A Review of The Yoga of Max's Discontent by Karan Bajaj

Based on bestselling novelist and spiritual teacher Karan Bajaj’s own experience, The Tao of Max’s Discontent, takes the reader on a breathtaking and often brutal journey in search of spiritual transformation—the dissolution of one’s sense of self and union with universal (or divine) consciousness.

Bajaj’s giant-sized protagonist Max Pzoras, shaken by his mother’s untimely death from cancer at the age of forty-nine encounters Viveka, a scantily clad East Indian food-cart seller whose experience living among yogis 20,000 feet high in the Himalayas intrigues him. Driven to make sense of his life and to attain what Viveka explains as the “un-born, un-aging, un-ailing, sorrowless, and deathless state” of immortality Max begins to investigate such a journey. 
When he learns of a South American yogi living high up in the Himalayas who teaches a method of yoga that leads to the end of suffering, Max impetuously leaves his job to seek this yogi. 

Gripped already by Bajaj’s gift as a story teller, this reader avidly followed Max as he confronted ordeals and disappointments bound to shatter many a spiritual seeker. Despite his focused effort to reach Nirvana, Max remains endearingly human. He might be living as the student of the great yogi guru Ramakrishna, but he is beleaguered by guilt for having abandoned loved ones in order to pursue his own goals. Starvation, intense cold, debilitating heat, exhaustion, fear, regret and anger threaten to overwhelm him as he continues his journey. 

Driven by the belief that his purpose in this life is to lose himself within the divine, Max continues his journey, experiencing intense love of and union with all of creation as his sense of self dissolves and union with the divine consciousness consumes him. 

The Yoga of Max’s Discontent is Bajaj’s brilliant and riveting meditation on the quest for spiritual insight and transformation. I couldn’t put it down.

A Review: Dog Medicine: How a Dog Saved Me from Myself

Chances are most Americans know someone suffering with depression or have grappled with it themselves. Julie Barton, a bright and talented young woman on the cusp of a successful career in publishing, woke one morning on her kitchen floor, the room filled with smoke from the meal she’d been preparing the night before when she lost consciousness. Terrified, she crawled to the phone and called her mother, convinced she’d had a nervous breakdown. Thus begins Barton’s powerful depiction of the catastrophic depression that unraveled her life until an adopted puppy called Bunker released the love that would eventually help her heal. Behind Barton’s depression lurked memories of the violent physical and verbal abuse to which her older brother subjected her and which her parents failed to address. Convinced she was the stupid ugly loser he said she was, she thought of herself in those terms and continually berated herself with those words. Caring for Bunker, however, taught her to forgive and trust herself. When a medical condition elicits a doctor’s suggestion to put him down, Julie she asserts her belief in his life, obtaining for him costly surgery to correct his bone deformities. In nursing Bunker to health, in saving Bunkers life, in giving him a better life she achieved the strength to save herself. Dog Medicine celebrates the reciprocal sharing that can occur between man and dog. It’s an exquisite testimony to the power of that love to heal. 

Don't pick it up. It might be a snake.

Today, the first completely sunny comparatively warm day, my husband rode his bike through Okeeheelee Park in West Palm Beach Florida, while I walked the exercise course several times. I’d made a recent resolution to be attentive to my surroundings (actually I’ve made numerous such resolutions, this being the most recent) so as I traversed the park I focused on the cedar trail itself. Doesn’t sound very interesting does it? As I normally look everywhere but down while walking, looking down is a novel experience. An exercise my husband advises me to do each time I trip on a rock or branch.

Composed of cedar chips, the exercise course offers a huge variety of cedar chip shapes and sizes as well as the cones and needles that fall from surrounding pines. If these pose obstacles to walkers, I pick them up and toss them onto the side of the path. Encountering a beautifully shaped twig of some sort, I bent to pick it up to examine before tossing (maybe it would be something to collect) I noticed square markings down its length.  As it was less than a foot long, I didn’t think snake. But snake it was, making me very glad I was exercising attentiveness. I squatted down to observe it more carefully as it lay without moving on the cedars, determined to look up Florida snakes on the internet to determine its identity. The Florida Museum of Natural History offers an excellent guide to identifying snakes. A check the box kind of aid: “Is the snake banded?” “Is the snake blotched?” “Is the snake cross banded?” “Are its colors uniform?” and so on.

I learned my snake was a common brown water snake that fully grown averages between 25-60 inches. The snake I saw was less than a foot long, the size of a newborn which runs from 7-11 inches long with hatching season from June to October, but this is February. Then I read that though harmless, it is often killed because it resembles a Copperhead . . .?????

It's raining yet they're out there

Today, as huge snow storms hurtle toward the north eastern states, southern Florida is touched by the merest edge. It is even warm, 72 degrees, but we are told to expect high winds and rain, lots of it. I look out our kitchen window and see rain pelting off the tennis courts, but on the golf course greens elderly men swing their clubs and a condominium employee mows the lawn. Perhaps they've given up on the sun. Decided to make the best of what is. Meanwhile, my husband has pulled shut the hurricane shutters and darkened the apartment. 

Beryl's Winter 2016 Newsletter

I write this newsletter from Florida, where we’ve been enjoying a warmer and wetter winter than ever. I do think of you however, especially as my new smart phone keeps me updated on weather up north and across the nation and the news is not always good. Mother Nature seems to be in a punishing mode, her behavior more awesome, tumultuous and damaging than ever. I hope you’ve stayed safe, that you’ve weathered whatever drought, hurricane or blizzard has brought your way. Even more turbulent than Mother Nature’s actions is the angry divided condition our nation reflects.

Today, while perusing the work of Anthony de Mello, one of my favorite spiritual guides, one story struck me as applicable to our situation today.  A spiritual master once told a visiting bishop that religious people have a natural bent for cruelty. His disciples were embarrassed and asked why he’d made such a harsh analysis.  Because religious people all too easily sacrifice persons for the advancement of a purpose, the master replied. Isn’t this what we see happening in our nation as the lives of millions of innocent refugees are sacrificed to national security?  In his speech before Congress, Pope Francis offered a solution to the refugee crisis:  follow the Golden Rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” words that earned him a standing ovation from Congress. Was anyone listening?

 Update on The Glass Chrysalis

“What happened to your newsletter?” is a question I hear almost as often as “When is your book coming out?” My apologies! This newsletter should answer the first question. The second is well on its way to being answered. You haven’t seen or heard much from me lately because I’ve focused on one thing only: the book. Having finished preparations for submission, a completed edited manuscript, a marketing analysis and comparative title analysis, The Glass Chrysalis will make its way into the world this coming week. I shall let you know when it’s found a home. Keep me in your prayers. I’ve done my best to weave a good book with the help of Jill Swenson, book developer. The rest is up to God.

Peace and all good to your inmost souls.

Beryl

© Beryl Singleton Bissell 2016


The Minneapolis Star Tribune named Beryl as a "Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors." Her book The Scent of God  was a “Notable” Book Sense selection for April 2006. Her second book, A View of the Lake was released in May 2011 and named a best regional book by the Minneapolis Star Tribune

A Cautionary Tale

A Cautionary Tale

Eight days ago my computer transformed into one humongous bug. What had it eaten? A new food called Windows 10. Windows 10 was free! It had all sorts of neat new options. What was not to like? I took the bait and Windows 10 took care of the rest. It trashed the contents of my computer. Bugs, viruses, bad registration keys, corrupted files. Not to worry, I had Geek Squad do a virus cleanup but the files were too corrupted to revert to Windows 7. Which of course, required the authorization key. How could I access the key when I'd recorded it in Outlook which was no longer in my now naked computer? How could I find that key when I couldn't even find my Samsung computer file with disks and manuals and pamphlets that might have helped? Enter my guardian angel, my iPhone, where I'd, oh so smartly, typed that information into contacts. Two days later I had my computer back with Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010  reinstalled.

While I can access my three email accounts on their websites, I have no access to all those files in Outlook where I'd neatly organized everything I considered important (and I had a lot of those) including those e-mails I'd set aside in the "to answer when I have more time" file. Haven't heard from me? That's why.

So. What have I learned? Don't trust freebies, especially when they involve your computer. And, above ll beware of Windows 10.

Book Review: Come Back by Claire and Mia Fontaine

“It is its own religion, this love.  Uncontainable, savage, and without end, it is what I feel for my child.” These opening lines of Claire Fontaine’s powerful memoir, sucked me right in. I know that love. Recognized it. It is what many of us feel for our children. She introduces us to her daughter Mia as a young child: perceptive, bright, loving and we’ve already fallen in love with both mother and daughter when a few inches down the page fifteen-year-old Mia disappears. From there the book takes off at a frenetic pace, hurtling through the initial panic. She has written a note telling her parents not to worry, “I have a knife and mace.” Claire’s precious daughter has taken off with a new friend. She loves her parents but needs to find herself, connect  with “real people” who will take care of her.

While runaways often flee abusive homes, Mia has known little but unconditional love. There’s past history here however. Emotional and psychological scarring. Claire’s first husband, Mia’s father,  emerges as a drug abusing, violent  pedophile who abuses his own tiny child. Though Claire divorces him and eventually remarries a good man who loves Mia, the damage runs deep. She is bright, beautiful, and loving in turn. Yet, she has fled this home with her strange new friend who knows the kind of people Mia thinks she needs. Finding Mia is not the end of this story, but the beginning. Mia escapes every attempt to treat and heal her and each time she descends into an ever bleaker darkness. Driven to desperate measures, Mia’s parents have the financial wherewithal to get her into expensive treatment programs, one in the Czech Republic, and another in Montana, where Mia manages to turn her life around. Aptly titled: Come Back! both Claire and Mia tell their stories and thus weave an insightful tale of love, loss and recovery.