January 2026 - AUM

Content warning: cursing, fascism, murder, orcs. Happy new year?!

Hi!

According to Seinfeld, it’s too late to say Happy New Year, so I won’t. Also because this still new-ish year does not feel very happy at all, at least for us collectively.

Welp……I wrote ten pages worth of material about the yogic concepts of impermanence and non-duality, and it got me absolutely nowhere. It’s decent writing, I’ll give myself that, but the fact of the matter is, I don’t think I like explaining things. And, explaining concepts that I believe are meant to be experienced, not just read or talked about, is especially not my cup of tea.

I was also getting stuck in trying to explain myself in a way that was so perfect, elegant & harmless that no one could possibly misunderstand what I’m trying to say. But like….I’m not AI?! And I really REALLY don’t want to be??! I don’t think we can be perfect and alive at the same time.

So yeah, I wanted to write about Vedanta, but I also, admittedly, felt a performative sense of obligation to make it about what’s going on in the world as well. And after ten pages of profound yet inauthentic writing, I said “screw this” and started over. My spiritual practice has offered me a unique (well, unique maybe to us Westerners), nuanced, non-dualistic perspective, but I’m not sure I’m meant to share my deepest understanding of it quite yet. It’s not quite clear enough. And it only took me ten pages of writing & countless voice notes to figure that out!

Look, I don’t have to tell you that we’re in a really shit time as human beings right now. It’s not the first shit time in human history and it absolutely will not be the last. I do not find that comforting, and I don’t need it to be. My yoga practice has made me entirely unsurprised that we are well into the “history repeats itself” part of humanity’s darkest era with the rise of fascism (though I’m not sure it ever went away). I’ve been told that “history repeats itself” over & over practically my whole life; I do not find this time we’re in at all unprecedented.

Human nature is a cyclical one. Violence is a cycle. Love is a cycle. Creation is a cycle. Destruction is a cycle. The experience of Time is a cycle. Birth, life, death, rebirth, life, death, etc. These are all deeply human capacities that we all have. This shit time we’re in will end at some point. Everything ends–which isn’t a bad or good thing, just the thing.

Now, I’m not saying we sit & wait this one out and do nothing until it ends. In my spiritual practice, I have come to believe that I am one lifetime, or even one circumstance, away from hatred, greed, or ignorance. I have also come to believe that all of us, the “best” and “worst” of us, still come from the same Source. Separation is an illusion (I am begging you to read the poem, “Please Call Me By My True Names” by Thich Nhat Hanh). Unity can be really hard to wrap our brains around when individualism, though not inherently wrong, has been shoved down our throats to a destructive degree. But knowing that I have the very human capacity to create as much as I do to destroy, to love as much as I hate, I choose the former. I choose love. I choose to create beauty and community with whatever amount of time I have.

So, knowing that this shit time will eventually end, we could use that as an excuse to wait it out, or we could see it as a calling to be really intentional about how we are going to spend our time. I find that it’s actually from the awareness of the finite nature of everything, that I am able to love more truly, more freely, and more unconditionally.

Frankly, I think a lot of us are stuck. We’re stuck in the “how” and “why” we got here. What is the “reason” this is happening? How can we prevent it from happening again? Noble questions, but I’m not sure the answers are within our grasp. And these questions require us to dwell in the past and in the future, and while the former can inform the latter, neither exist anymore or yet. This very present moment is the only thing that exists. In present tense. Every moment is an opportunity for us to see things as they are–whether we like what we see or not. Trying to figure out how or why things are the way they are has only ever given me a false sense of comfort or control…it has led more to me making excuses for circumstances rather than accepting them. The truth is, I do not know if anything happens for a reason. Lots of things happen to lots of people that don’t deserve it.

So if you’re wondering, “well then where the hell do we take any comfort?”...I’m not sure we’re meant to. The moment we’re in is dark, and deeply painful (let alone uncomfortable), and we have the capacity to bear witness to it, to sit in it, and to experience it. The “comfort” comes from the knowledge that we are not alone in what we are experiencing. I’m not saying that we do nothing–I’m saying we meet the moment as is and try to see, with clarity, what it is asking of us. And I think this moment is asking us to be brave, to take risks without attachment to the outcome, and trust our ability to ride the waves of our experiences, knowing that each one has a beginning, middle, and end. I’m reminded of a scene from the second installment of (objectively) the greatest movie trilogy of all time, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. In the darkest, most bleak moment of the battle of Helm’s Deep, King Theoden of Rohan asks, “What can men do against such reckless hate?”

To which Aragorn replies, “Ride out and meet them.” There’s no comfort. No assurance they will survive—in fact, they pretty much assume they won’t. They know they cannot attach themselves to an outcome that they can’t predict or control, and they still choose to meet the moment with courage and a love for their people.

The good guys win, by the way. Not without a great deal of loss and grief and trauma. But they still win. You can watch the epic scene here.

There’s no avoiding. There’s no turning a blind eye. The only way out is through. And it’s gonna suck. It already sucks.

But amidst that suckiness, there is joy. Experiences of joy, grief, love, heartache, pain, creation, hatred, destruction, pleasure, wisdom, ignorance, and everything in between, rarely occur separately. Would we even know love without hate? Would we know joy without grief? I don’t know–I don’t need to know. Light can (and I believe must) be found in the darkest of circumstances. Only then can what’s hidden in the shadows reveal itself, and we can let go of our fear.

I’m honestly a little tired of hearing people say, “I can’t believe this is happening”. I absolutely can. I am deeply saddened and enraged by ICE’s murder of Alex Pretti & Renee Good, but I am not at all surprised. We have seen this before. The Gestapo made it very clear that the un-targeted citizens of Nazi-occupied territory were not to interfere with the targeting, kidnapping, displacement, and murder of their friends and neighbors if they did not want to meet that same fate. Pretti & Good’s deaths have happened just as many of us have been banding together, creating whistle kits, taking out our phones to film, and doing what we can to stop the stealing of innocent people & separating of families. Trump, Kristi Noem, ICE leadership, & their grotesque army of orcs are trying to send a clear message–the same one Hitler and the Nazi’s sent: that trying to stop them was punishable by death.

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, has 28,707 trees planted to honor the “righteous among the nations”, the people who risked their lives to save and protect the Jewish people from genocide. American troops risked their lives going overseas to fight fascism during World War II. (Even though we were doing our own special brand of fascism at the same time with the internment of Japanese Americans.)

Are those of us privileged enough to not be directly targeted by Trump’s administration & ICE willing to be this generation’s righteous among the nations? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know if I’m that brave. Alex Pretti and Renee Good certainly were. Though I do think this is a question we are all going to have to answer.

And if you are like me, and believe in reincarnation and multiple past lifetimes, then it’s possibly a question we have already answered before. Because, like I said, this isn’t the first shit time for human beings. And it won’t be the last. And while we may not be able to take much comfort, we still have to take care. We have to take care of ourselves and each other.

What empowers me to keep going through any cycle of human nature is knowing that I have lived through countless beginnings, middles, and ends in this lifetime alone. We live through about 25,000 rounds of this cycle per day with our breath. No matter what we’re experiencing, or how we feel about it, we have the breath. We have the inhale, the pause at the top of the inhale, the exhale, and the pause at the bottom of the exhale.

So, if it’s interesting to you, place a hand on your heart & the other on your belly (or not), and close your eyes (or don’t), and take five breaths that you are consciously aware of. No judgments, no right or perfect (your body knows how to breathe)....just noticing. Just a few moments of acknowledgment, respect for, perhaps even reverence of the simplest, most innate cycle of them all. Inhale, pause at the top, exhale, pause at the bottom. Repeat and repeat for the rest of your life.

In the tradition of yoga, the cycle of beginning-middle-end is honored through the sound of AUM (“Om”). AUM is actually three sounds put together: “aahh”, “oooh”, and “mmm”. Each one represents a part of our life cycle. “A” is the beginning, “U” is the middle, “M” is the end. In Vedanta, they are each represented by a deity in the Trimurti (often known as the “Hindu Holy Trinity”). Brahma, the Creator, is the beginning. Vishnu, the Preserver, is the middle. And Shiva, the Destroyer, is the end. We do not see Creation, Preservation, or Destruction as bad or even good things. They just are.

And then there is the silence after the sound of AUM. Equally as important, as it is a manifestation of pure, divine, infinite consciousness, beyond the cycle of creation/preservation/destruction. In yoga/vedanta, we believe this to be the Source of all things in existence, and our True Nature. We believe that when we identify with that Source, rather than what is impermanent, we will live a life free from suffering.

This is why AUM (including the silence) is considered the most sacred mantra in the universe. It honors both the impermanent nature of every material thing in existence, as well as its infinite Source.

So, in my choosing love, beauty, creativity, community, and connection during this shit time, I have decided to finally launch what I’ve been sitting on and terrified to bring to life for years: the 3 Om’s Podcast.

Insert cringe here? By all means, I welcome it.

I sat on this idea as long as I did because I really didn’t want to be another person adding to all the noise and distraction already out there. And, honestly, I don’t even listen to a lot of podcasts. Especially the yoga-related ones. I find most of them very annoying, actually. But I think the people who do these kinds of things, who put themselves out there, know that they risk being seen as “annoying”, and they don’t care. And more than anything, I’m envious of that. I’ve been slowly finding my voice again after years of not using it, out of fear of how it may be perceived. And the results are mixed! And I’m becoming more okay with that, as I find myself becoming less and less attached to an outcome I could never control in the first place.

Really, I’m doing this for me. I love talking to friends and colleagues in my field (& adjacent fields) about what they do, why they do it, and how they got there. This is an excuse for me to do that, albeit in a public way. But what I noticed from the yoga podcasts I’ve listened to and the networking conversations I’ve had is that there’s never a moment to just connect and co-regulate before diving into the conversation. We don’t even take a breath together. And I usually go into conversations with a bit of frantic energy, so I could use an opportunity to connect and co-regulate. We are not meant to regulate our nervous systems completely on our own; community is a basic need for survival.

I have no idea what’s going to come out of this and I really don’t care and I love that for me. It’s freeing. The best outcome I am hoping for–and even anticipating–is having lots of fun talking to people I admire and enjoy and getting to share in one of my favorite activities ever, which is chanting. Anything else is sweet, sweet icing.

As of now, the plan is to drop one episode a month. If I wanna do more, I’ll do more. If I wanna do less, I’ll do less. If you wanna listen, listen. If you don’t, don’t.

The first episode, launching Saturday, January 31st, will be a solo conversation with yours truly. I don’t want to ask people questions about who they are, what they do, why they do it, and how they got there, without answering them first myself.

To be VERY clear, this is not my direct response to the rise (for lack of better word) of fascism in the United States/world….though it isn’t not, either. I do believe that part of our response to all this fear and war-mongering has to be to live our lives as fully as possible, & create deep, meaningful connections with one another. That is absolutely one way we fight back.

AND, here are some other grounded, tangible resources I’ve found helpful and inspiring:

“Five Ways to Fight Trump’s Fascism” video by Robert Reich

The Financial Diet’s “Ice Resistance Guide”

Resources for creating your ICE Whistle Kit

https://www.reddit.com/r/pittsburgh/comments/1qb1d4t/create_your_own_ice_whistle_kit/

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zXBmpznTPPA1BiiWdvwE9w6R_lcA6zN9

Do with all of this what you will.

So, after discarding ten pages and writing about seven more, I’ll leave it here. Like I said, everything ends. Forth, Eorlingas!

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu (May All Beings Everywhere Be Happy And Free)

Peace & love until next time,

Cami

P.S. I have a Substack! And this is published on there, too. Subscribe if you like: https://substack.com/@camicodell