SOMA

Well it’s that time of year again to make a resolution to improve something. From weight loss, to saving money, to spending time meditating we have all run the gamut on topics. This year I encourage everyone to stand up and resolve to do something daring: get a BRA!

No, no, no! I do not mean that men have to go from being straight to becoming cross dressers. Nor should we women necessarily go from its cold down there to cold out there (only women will get this one). I am saying BRA as an acronym: Best friend, Reality check and Awareness of a higher power.

Studies have shown time and again that one of the reasons women fare better during hard times is our friend network. My grandma had a saying: friends double our joy and divide our grief. And while it sounds so simple…how many friends do you really have?? Try going thru a life altering event and you will watch your buddies disappear like cockroaches when the light is turned on. Being a true friend takes energy and it takes time. To have one, you gotta be one! When is the last time you called your friend on her birthday? Or remembered when her parents died?? Or just sent a card to your friend for the sheer joy of putting a stamp on an envelope? I am blessed with a couple friends and my longest standing and truest friend is Shelley back home in Michigan. We have known each other since high school, working together as kids at Dairy Queen and later at AirMatic in Southfield MI. Life took its twists and turns, but when my folks died she was right there as if we had never separated. She knew what they meant to me, and she helped piece me together to do each of their eulogies. For that I am ever grateful. Bottom line: want to live a longer healthier life? Save the money on the gym, walk more and invest in having/being a true friend.

Let’s switch gears to reality checks. What do I mean by a reality check? I define a reality check as a situation or circumstance that comes about in life that causes one to take inventory of all of their blessings and/or that causes one to become humble. The roots of greatness grow strongest in humble soil. When we are humble we are open to the Divine wisdom ever present all around us. We are grateful for the smallest of things like hearing the birds sing. We realize that prosperity is not just the ability to pay for a Wii game system with cash. We start to define prosperity in different ways: health, friends, happiness as well as cash. On the contrary, when we are arrogant we think that we are the epitome of all anyone could ever hope to be, leaving our selves doomed to failure as we have cut off our true source of power—the Divine. Want a reality check? Walk in an ER and see the accident victims. Not one of those people woke up that day saying ‘hey, I wonder what it would be like to sail thru the air at 60 mph for 100 yards off the back of a motorcycle?’ Or if ERs nauseate you. Drive to the poor side of town and you'll realize that not everyone is there by choice. Some lost their jobs. Some had a devastating illness in the family, and they lost every last nickel keeping dad alive. The next time you feel like you are getting ‘too big for your britches’, take a breath and remember to do the R of BRA—reality check. May your pants always fit you ‘just right.’

Finally we come to ‘A’, the alpha, aleph, the awareness of a higher power.   Western medicine is just beginning to glean the import of faith in medicine. We are multidimensional beings: spiritual, mental, emotional and physical. Feces rolls down hill! When we are not right in either of the first three levels we will manifest disease in the body. People on prayer lists do better than those who are not. This factoid has been published time and again in multiple medical journals.

When asked most people have some faith in a higher power. But wait! I can see the eyes roll of the atheists! How can we believe in something that we have never seen? Well! Has anyone ever seen gravity?? NO. But we know in the morning that our feet will stay firmly to the ground because of it.   More importantly how can one deny the existence of God/Spirit/Divine Intelligence? Look at the miracle of birth! Despite the burgeoning population, the fact that the sperm made it to the egg on time, the two connected, the cell blob divided properly, and that it stuck to the uterus for 9 months—that’s a miracle in and of itself. Let alone the short jaunt down the birth canal! I know—I have two kids and I used to deliver babies as part of my practice.    Birth is truly a miracle when one considers the odds against it.

Jumping into the microcosm, consider the double helix of DNA. There is no way this popped out of a boiling soup kitchen at the dawn of time. If that is the case there’s something waiting to birth from beneath my son’s bed!! Two strands of four base pairs lined up in different configurations---that’s all there is to the code of life. For everything!!   That is incredible!! Wow!!

And now lets look up to the macrocosm. All of those stars swirling around one another and galaxies beyond orbiting around the galactic center. This all portends of an order that has been established. Left to its own accord physics says everything is moving to entropy or disorder. And objects in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Ladies and gentlemen it is my argument that this outside force is the Divine. I believe that it is the Divine that keeps the Universe as we know it from succumbing to the law of entropy. Call it Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, Allah—the Truth is one, the names are many—Sadguru Sant Keshavadas. So I invite you this new year to get to know the Divine on your own terms. You just might find the best friend you could ever have!

Back it up Gloria Steinem!! We are putting our BRAs back on!!