About Mariellen Ward

Recent Posts by Mariellen Ward

10 Books About India, Because “Eat, Pray, Love” Is Not The Only One

There are two types of people in the world: those who think Shantaram is a great book; and those who think it is a spew of virulent air, driven by the criminal mind and maniacal ego of its Australian pseudo-writer. I guess you can tell which type of person I am. This post is 10 suggestions for books about India that are better than Shantaram.

I tried to read Shantaram when I was living in Delhi, but ended up literally throwing it across the room. I thought it was poorly written and more about the fevered imagination of its writer than about India. In fact, it offers very little insight into India, if you ask me; and the longer I spend in India getting to know it, the more true this statement becomes.

Since that time, however, I’ve read lots and lots of book about India, by Indians and foreigners, and almost all of them are much, much better. Except Eat, Pray, Love. If you actually want to know something about India — rather than about an ego-driven writer — I suggest the following 10 books, in no particular order.

(If you want to learn more about a book, below, hover your cursor over the image; and to buy it, simply click on the image and you will be whisked to the U.S. Amazon site.)

1. A Search in Secret India by Paul Brunton. A cult classic, this book was published in 1934 and it’s about the author’s sincere, strange and ultimately inspiring search for spiritual truth in India. After many false starts, dead-ends and kooky run-ins, he lands at the feet of Sri Ramana Maharishi. Which in itself a metaphor for the spiritual journey. This is the book that introduced Sri Ramana Maharishi to the west (and he still remains one of the greatest Indian saints of the 20th century).

2. Empire of the Soul by Paul William Roberts. This is the book I hope Shantaram readers graduate to read. It is about two lengthy trips journalist Roberts took to India, separated by many years; and about how he reconciles some of the extraordinary experiences he had there. Roberts is known for hard-boiled books about war-torn countries like Iraq, so when he writes about his spiritual awakening, it rings true.

3. Out of India by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The introduction to this book of short stories is alone worth the price of the book. It’s hands-down the best piece of writing I have ever read about what it is like to be a foreigner in India. Absolutely priceless. If you recognize her name, it’s because she was the screen-writer for the Merchant-Ivory film productions (including A Passage to India, see #6.)

4. India’s Unending Journey by Mark Tully. Mark Tully was the BBC’s chief correspondent in India for many years. He has the character to overcome his profession’s limitations and admit that the chief thing he learned in India was to be certain only about uncertainty. And he says it’s the most valuable thing he has ever learned.

5. India: A Million Mutinies Now by V.S. Naipul. What can I say? It’s the classic. Personally, I admire this book more than I like it.

6. Passage to India by E.M. Forster. Very recently, the Consul General of India in Toronto — a remarkably cultured woman — told me she thought Forster really captured India in this book. I told her I feel like Fielding. Mutual understanding was firmly established. It was the best book I studied at university, I still remember the discussion about the meaning of the Marabar Caves. The film is good too!

7. Maximum City by Suketu Mehta. This is one of the best books I have read recently. It has an ambitious scope and many small wonderful moments, and seemed Dickensian to me in its attempt to capture the spirit of the times in a big, broiling, magnificent city. This is Bombay (Mumbai): gangsters and hero cops, foot-path poets and down-to-earth movie stars. You will learn a lot more about what Bombay is really about in this book than in Shantaram.

8. Kim by Rudyard Kipling. This is my favourite book of all time. If you’ve never read it, throw out everything you think you know about Kipling, who was the most famous writer of his time. The book follows the story of teenage Kim, son of an Irish immigrant and ‘friend of all the world’, who travels the roads of India with his guru, an elderly Tibetan lama on a spiritual quest for a river of enlightenment. It is unique and uncanny in its ability to absolutely immerse you into the scene and the story. You can feel the oppressive heat of the plains and the crisp air of the mountains. You can imagine Kim’s excitement about rejoining his friend on the road after a stint locked-up at school. You can feel the old man’s pain as his quest seems to elude him, and the love he engenders in Kim, his disciple. And you will be carried away by the transcendent ending.

9. City of Djinns by William Dalrymple. I was torn, not sure which Dalrymple book to put on this list. They are all good, especially Nine Lives. He is a solid as a rock in terms of research, reporting and writing. But this is his first book about India and it’s about Delhi (Dilli), my home-away-from home in India — and in fact, his real home. He lives there now. He has an Indian soul. The book is both a personal narrative about living in India for a year and about the history of Delhi. (And if there’s one thing Delhi has, aside from crowds of people and traffic, it’s history.) It’s by turns informative and funny. I keep intending to find out if International Backside taxi stand really exists. P.S. Dalrymple is the found of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

10. Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. On the stroke of midnight, August 15, 1947, India became free. This is the classic book about the biggest event in modern Indian history: the freedom struggle, partition and birth of a nation. You cannot begin to know or understand modern India if you don’t have a grip on its struggle for independence and the larger-than-life players who made it happen, especially Gandhi, Nehru, Mountbatten and Jinnah. The film Gandhi, directed by Richard Attenborough, gives you a lot of the same information, but this book fills in all the holes.

The Beauty of Indian Writing

 

In honour of the Jaipur Literature Festival, which kicks off on January 24 in Jaipur, India, I am publishing an article I wrote for the Maple Tree Literary supplement about my afternoon with four delightful Indo-Canadian writers.

Jasmine D’Costa sat solidly in her chair, looked at me with clear, wide-open eyes and talked with a sense of authority in her voice about her past as a banker in Mumbai and her present as a writer and editor in Toronto. Across from her, Mayank Bhatt talked about establishing himself as a writer in Canada, with an amiable mix of gentleness and conviction. Author Farzana Doctor listened more than she talked, but when she added something to the conversation, it was carefully considered and spoken in articulate tones, tinged with the formality of academia. Writer and book reviewer Niranjana Iyer, soft-spoken and well-bred, looked like an Indian Audrey Hepburn, and she drew me in with her huge, expressive eyes and the obvious intelligence in her voice. Each of these people is just that, people – unique in their background, outlook and experience.

Jasmine D’Costa is a Catholic from south India who had a successful career in banking before immigrating to Toronto, Canada to begin her career as a writer of short stories (Curry is Thicker than Water) and editor of anthologies (Canadian Voices and Indian Voices). Mayank Bhatt, who is a Gujurati Hindu, is the most recent arrival to North America – he was a journalist in Mumbai and then worked in a trade office; he now has a full-time job as the Executive Director of the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce, publishes a blog called Generally About Books and is also working on a novel.

Farzana Doctor was born to Muslim parents of Indian origin in Africa and grew up in Canada; she is gay, she is a psychotherapist and she is the author of two novels (Stealing Nasreen and Six Metres of Pavement). Niranjana Iyer, who told me to call her Nina, is Tamil, but she doesn’t speak the language. She grew up largely in Delhi, attended the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Ahmedabad and later moved to the U.S.A. to study creative writing at university. She now lives in Canada with her neuroscientist husband and three-year-old son and considers herself a global citizen. She writes for many magazines and publishes a book review blog called Brown Paper.

I gathered these writers together to find out about Indo-Canadian writing – and found out the closer you look, the more difficult it is to define. Like India itself, Indo-Canadian writers in Canada are extremely diverse and there is no set pattern of experience; no underlying theme they are collective exploring; no real commonality between them. Except that they are Indian. And after about two hours of discussing their differences, after several glasses of wine and after a feeling of camaraderie developed, the truth came out. They may have different experiences, backgrounds and viewpoints, but they tend to stick together, support each other and help each other out.

And this perhaps is the essence of their Indianness, this tolerance and helpfulness. In spite of a long history of communal violence back home – and also a long history of tolerant pluralism – Christian, Muslim and Hindu sat together in Toronto and talked with trust and freedom, pledging to help promote each other’s books and other writing efforts.

And here’s another thing, articulated simply, clearly and authoritatively by Jasmine: Their voices are Canadian, and an important part of the mosaic of Canadian multiculturalism. This is Canada, too, a tolerant nation made up of diverse peoples – not unlike India itself – though perhaps more so in Toronto, one of the world’s great multicultural cities. All of the ethnicities in Canada can lay claim to this inclusion, but perhaps Indians have a greater share due to their English language skills, their literary tradition, their large numbers (soon to be the largest “ethnic” group in Canada) and the rapid growth of both India’s economy and its profile on the global stage.

These writers have all found an identity in Canada as writers, and whether they are seen as Indian, Canadian or global depends on the prism you look through. The politics of identity became a central theme of the conversation, and how tricky it is to be an “ethnic” writer in Canada; how white, European culture is still considered the mainstream; and about how granting bodies and other organizations supported by the government are bound by CanCon (Canadian content) rules – in an effort to keep the American cultural tsunami at bay.

But being Indian may make it easier than not – Indian writers certainly are prominent in Canada, and especially in Toronto, home to Michael Ondaatje, M.G. Vassanji and Rohinton Mistry. Jasmine and Farzana passed around their books to show the very Indian-looking treatment the covers were given – women in saris, fonts designed to look like devanagari script. Their publishers told them the books would sell better if they looked Indian. For better or worse, the appeal of the exotic is still a draw, and so is the modern, Indian literary tradition.

Mayank exclaimed that they should all be thankful to Manmohan Singh and Salman Rushdie – for Singh reformed the Indian economy and laid the groundwork for the current boom and Rushdie’s success with Midnight’s Children – a book written in English – changed the way the world looked at Indian creativity.

And though it is not politically correct, perhaps they owe a debt of gratitude to Britain too – for along with plundering the country and denigrating it’s native-born citizens, the British Raj left behind a legacy of educational institutions, political and administrative bureaucracy, the train system and English. If you are among the educated elite of India, who are taught English at school, you stand a much better chance of blending in with the globopolis – the predominantly English-speaking, urban-based, global citizens of the world. English may be one of the reasons for the success of Indians – if not of India. And this was a topic of conversation too – that though they all had different mother tongues back in India, they can all speak with each other, and with me, in English.

But even though they speak English, it does not necessarily mean they have lost their cultural identity. These writers seemed very agile at skating along the surface of all of these contradictions, political considerations and attempts at labeling them; and they seemed energized by the excitement of being Indian in the 21^st century. It has been said before that Britain dominated the 19^th century, and America the 20^th, but the 21^st belongs to India. Each of these writers have their own struggles – as all writers these days do, of course – but I felt the excitement and energy of being part of a rising tide. There was a confidence in the room, the confidence born of knowing you have something to say and that you have a good chance of being heard.

Immersive Travel and Finding Your “Soul Culture”

What is immersive travel?

It’s travel that takes you deep into a culture and changes you. Immersive travel can be voluntourism, solo travel, or long-term travel. It can be embarking on a spiritual path or a going to a health & wellness retreat. Or it can simply be an attitude.

It’s about being open to a new culture, learning from it, and letting it change your ideas, beliefs and assumptions about life and the world. If you go on a trip, and see things differently when you get back home — then, you have probably experienced immersive travel. Here’s a synopsis of my first three columns.

Are you a tourist or a traveler?

If you have men who will only come if they know there is a good road, I don’t want them, I want men who will come if there is no road at all.” ~ David Livingstone

There’s a difference between a traveler and a tourist. Maybe I’m old-fashioned: I prefer reading to television; trains to jets; long sojourns to quick getaways. I love reading stories about travelers who went abroad for months, even years, and became completely transformed. Like Ibn Batutta. He left his homeland, Morocco, to make a hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca in 1325AD that should have taken 16 months. He didn’t return home for 24 years.

In total, Ibn Battuta traveled for 30 years. He covered most of Africa, Europe, the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia, all the way to China, for a total of 75,000 miles (121,000 km) – a mileage record that held for more than 400 years. Batutta recorded his travels in a book called The Rihla (Journeys) of Ibn Battuta.

I think of the 19th century as the golden age of travel. People packed steamer trunks and ventured out into the world before there was any kind of tourism infrastructure. These people had adventures!

Three hotels that offer the comfort of luxury with the joy of cultural immersion

When you think of immersive travel, you may think of living in a local’s house, eating home-cooked food and following the family’s daily rhythm. I do like staying in small guesthouses and homestays when I travel, but I also enjoy finding higher-end accommodation that tries to preserve the spirit of cultural authenticity.

The three hotels featured here ― the Bhakti Kutir in Goa, the Windamere Hotel in Darjeeling and the Uma Paro in Bhutan ― each combine the best of both worlds, the comfort of luxury with the joy of cultural immersion.

Have you found your soul culture?

There are many ways to experience “immersive travel.” You can travel somewhere to live for a time, or volunteer. You can study the culture, learn the language or master the arts. But the type of immersive travel I am writing about today cannot be engineered. You cannot make it happen.

I call it finding your “soul culture,” and it’s like falling in love. It just happens.

Sometimes, people discover a corner of the world where they feel most at home. It is often in a country and culture far away, and far different, from their own, and it doesn’t make a lot of rational sense.

People who found their soul culture always intrigued me. And, I admit, I was a bit jealous. Though I had traveled to many parts of the world, and lived in Tokyo, I had never felt that special affinity, and didn’t know if I ever would. Then, in late 2004, at about the same time the tsunami struck Southeast Asia, a personal tsunami of sorts hit me.

I was trying to recover from a series of devastating losses that had left me feeling flattened, and was enrolled in a yoga teacher training program. That’s when the idea of going to India for six months grabbed hold of me. Throughout that time period, I discovered that India is my soul culture.

Jaunting Down To Niagara Falls

Read on to find out how I experienced both a festive winter wonderland and desolate tourist trap during my short 24-hour Jaunt to Niagara Falls.

Jaunt Experience: Smooth and friendly

I traveled from Toronto by GO Train, with connecting GO Bus, on Sunday afternoon, and traveled home again the following day, almost exactly 24 hours later. When the bus dropped me off on Sunday, I took a taxi to the hotel — and, oddly, had the same taxi driver, Derek, on the way back to the GO Bus stop on Monday.

Overall, I had a great time on my Jaunt, thanks to the well-organized execution. From the moment I checked in at the Hilton, I was greeted by friendly and knowledgeable staff, who seemed to have a thorough understanding of the Jaunt deal. They handed me a print-out with my coupons, which were clearly explained.

Staying at the Hilton was definitely one of the highs of my trip. I loved the extra-large jacuzzi tub in my suite, my 26th floor view of both the U.S. and Canadian Falls, and having dinner at the Watermark on the 33rd floor: I sat by the window and ate a lobster tail and seafood platter.

Jaunt Ambassador:

The highs and lows of life in Niagara Falls

When I travel, even if it’s only two hours away (the distance from my hometown, Toronto, to Niagara Falls), I try and go with an open mind and no expectation of what I’ll find; I let “the story” find me. And the story I found in Niagara Falls was about the seasonal highs and lows of a tourist town. My short 24 hour Jaunt to Niagara Falls was an exercise in the polarities of life.

On Sunday evening, after checking into the hotel, I walked down to the Falls. The promenade was a winter wonderland. The mist from the Falls created a frozen sheaf over everything nearby  — railings, trees, lamp posts — and at dusk it was gleaming with an other-worldly glow. Horse-drawn carriages jingled by, covered in bells and tiny lights. People were skating on an outdoor rink, taking pictures of each other with the Falls in the background — lit up after dark by spotlights that changed from red to purple to green — and warming themselves around an outdoor fire pit. The scent of the fire, jingle of the horse bells, roar of the Falls, and sparkling nightscape was festive and fun. It was Niagara Falls at its wintery best.

I took lots of photos, inspired by the majestic Falls, gleaming ice and festive lights, and went back to my hotel to dress for dinner feeling that I’d had a fun and creatively stimulating experience. Dinner and jacuzzi was great, and I enjoyed the comfort of my room, and my panoramic view.

On Monday morning, I walked back down the street to the Falls and the promenade and felt I was in a completely different town. This time, I experienced Niagara Falls as a desolate tourist trap. The warm temperature had melted all the ice sculptures, there were few tourists and workmen were milling around a huge crane that was parked right at the most scenic point on the promenade. The overcast day cast a gloomy grey tone and drained the colour from the scenery. Music blaring from the empty skating rink, and from the empty Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville restaurant, only added to the surreal feeling of the barren streets. I felt like I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

I asked my taxi driver, Derek, about the extremes I experienced during my short stay in Niagara Falls and he said that about summed it up — though he sees the highs and lows as more seasonal in nature. “As soon as they take the boat out of the water in October, the whole town shuts down,” he said, referring to the Maid of the Mist, which ferries tourists up the river to the base of the Falls in summer. Talking to Derek, I was able to glean how difficult it must be to live in a tourist town, and deal with rambunctious crowds in summer and desolate streets in winter. I felt I had both experienced the magic and majesty of Niagara Falls, and also a glimpse behind the tourist facade.

The Magic Moment

My short trip afforded me three magic moments in Niagara Falls: photographing the ice-and-snow covered parkland surrounding the Falls; eating a very large lobster tail while looking out at the panoramic view from the Hilton’s Watermark dining room; and soaking in the jacuzzi tub in my suite. Combined, they epitomize the idea of a jaunt, a short trip packed with fun highlights.

Travel Tip

To get the best rooms and the best view of the Falls at the Hilton Niagara Falls Fallsview Hotel, book a room in the new tower, above the 20th floor.

NOTE: My Jaunt to Niagara Falls was sponsored by Jaunt.

Niagara Falls: Canada’s Taj Mahal

People in India are fascinated by Niagara Falls

This weekend I am in Niagara Falls on a Jaunt. Whenever I travel in India and tell people I’m from Canada, I often hear, “Oh, I would love to go to Niagara Falls!” It’s always been a bit strange to me, as I grew up within driving distance of “the Falls” and never took them all that seriously. I thought the place was silly. So to hear people in a far-off country — a country that I always deemed to be the height of “exotic” — say they long to visit Niagara Falls seemed bizarre. But of course perspective is everything.

When asked exactly why they were interested in seeing Niagara Falls, some Indian people said that they believed the site to be as famous as the Taj Mahal in India; others said that they believed it to be a symbol of the New World. Most people agreed that the Falls were “what you thought of” when you thought of Canada as well as one of the most beautiful natural sites in the world. Some people also discussed the prominence of Niagara Falls in Bollywood.

Bollywood and Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls has made it’s way into several Bollywood Films, going at least as far back as 1967. An Evening in Paris, with Bollywood greats Sharmila Tagore and Shammi Kapoor, “taps into a certain ‘occidentalism,’ an Indian fetishization of the west that is the mirror reflection of the west’s orientalist exoticization and fetishization of the east. It is a whirlwind tour of romantic locales – strolling along the Seine, skiing on the Jungfrau, water-skiing at a posh resort in Beirut, and spinning to a dramatic climax in the swirling rush of Niagara Falls,” according to FilmiGeek, who notes: “Unfortunately, as is often the case with masala thrillers, the film gets bumpier when the plot, such as it is, gets going in the second half – but the dramatic climax at Niagara Falls is worth hanging on for.”

More recent films shot in Niagara Falls include Taal (1999) with Aishwarya Rai and Anil Kapoor; and Thank You (2011) with Sonam Kapoor and Akshay Kumar — who, by the way, is an honourary Canadian. The film Kismat Konnection (2008) with Shahid Kapoor and Vidya Balan was actually based in Toronto, but the location for this song, below, is downtown Niagara Falls.

Jodhpur Blue in India’s Rajasthan

I met photographer Jean-Pierre Muller during the Kumbh Mela in India April 2010, and loved his enthusiasm both for India and for photography. This photo is a part of a series, called Jodhpur the Blue, which was shot in the famous Blue City of Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.

Happy 100th Birthday To Delhi, India!

Delhi turns 100 as capital of India, a milestone met with mixed feelings.

When I was getting ready to travel to India the first time, back in 2005, I had several friends warn me: “You won’t like Delhi. It’s crowded, it’s polluted, the people are aggressive, you will be pestered to distraction.” I’d heard lots of stories about Pahar Ganj, the grubby “traveler’s ghetto”; the challenges of buying tickets and arranging any kind of transportation; the scams and the con artists; the crowds and chaos.

However, my first morning in Delhi, I walked out into the warm December sunshine on the big, white marble terrace of my friend’s home in South Delhi and was greeted by the family, who offered me breakfast. Later, a man arrived with a huge bundle of gorgeous shawls and fabrics, and I sat on the terrace drinking tea and shopping with the ladies of the family. It was all very civilized and I felt I had arrived in heaven, not the hell that I was promised.

That’s when my love affair with Delhi began, and it has never ended — though I have had my moments of frustration and annoyance, like everyone else, and have witnessed heart-breaking scenes of poverty at the side of the road.

Celebrating the City

On December 12, 1911, during a magnificent durbar on the outskirts of Delhi, King George V proclaimed that the capital of the British Raj would be moved from Kolkata to Delhi. For the next 20 years, the new city of New Delhi was built, under the leadership of visionary architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.

So, while the anniversary of Delhi is greeted with mixed feelings by Indians — who are usually not keen to celebrate anything the British Raj created — I am quietly celebrating my home-away-from home — the city that greeted me so hospitably when I first arrived in Delhi, and continues to be my beloved home base in India.

In an article about New Delhi at the time of the city’s inauguration, in 1931 (New Delhi, The First Impression) the very talented travel writer Robert Byron wrote, “The surprise which awaits the traveler on his first view of the imperial capital will be proportionate to the fixity of his previous ideas about it.” This was certainly true for me; no one had told me that New Delhi is also beautiful. And gracious, historical, cultural, green, spacious, and a paradise for shoppers and foodies.

Top Ten Favorite Things to Do in Delhi

1. soft mornings and pink sunsets
2. the inspired and majestic symmetry of the planned city of New Delhi
3. the profusion of green: leafy enclaves, tree-lined boulevards, gracious gardens, lush parks, verdant historical sites
4. shopping! at Khan Market, Lajpat Nagar, Hauz Khas, Karol Bagh, South Extension, Janpath, Sunder Nagar, Greater Kailsh 1 M- and N-Block markets, Arobindo Market, etc.
5. ancient historical treasures, especially Red Fort, Humayun’s Tomb and Qutab Minar
6. modern historical treasures, especially India Gate, Gandhi Smirti and Raj Ghat
7. spiritual Delhi, especially Lotus Temple, Sivananda Centre in Kailash Colony, ISKCON temple, and the tiny, ancient Shiv Mandir in Panch Shila Park
8. food glorious food — from mini-tiffin at Saravana Bhavan in Janpath to dining at one of the world’s most beautiful restaurants, Spice Route at the Imperial Hotel; from chic watering holes like Olive to paneer tikka to go
9. strolling in Lodhi Garden
10. having tea with my Indian family on the marble terrace in South Delhi

There are many things I love about Delhi – I could go on and on. Though the city is actually thousands of years old and has been the capital of at least seven kingdoms, and although Indians have mixed feelings about Delhi’s 100th birthday, I will take this moment to wish the city and it’s 14 million inhabitants happy anniversary anyway.

The 5 Spiritual Ideas of Social Media To Test Out

Social media is a spiritual discipline

Learning how to “do” social media effectively is a lot learning a spiritual discipline. There are paradoxes involved, and you have to abandon the traditional western approach of applying ego-based will-power to get results. Here are five spiritual ideas and how social media exemplifies them.

1. The law of attraction

The more you try to “get” results — such as increased sales or traffic — using social media, the more likely you will fail. If you come across as too pushy or too self-promotional, you will be shunned. You can’t use traditional selling or marketing techniques that rely on pushing your message out. Instead, you have to be like a light, a beacon. You have to be attractive, to attract.

This is the paradoxical nature of the law of attraction. The more content, confident, happy you feel as you engage in social media, the more likely you will be to attract attention. Neediness and greediness will have the opposite effect.

2. Letting go of attachment to outcome

If you are concerned with the bottom line, and with the results of your efforts, you will miss opportunities for engagement, for community building, and for nurturing long-term customers and readers. Letting go of attachment to outcome also frees you up to discover what you enjoy, and to do more of that. Plus, it leads you to be in …

3. The moment

The gift of social media is ironic — given that it is done largely when people are alone in front of an electronic device, and their pixels are engaging with other people’s pixels in cyberspace. But if you are truly engaged in social media, having conversations, sharing interesting, important or entertaining information, you are in the moment. Social media gives you the opportunity to interact with others; to notice others, to get interested in who they are and what they have to say, or what they want to share. The more you are able to JUST BE, the more likely you will have satisfying exchanges. It also helps to accept that you have little or no control. Just like life.

4. To give is to get

One of the best uses of social media is curatorial: looking and finding things to share, plus adding your own take and embellishing. The social media net is like a matrix; in fact, it is a lot like the connectedness that spiritual masters teach is at the base of all reality. Movements take root, people inspire each other, they help each other to reach a wider audience, new connections are made, even friendships. The effects of sharing are instantaneous, unpredictable, creative; and the more you give, the more you benefit, both because sharing and being generous are highly valued in the social media world; and also because of the nature of social media and how it works.

5. Go with the flow

Yoga teaches that going with the flow of energy creates efficiency and harmony, and puts you in a more spiritual and creative frame of mind. For example, I am writing this in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. I am going with the flow of my restless energy — and creating a blog post! Likewise, on social media, it is more harmonious and satisfying to go with the flow, and join in conversations, trends, organized chats. Once you accept that you cannot make things happen — you have to let them happen — you can relax and enjoy … and trust that social media will help sweep you and your business towards your destiny.

And like any spiritual discipline, you don’t just learn these ideas once. You continue to learn and practise, always getting a little more awareness, a little more mastery, until the knower and the knowing meld….

Next Page »