a sort of setup that we might lose them. A child grows up and leaves home for college, causing empty-nest syndrome for the parents. A relationship ends in divorce or separation, and people may think that love itself has forsaken them , leaving them feeling abandoned and alone. Loved ones inevitably pass away, and it may seem as though a part of us dies along with them.

Jonathan is a quiet man. He’s had a most unusual life. Musically talented, he has much to give to others, through his piano tunes as well as his immeasurable kindness, expressed in part through his strong connection with children. Three people in his life, all very dear and close to him, have died suddenly over the years – which studies say is the hardest form of loss through death. First, Jonathan’s sister passed away when he was only 8 years old, after watching her lose her struggle to breathe. Next, his father died of an aneurysm when the boy was barely into his teens. Then, his toddler son passed away from a rare bacteria that spread rapidly and took him quickly.

“Loss was a big part of my childhood,” Jonathan said. “Each time it happened, I felt blindsided—and that something was very wrong. Now I’m more accepting of loss. I’m getting better at not blaming myself as much for what happened.”

In my book From Bagels to Curry, I wrote about the imminent loss of my own father, who died ten years ago last month from pancreatic cancer: “I have shed many tears, and my sense of loss is colossal. Yet no suffering is senseless or without purpose, as I have come to understand, while he soldiers on with the inner work of his own spiritual journey.”

I also wrote about my realization of how his death in this world was also the moment of his birth into higher realms. When our loved ones leave us, there may be much left unexplained, unless we also can understand in our hearts what Paramhansa Yogananda called “the stunning mystery of death.”

To grasp the truth that we are bonded forever with our loved ones, within the essence of our own hearts, can bring us great comfort. It can help us to find the inner fortitude to carry on with our own lives, and to live in the truth that “love is sufficient unto love.”

This blog is inspired by a woman named Juliette. Juliette had a rough start in life and tried as well as she could to make the best of it. Her childhood with an alcoholic father was a not an easy one. One night, her mother woke her up, along with her sister, younger than her by 18 months, and told them to dress. She was 7 at the time. Their father had left for a late shift at work. They stole out of the house in the middle of the night. Juliette saw her father only one more time, at about 10 years of age.

Her mother, she said, was always honest with her, except on one subject: telling her that Santa Claus was real. The mother remarried, but sad to say, to another partner even more troubled than her birth father.

Unfortunately, Juliette herself married a man who was, as she said, less than honest. He too had suffered an abusive home life. Juliette admitted that she couldn’t remember a day in her life when she’d been happy, try though she might.

Where does one go with such overwhelming difficulties to work through?

Sometimes life is like that. Rough. Sometimes there are no easy solutions. Therapy might or might not help, and medications aren’t always successful.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to raise our energy and live on a level of solutions – on the level of the soul, where solutions exist. We might define “soul” as “the individualized expression of Spirit.” Although it may sound simplistic, truth itself is simple.

Our soul always remains in a state of joy. In our essential soul nature, we experience only bliss. It exists above and beyond any suffering of this world. The soul, we might say, is our highest reality, ever present and waiting to be tapped into and acknowledged.

Sometimes there may seem to be no solutions possible in this world, as in Juliette’s case. However, there are nothing but solutions on that level where answers abound – in the soul. Hence the title of this post: Your Soul Never Wakes Up on the Wrong Side of The Bed. In other words, we may rest assured that we will never have “a bad soul day.”

Why?

1. Our souls remain untouched by the endless waves of ups and downs in this world.
2. The soul exists on a superconsciousness level, that place where our tests are put into a manageable and understandable perspective.
3. The soul understands that we are bigger, energetically speaking, than any test.
4. It cannot be affected by our likes and dislikes, “our pleasures and pains, our losses, our gains,” to quote the lyrics of a song by J. Donald Walters (Hansa Trust copyright).
5. Our souls fully understand that any obstacles we encounter – no matter how severe, including Juliette’s monumental difficulties – are opportunities for us to grow even stronger, in the process of becoming more in touch with the infinite joy of our soul nature.

In my spiritual memoir, From Bagels to Curry, I wrote about my father’s journey at the end of his life as he battled pancreatic cancer, just before he left this world:

The brilliance of Dad’s soul is stepping forward, and I feel I’m being introduced to his essence for the first time. Together we’ve found a tear in the veil that separates this world from the hereafter to glimpse the astral realms. Home now to my father is where the angels sing.

Sometimes it takes a test as pressing as imminent death to spur a person on to working more seriously on himself. The Indian scriptures support this verity by explaining that an individual can make great spiritual progress toward the close of an incarnation. For many, it’s a time of profound soul-searching and tying up loose ends.

In fact, a hospice worker shared with me that: “People don’t leave here with unfinished business.” My father passed 10 years ago this month, I was blessed to witness the dignity with which he faced his trials at the end of his life.

So the next time you feel that you awoke on the wrong side of the bed, you may want to consider checking in with the never-ending, calm joy of your soul.

And then, have “a good soul day.”

To simplify, there is basically only one solution for sorrow, grief, sadness, or in fact any test where you find yourself stuck and unable to move forward. That is, to raise your energy.

This may sound like a cold statement, though it’s not intended that way. In my office hangs an illustration of a cat looking at himself in a mirror. The reflection staring back at him is a lion – majestic, kingly, towering. The caption reads, “What matters most is how you see yourself.”

We could look at the topic of overcoming our tests from a metaphysical standpoint, in terms of the chakras. To raise our energy means to gather it in the 4th/heart chakra, about loving without condition. Here, we would find our own healing through acts or thoughts of compassion toward others.

In the 5th/throat chakra – for calmness, expansion, and clear communication – we can experience a sense of energetic stillness to address our problems.

At the 6th/forehead chakra, the seat of wisdom and joy, we would find those difficulties resolved through attaining a higher state of consciousness. Raising our energy above the first 3 chakras (a topic we’ll save for a future post) is the first step toward overcoming our trials.

In The Essential Flower Essence Handbook, I explain one of the 20 Spirit-in-Nature Essences in a 10-page chapter – Coconut – as this is the exact subject it vibrationally addresses: how to achieve uplifted spiritual awareness:

“About twenty years are required for the coconut palm tree to reach a state of full bearing – a perfect symbol for Coconut essence’s quality of perseverance. “Patience, endurance attaineth to all,’ promised the Spanish saint Teresa of Avila. Coconut, then, helps us to commit to resolutions and solutions-and to believe that they are here to be found.”

One client whom we’ll call Caroline experienced the benefits of this flower essence. It helped her to overcome a lengthy and difficult health challenge. A couple of years ago on a dark winter night, she’d missed a step and fallen flat on the grass. She found herself unable to move without severe pain in her upper torso. The fall happened several apartments’ distance from her own place. Apparently, no one was at home to come to her aid. Finally the ambulance arrived and she was treated for a broken shoulder. Little did she know at that time that the cure would prove to be much worse than the accident itself.

Caroline writes:

“I was intimidated by needing to have 2 physical therapy treatments weekly. My spirit was freaked out. I had the courage. I faced having to go. But I wanted to change inside how it felt.

“I took Coconut Essence. I was also working with other supplements, and had for a while. Starting the flower essence helped me to feel that I was no longer ‘in it.’ By this I mean that I was changed. I was not cowed by it. It was a big shift. I was laughing. My therapist Stephen asked me, ‘How can you laugh?’

“It’s powerful, this flower essence. It was like they said about my shoulder, ‘We will torture you twice a week indefinitely. Are you okay with that?’

“Coconut Essence changed the color and the timber of my experience. It’s my best friend.”

Likewise, an attitude of uplifted spiritual awareness can be your best friend too. The next time you feel stuck or smaller than your tests, try looking in the mirror to see that lion.

Maybe it’s your time to roar.

Dear Honorable Reader of This Blog,

This afternoon, I was talking with a dear friend at the shores of the North Fork of the Yuba River. The weather was pleasant, the sun was warming and not too intense. We were considering how it was still much too cold in the season to even dip our toes in the water. Then a guy swims by, proving us wrong.

As my friend is also a writer and an international seminar leader, we talked about blogging. We talked about how we’d each separately been advised by experts on the subject of the people who choose to remain on our enewsletter lists, entrusting us with the sanctity of their emails – that, in a sense, they love us and want to learn from us. Not in the aw-isn’t-that-sweet kind of way but in the way that they are able to draw some inspiration from our writings and programs. We ruminated over how, for any teacher who does her best to be a channel, these people are a sacred responsibility.

For this reason, I’d like to ask you if there’s anything you’d like to see written up in a blog. Perhaps you’re dealing with certain difficulties in your life related to the topics of my book, From Bagels to Curry. This memoir addresses a variety of subjects concerning the preciousness of life: the loss of a loved one, the devastation of cancer, familial challenges, hospice connections, setting out on one’s own against family traditions, facing our mortality, and as the cover’s byline suggests – life, death, family, and triumph.

I’d like to recommend Bagels to the kind lady whose call I just answered, assuming, as her voicemail dictated, that she wanted to place an order for flower essences. I’d already decided to honor her request to extend our expired sale on Pear Essence, for restoring a sense of inner peace and for dealing with times of crisis and emergencies – both of which described her situation. She’d found herself basically not wanting to live any longer in this world. The meaning and purpose had left her life and left her feeling hollow. My first thought was, I’m neither prepared nor trained to deal with this situation. What could I offer by way of support to someone whose only reason for still hanging around, as she explained wryly, was her proclivity toward procrastination?

My second thought took a different turn. Of course you’re qualified to reach out to her, by virtue of the fact that you’re alive. And you care.

Since that first talk, we’ve connected again. She was doing much better at our second call. We talked about her garden, her interest in plants, her knowledge of all kinds of insects, and the great location of her rental being so near a historic herbal shop. I pondered the irony of her submersion in thoughts of suicide while my memoir, From Bagels to Curry, documents the life my father clung to and was loathe to relinquish to the pancreatic cancer that ultimately took his life nearly 10 years ago:

“An animated and energized Aaron pushes the shopping cart down the aisle at breakneck speed, his soul driving him in defiance of the disease that is dethroning him from the existence—perfectly trimmed into neat little pieces—that he so loves. There will be more than a few remaining shopping trips in his future. Some with his daughter, some with his sons. Dad savors the joy of each excursion, never quite knowing if it will be his last.”

In later pages of the book, I wrote:

“These tiny, magical moments sprinkle my soul in a garden of memories, especially knowing that so few of them remain.”

These are just a few thoughts I wanted to share with you, dear reader. I hope your own life is filled with many magical moments that give it color and meaning.

And I hope reading this blog has somehow helped you toward that goal. Please stay in touch.

I’m not sure this title fits the subject of this post, but I like it anyway. This blog will be about a turtles, a story that presented itself to me today, quite inadvertently, quite by accident. Or so it seemed at the time.

My Bagels book, as I call it – From Bagels to Curry – also recounts a turtle story, symbolically depicting an issue I confronted as the passing of my father drew near almost 10 years ago:

As I’m driving home from my office at Ananda Village after completing some quiet catch-up projects, what appears to be a largish stone in the middle of the road begins to move. Very slowly. The tortoise makes his way onto the blacktop road from nearby Turtle Pond. I bring my car to a stop on the gravel shoulder and coax him onto my clipboard to return him to the water’s edge. He looks up at me, turns away, and not once but twice from instinctive fear urinates on my notepapers. My act of heroism may have cost me the notepad, but it probably saved his life. My own life seems to have slowed to a tortoise-crawl.

Fast-forward to the present. Today I was driving back from town after a most delightful acupuncture treatment – or truer to say the delight came after the electric sting of the baby-sized needles to jumpstart my life force. Despite the wise advice not to eat and drive – being not great for the peristalsis, i.e. DUIP, driving under the influence of popcorn – I was eating a bag of the herb-flavored kind for my makeshift lunch.

I’d just turned off Highway 49 onto Tyler Foote Road when there appeared to be an overturned rock slightly off-center in my lane. With no oncoming traffic and a quick swerve, I was able to avoid hitting it. The closer I approached, the clearer it became that the object was a turtle. The midday sun glistened off his shell. It was easy to see where the product “turtle wax” got its name with his shell shining like an impenetrably solid and well polished vehicle.

The two-lane road was vacant. There was no danger in pulling off to the side of the road and running back to relocate him to safer ground. After all, he might not be so lucky with the next driver, or the next!

Funny thing was, as I started sprinting back toward him, he started running to escape being caught. Can you imagine the look on his little winded face, crawling as fast as he could to outrun me? I’m no marathoner but there really was no competition here at all. He barely moved. A snail could’ve left him in the dust. Yet I imagined sweat pouring profusely down his little sloped forehead as he hastened himself forward with all his might to soldier on and outrun me. Our race -with him scrambling like lightning considering that he carried with him a shell developed from his ribs wherever he went – was ludicrous and sorely ill-matched. Needless to say, I overtook him.

I picked him up as he retreated head and limb into his shell. Placing him squarely in a nicely moist meadow, I hoped he would have the sense next time to race away from the road rather than toward it.

I returned to my car, the motor still running, but not to the bag of herbed popcorn. All I could think about was the turtle. The little sprinter had filled me with thoughtfulness about the fragility of life. Don’t we all inhabit some kind of shell, trying to insulate ourselves from the harshness of our trials? And then comes along some big metal vehicle . . .

This is where the post’s title ties in. If we can’t retreat and we can’t hide, then why not dance through life? Precisely as if no one’s watching. Why not shine, like that little turtle? Why not run with all our might toward our goals no matter how uncertain the outcome? Even if we get run over by one test after another – well, then, at least we’ve given it our best.

“Perhaps they are not stars in the sky, but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy.” – Charlie Brown, looking up with Snoopy at the night sky

Often we will experience a closer relationship with a pet than another human being. Why? The conflict and butting of heads, or egos, so often present between people is virtually non-existent with our animal companions. They construct no intellectual or emotional barriers. They give us only ongoing dearness.

Perhaps there is no more difficult decision in owning a pet than recognizing “that moment” when it’s time for a lifetime of precious togetherness to come to a close. In the decades I’ve worked with Spirit-in-Nature Essences, many consults are about pets – their lives, their emotional needs, their behaviors, and sometimes their time of passing.

How can we know when it’s neither too soon nor too late, when that moment arrives?

Flower Essences for Animals in one of its closing chapters addresses this topic:

“Remember, animals deal with discomfort much differently than we do. Pain, to them, is simply another event in their existence. (However, if their suffering is ongoing, Orange Essence assists them in dealing with lingering difficulties.) Plus, nearly all animal communicators report the same thing: Animals are ready for their own passing and are basically fine with it. It is the grievously upset owners whom our pets are concerned about, as they will love and serve us until their last breath. They pick up on our worry, our unwillingness to let them go, and our fear about how we will continue without them. For these reasons, their passing provides us with one of the greatest possible lessons: unconditional love. The highest service we can render them as their time of transition approaches is to love them freely and to free them from any attachments we might hold within our own hearts and minds.”

This final act of heroic love on our part is basically to do what Nature cannot: to end a life when the animal is weakened and unable to care for himself – because that pet has lived a life of domestication instead of one out in the wild where the rules of “survival of the fittest” apply. One couple whose cat in serious decline from liver failure could in no way continue to take care of herself. She lay immobile in a corner, withered down to skin and bones, dehydrated, and unable to eat. The husband wanted the pet to be euthanized; the wife said it was unnatural to take her life.

Isn’t it also in a sense “unnatural” to remove animals from the wild? When we take the responsibility of bringing a pet into our home, we take along with it the unwritten promise to care for them and then help to release them when the quality of that life expires.

One client recently admitted she wanted to have her dog put down because of a messy intestinal problem that was destroying the sanctuary of her home. She couldn’t bear, she wrote, to see his continued suffering. But who was it who suffered? Did her dog still have quality of life, curiosity, the ability to engage with others and with his surroundings?

These are difficult questions, perhaps with difficult answers.

It is understandable in taking this responsibility that some people choose not to have another pet. For many people, the loss of a pet feels like losing a child. For humans, it is heartbreaking to see a child pass before a parent – and for pets, contrarily, when the owner passes first.

Flower Essences for Animals lists the symptoms to help identify the appropriate point in time for euthanasia. There are other very fine and compassionate resources on this subject, including checklists, some of them with a sliding scale where numbers are tallied. This approach can also afford us an impersonal perspective to assist us with “the decision.”

Yet how can we know with accuracy when that moment arrives? Our pets have a clearly defined moment of birth whose timing does not need to be calculated. For the moment of passing after a lifetime in our care – sometimes, that knowing is not the case.

As our pets are on a natural evolutionary journey to joy, according to the ancient Indian scriptures, they live quite differently from us without the pitfalls and blessings of our brain’s prefrontal lobes. It is this part of the brain, as explained in Chapter 1 of Flower Essences for Animals, that allows us – unlike them – to live in the future and the past as well as the present, while they live only in the moment. It facilitates our ability to meditate, to aspire, to make rapid spiritual progress or the opposite, determined by the use of choice/free will, which the animals are not anatomically capable of. And yet animals do possess a spark of the ability to make choices – a quality that makes them both supremely lovable and impossibly mischievous!

Equipped with prefrontal lobes, euthanasia holds a completely different meaning for humans. Why? Even up to the last moment of a person’s life, it is possible to make great spiritual progress, unlike the animals who are on a slower – and one might say steadier – track toward joy.

That said, when a pet ceases to draw on his natural stream of enthusiasm for life expressed through his interest in sights, sounds, scents, activities – it may be that “the moment” is drawing near.

When he withdraws from his daily life and behaviors instead of savoring the joy of living, his behavior and other clues will let you know. Oftentimes, the loving owner will “just know,” when able to see through his/her own grief.

Yet there are exceptions to every rule. One cat had lived 15 years with such an overwhelming curiosity that even a life-threatening illness failed to dampen her passion for life. She had more energy on her deathbed than most cats have in their prime! Yet her body simply could not soldier on.

Often our pets want to comfort us. They linger on to meet our needs and assuage our grief. One veterinarian shared that often, as the visit for euthanasia draws near, the owner may bring the pet in several times before “that visit” arrives. A good vet can assess if the pet is still engaged in activities, curious about his environment, and expressing enough quality of life to remain longer in this world.

Considering that Charlie Brown is a cartoon character who lives in the comic section of the newspaper, he expresses great wisdom in this post’s opening statement. From the unlikely source of a round-faced fictional kid comes the insight that, maybe “life on the other side” isn’t so bad after all.

Maybe it’s actually an amazing place to be. Perhaps the suffering that commonly surrounds death is limited to those of us left behind, as some of the major religions tell us.

The next time you find yourself grieving the loss of a loved one, why not try looking up at the stars in the night sky? Perhaps you might glimpse the happiness of those who have passed over into higher realms.

Morgan’s day care is an exceptional facility. He practically jumps for joy when climbing into the car for the 10-minute ride there. Randall goes to work and Morgan goes to play all day with his friends. The few extra dollars per hour paid to its staff, thus putting it on the higher end of dog boarding kennels, is worth every cent to his owner. Sometimes there’s a birthday party with party hats for everyone and a special canine cake.

Most days are all about playtime and hanging out. Zen is one of Morgan’s best friends, his buddy who suffered a stroke some years back and, nonetheless, soldiers on while loving his life and all those who are a part of it.

Morgan is a 10-year-old golden Labrador retriever. He’s in the 17-to-21 percentile of dogs with elbow dysplasia, a lifelong painful and incurable disease that advances to chronic arthritis. His eyes reveal a certain sadness, doled out to him by a disease with a strong genetic component,  as well as a keen interest in the goings on around him.

Morgan receives bi-weekly pain injections and supportive supplements to ease his discomfort. This boy hasn’t had the easiest of lives and yet, as explained in Chapter 1 of Flower Essences for Animals, he handles it well and takes it in stride:

“Animals deal directly with pain in the moment they experience it. They do what they have to do to avoid it, if possible, or to adapt to it. One ‘animal communicator’ —a person who can communi- cate telepathically with animals—attended an elderly black Lab suffering from severe arthritis and reported, ‘This dog just goes and goes. It’s not an issue for him; he simply deals with it. His attitude seems to be that this is the way it is, and he’ll try to get comfortable.’”

The book continues on this subject:

“Animals suffer physical pain due to the stimulation of the nerves. A fox with its leg caught in a trap, for example, would feel the pain of the clamp and tearing of the flesh with a full nervous-system response. A human being in that same situation would suffer the additional agony of mental anguish: ‘What if I lose the leg, how will I support my family? What about my job? Is this covered by my insurance? How will I get by in the future?’ and so on. Thus, a person experiences a much greater component of suffering than the physical response alone. Animals live in the moment, accepting what happens and dealing with it at the time, unlike we who often live simultaneously in the past and future. In this way, we could say that they deal with pain better than we do. Plus, they don’t take it so personally. Our identification with our body, and the resultant thought that this is my leg and my pain, increases the suffering many times over.”

While animals are on what might be called “an evolutionary track to joy,” we humans with the capacity to exert our free will can make quicker progress on this track. What does this mean? Sometimes, even in the midst of suffering, we can find the light shining through even the darkest “night of the soul.” We can choose in every moment to live in expansion rather than to contract. This was my experience in caring for my father in the final months of his life, as described in my spiritual memoir, From Bagels to Curry:

“My spiritual path of yoga teaches the willing aspirant not to be tossed about by life’s waves of transient emotions. True joy, the ancient science affirms, springs not from outer circumstances but from within us. This explains the superconscious bliss that I feel in my deep spine rendering sleep at night impossible, finally to be lulled back into subconscious realms up on awakening in the early morning—those precious hours that hold their breath before exhaling their way into the skittish dawn.

“In these trying days, that joy lives within the marrow of my soul.”

Now let’s return to Morgan’s story.

Last week for the first time, he was given Orange Flower Essence. For animals who are older or suffering from difficulties with the aging process or other bodily pains, this flower essence can give them a boost of enthusiasm that resonates with their natural, unfettered state. Morgan’s dosage was minimal: 2 drops in his fresh morning water bowl to lap up throughout the day. Some animals respond beautifully when receiving their essences with food, even though it’s recommended to take a flower essence on an empty stomach. In Morgan’s case, it was both options.

On Day 2 of Orange Essence, the kennel staff noticed a difference in his behavior, without being told about the flower essence. More pep! He’d been placed in the room with the younger pups as usual. But this day, he stretched out his paws and lowered his head for the younger dogs, gesturing that he wanted to play. Perhaps he was getting in touch with his own inner puppy!

His owner observed when letting him out of the car at the entrance to the day care center, “Morgan pranced! He didn’t hold back and cower like he usually does. Normally, he walks with a limp. There was no notice of him limping. Also,” Randall added, “He’s drinking more water these last 2 days.”

And what about us humans? We too may suffer from chronic physical ailments, incurable diseases, or a vast array of emotional difficulties and losses.

In America, we tend to think in a linear fashion: I am happy or I am sad. In India, a complex country with a deep spiritual soul, the line of thinking is often one of “I am happy and I am sad,” concurrently. Is it possible, then, that we too can experience joy and sorrow in the same moment?

Morgan’s story illustrates that, even in times of discomfort and dis-ease, we can tune in to the joy of our own soul, thus reaching that level where there is only comfort, ease – and even bliss.