One Step Beyond

Prologue

In 2000 we moved into our home in Acton, Northwest of Toronto. Equipped with a well dug 90 feet into the aquifer which sat on this the highest point in the Greater Toronto Area some 500 ft above the city our water needed softening and filtering. We had a reverse osmosis filter installed looking on line I saw there was a plumber in town who provided them. An RO filter has three cylinders which remove impurities at increasingly granular level with the final one adding the polish making the water more than just potable but actually somewhat sweet. It turned out the online yellow pages had directed me to the home of a commercial plumber. An elderly lady with a strongly Scottish brogue answered and told me Milne Plumbing was a commercial enterprise run by her son. But she was nonetheless happy to provide me with the cartridges. Water arrives from the our ecology the global commons deep within the ground into the community that is our home and then to sustain the flow of current in the embodied identity. Almost a decade later the synchronicity of a chance encounter amidst the great financial crisis stirred me again and then some twenty five years later - now today - I adopted the name as my own as I came together; as I found that I had come full circle to know my Calling. Such is the thread. Such is the sutra.

Kernel of Truth and Beauty

I am the son and the heir Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar I am the son and heir Of nothing in particular

~ The Smiths (How Soon is Now)

We are born heralded — an innovation from the deep wellspring of culture, delivered into the stifling yet sustaining structures of family, community, and nation. These have forever been, for better or worse, the foundations of every civilization. The coming together and the meeting in an ecstatic moment of conception itself ignited the blush of anticipation: What new idea will this child’s fresh eyes bring to our semi-charmed lives? Will a beginner’s mind awaken somewhere within them as they journey through life's rich pageant? Will they find the space and stillness for contemplation — enough to shake themselves free from the long stupor of life and the many shiny quests, one attraction after another, designed to lure the mind into endless distraction? Will it prise itself from layer upon layer of sumptuous comfort and the futile pursuit of happiness, mired in the accumulation of endless dross? Will it feast on the mere sensation of fullness while running on empty, as we do — or will the contents of this manger seek true substance and evolve our meaning of what it is to be civil?

Our objective today, amidst all our modern conveniences, must surely be to recall and experience in some way the tale of the princess who spied the discomfort of a seed — a solitary pea — as she lay upon twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobility is seeing through the extraneous and perceiving its wastefulness; to feel viscerally that we will all be left in the discomfiture of sleepless nights if we continue to live in opulence while the great mass of humanity is deprived of the most basic thing — the right to a solitary bean to plant and from which to reap continuous harvest and endless feast. Since when was the barren a source of the wholesome? This patent absurdity will end, or it will be the end of us. We will graft our lives onto the rootstock of futility and famine if we hold fast to these ways. There will be no grist for the mill. Sine Qua Non. Neither you nor I will deserve grace nor favour when intelligence is self-evident and yet ignored. There will be no Milne to grind our corn so that we may bake and break bread to create the lasting bonds of true friendship. Nor a candle to light up a loved one's face as we seek a path through our witless ways. There will be no coming together, no meeting of minds, nor bodies ever again — not meaningfully and with fruitful intention. Just the too-hot-for-comfort numb gratification found in the oblivion which runs its course as a vain euphoria. A forgetfulness of being that wants to be done with it all rather than fade with the mass of dullards and their blandishments — those who cast their lot with long shelf life for its own sake and so shelve true and vital living altogether without knowing it. We might choose to turn away from the insanity of our collective in any number of ways, and I have explored several avenues (not all of them entirely constructive). In the end, I choose to come back again and again to get a grip and to find some purchase on ideas that have integrity and on ways I know to be rational — all with which to manifest and turn truth incrementally toward something possessed of the order, sublimely refined peace, and beauty.

Niyati Se Milne

अगर भीतर शांति हो, तो नियति से मिलना सहज होता है। Agar bheetar shanti ho, to niyati se milne sahaj hota hai.

If there is peace within, then meeting destiny becomes effortless.

For humanity in all its hues, the kernel or the seed has forever held the essential code. In the natural world, it is at once the prospect, the harvest, and the good fortune gathered and stored through lean times. Take the industrious squirrel who squares away an acorn meal for the future; sometimes in his forgetfulness he instead plants a mighty oak. Creation is forever accidentally on purpose, on a mission to both take stock and yet still plant, grow, and evolve. Are we as humanity aligned? Can we honestly say this much when we appear to deliberately manufacture scarcity for others so that we might continuously generate prosperity for ourselves? We affiliate and align with legal entities and afford limited liabilities only. Our entire idea of risk and reward has become entirely theoretical or conceptual. It deals in entirely notional elements rather than with the brutal forces of reality and the natural elements. Yet it is precisely within those forces of nature that our greatest risks lie, even as we drift through our ordinary, petty lives, oblivious to them. Even those who acknowledge the existential threat of climate change often shrug it off, as though the way each of us lives were not directly and causally intertwined with that threat. Yet from within us, that knowledge, that grain of truth — a kernel of insight — reaches out into the world as we are animated to emanate beauty.

As we do so, all we create systems, both analogue and digital, to implement order in civic forms as good governance — an aesthetic idea — and as close to beauty as political theory gets. In software development, the kernel lies at the heart of programming. It orchestrates procedures and sets the execution order when many tasks compete for attention at once. Good code, then, is code that understands: not everything at any given moment is the priority. As well, within all of us — and in particular, the most introspective — lies that essential code that seeks to align one's own self with the universal, never mind what the rest in civil society chooses to do, and which knows that what matters most for us is ultimately what is right for the entire world.

For me, these heady ideas dovetailed in the years approaching the 2008 financial crisis. By that time I had been at IBM for a decade, taking on progressively senior roles delivering enterprise solutions in software engineering, beginning to chafe at the bureaucracy of that institution while sitting in the uncomfortable position of an integrator negotiating the fine balance of interests between customer and firm. Simultaneously, I explored the contemplative practice of yogasana — specifically Ashtanga Vinyasa. Before turning toward a career in information technology, I had studied history, political science, and political economy. Now I began to introvert, and through a meditative practice I sought to synthesise these disparate ideas; braid them into a coherent logic.

Synchronicity allows that Milne in Hindi (मिल्न) phonetically means, in an abstract sense, to 'come together' or meet. The word is descended from the Sanskrit root mil (मिल्). So too, the idea is the English idea to 'mill about,' denoting motion and mingling in a shared space, perhaps at the heart of a community where grain itself is turned to flour at a mill. So too, with the Great Financial Crisis looming, did I seek the community of like-minded souls who reached for alternative ways to live and work creatively and sustainably.

I came to Downward Dog in 2007. The studio — a beloved Toronto institution — stretched across a gorgeous second-floor space on Queen Street West, all sunlit wood and urban charm. Until then, I’d been something of an adept in private, shaping my practice alone at home. But now I found myself in the main front room, where mats were laid out edge to edge, a quiet sea of bodies breathing and moving together. I was soon a stalwart: a central character in the studio's cast of acrobatic contemplatives on close terms with the owners and senior teachers, Ron Reid and Diane Bruni — as well as a group of favorite dedicated practitioners. Soon, I had a key to the studio. I was the first in through the door, turning the lights on each morning, sometimes as early as 5:30 a.m. One morning, swiveling back into the bind of Marichyasana C, I found myself looking straight into a pair of blue eyes framed by a blonde bob, their owner leaning forward into Trikonasana. She looked through me with the practiced neutrality of yoga-studio etiquette — a glance that acknowledges nothing, or is it everything?

Ron and Diane encouraged me to enter their teacher training program, if only to deepen my personal practice. Across town, in Toronto's Cabbagetown district, a studio reserved for the purpose, a group of us delved into the subject under their guidance. We covered a holistic blend of practice, theory, and philosophy: studying detailed anatomy and physiology, learning safe adjustments, and exploring breath-work and the system linking posture, gaze, and breath. The curriculum also included Ayurveda, meditation, mantra, ethics, and the theological underpinnings of yoga, drawing from texts like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita. Finally, through Mysore-style self-practice and teaching exercises, we developed both technical skill and the ability to guide others with clarity and presence.

At the front, Diane, fierce, calm and beautiful with long braided platinum-black hair, smooth tanned skin and big brown eyes exuded her own authentic earthy brand of yoga charisma. She would soon begin this first session with a homily — a sombre serious exhortation for us to seek our bearings in something deeper and more enduring than the world seemed to offer, a world adrift, perhaps even having abandoned its senses. Her children Katherine and David, friends of mine were outstanding teachers and a part of our community. In a matter of two or three years Diane's vitality was claimed by cancer and she was gone. The studio too would unravel and we evolved to go our separate ways.

Coming into the space for the first time, I glanced around the room, already full of new and familiar faces, and spotted ‘Blondie’ leaning back on her arms, legs stretched out in front. An empty spot next to her beckoned, and I took it. This time, we exchanged smiles and struck up a conversation, and in time, we became close friends. I was married, and we navigated the platonic boundaries carefully. Still, the chemistry between us was patently obvious — casual onlookers would have thought us a couple. We supped together at our spot — a Korean restaurant across the street from the studio — or waited in line at Starbucks before class. She freelanced as an independent and creative — a writer and yoga teacher. I fancied myself in some ways her older, pinstripe-spiffy 'corporate stiff' brother enjoying his pretty and precocious 'Indy' sister's bright company and counsel; she was my junior by fourteen years, possessed of a graduate degree in anthropology. I was convinced she could discern significant trends and understood, better than most, the burgeoning risks and opportunities of the digital economy and the evolving nature of capital. She rarely dropped names, and when she did, they invoked flow and creativity — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, for example. She seemed to suggest that, given my potential, I wasn’t taking enough creative risks — not consciously, at any rate; that I was holding back, or perhaps conversely driving in a fascinating, legitimate, and exciting direction but without being fully aware of it. She nudged me to think of the work I was capable of but hadn’t yet attempted. Work that I am in fact now doing.

I knew that if life had allowed it, and if circumstances had been different, we would have been much closer. One evening, her father Ian came to the studio for a class — almost certainly a favour to her. He looked alone and uncertain in the alien surroundings of a yoga changing room. I wandered over and introduced myself. He smiled: “She talks about you all the time.” I returned the smile, and we talked shop for a while. “It was criminal what they did to Dennis [Kozlowski], he didn’t deserve that,” he said. (Ian was a Director at the security firm Tyco.) I shrugged and gave a wry smile; he smiled back and nodded, recognising my resignation.

We both knew how corporate worked — checks and balances, privileges quietly managed, cheques and shadow ledgers, swings and roundabouts — all to preserve the courtesy enjoyed at the top by those who learn to pay to play and play along. Occasionally, an obligatory scapegoat was offered up, so that everyone else might continue to enjoy their material, and ultimately ephemeral, perquisites with reputations intact. In that economy, I was learning that I did not belong. I demurred, again and again, from paths toward director, partner, and the c-suite — unsuitable as they were for my own feral brand. In a time of atonement I was the goat left to go into the wilderness as I wanted.

While Ian represented the corporate lens of the world, Ron, my mentor in all things Yoga, scoffed at the corporate crass materialism and even materiality itself. To my mind he was a genuine seer - someone with real insights. But if your conversation took a philosophical route he'd just look deeply at you the smile and shrug. He offered the other extreme — a more earthy, archetypal counsel; leaning in one morning to whisper an archaic admonition: 'Don't give her your seed...man.' I had no such intention — at least not before, and without a whole lot of adjustment in our prevailing circumstances. Her name was Cecily Milne.

While I was formulating Transition Insight—a framework for identity management and secure governance—Cecily was building The Yoga Element. Her brand teaches the practice sensibly, cultivating the internal balance and humility needed to prevent ambition from turning animus inward. Our connection lies in a shared necessity: transitioning to a sustainable future requires integrating the wild, the deep, and the rational. In this synthesis, humility harmonises with self-awareness, guiding us toward a truly self-sovereign identity.

The Yoga Element

In an interview with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell once noted that in the traditions of yoga, a contemplative who comes full circle to complete the 'hero's journey' to truly understand his calling will manifest a profound change in his demeanour and personality. He will even adopt a new name — one to emphasise his new-found sense of mission. During the enforced isolation of the lock-down following the pandemic, I seemed to unravel. The most critical layers of my persona fell apart completely in a full-blown crisis of meaning, purpose, and identity. Thankfully, the constructive protocols I had cultivated over decades — particularly my capacity and appetite for introversion served me in this time. Campbell drew the distinction between introspection and introversion. The former involved withdrawal from the world to seek a connection to it while the latter comes later in life; when one is sufficiently clear on the world's machinations and various ways it expresses animus — and has only to divine from within and one's deep wellspring of anima for answers.

Instead of being a moment in which I comprehensively spiralled into descending 'less than zero' oblivion, it became a reawakening to my life's purpose. I came together, or found myself as it were. Ideas that were once impossible to contemplate — pivoting away from conventional notions of employment, property, and reputation — seemed not only rational but also natural — and an absolutely utilitarian imperative. It felt vital that I exemplify the changes necessary in the world. I adopted the name Milne, with its staff of life evocation of vitality in English, and of coming together in Hindi. In these fragmented and alienated times — where suspicion, division, and isolation seem to define so much of our experience — no two ideas were more critical than these. We must focus on the vital, and we must come together.

With the exception of those who renounce civilisation to embrace the life of a sannyasin, I see consciousness as composed of three yoga (Vedanta) aspects — the primal, the deep, and the rational — expressed through what I call the Yoga Element. It is through this element that beauty is connected to truth by way of a sense of mission and purpose, or utility. The sacred gesture of the Vitarka Mudra is formed during practice precisely so that a visible intention may be brought into the moment, allowing an internal dialogue among these aspects of the Yoga Element to resolve into a wholesome acceptance of what is.

These too are the qualities of thought which make an idea creative. We may also think of those qualities as a pair of Zen opposites: the logical and the intuitive. As beings possessed of both life and agency, we seek to set boundaries — a semantic perimeter of embodiment (semper idem) — so that we may understand where one thing ends and another begins. Philosophically animus describes our outward, directed, rational expression in the world, while anima names the visible boundaries and qualities of vital life which it seeks to preserve and perpetuate. This as true for individual notions of identity as they are for collective ones such as family, partnership, and community — the things we love that lie beyond our person — within which trust is established to assure safety.

Our task, then, is to conceive of our common stock — the wilderness of our planet — as a finite resource to be sustained, while navigating the contrived, increasingly complex, random, and incoherent forms of collective identity that extend beyond traditional boundaries. We must confront the domains of the amoral, procedural, legalistic, and zero-trust — the corporate, the state, and the nation-state — entities whose rapacious animus seems boundless, and bring them to heel, so that our planet may heal and continue to come full circle in perpetuity. Serendipitously, दीप (dīp) is Hindi for light. It is this light of utility — purpose and mission — that connects us, as rational beings, to the universe through thought, a sequence of notions made real.

Epilogue

One of the great things about working in a city with a vibrant cultural and commercial core like Toronto's is the opportunity it affords to get outside on the street and the serendipity of chance encounters of a whole other kind. Some years past since I met Ian Milne at Downward Dog on Queen Street. I was now on King Street during a lunch break having decided to stop in at the MEC to browse and maybe pick up an new cartridge for the Platypus gravity filter I use when I'm out in the backcountry.

Looking through merino tops I glanced up to see Ian walk by with an attendant. I wasn't in the mood for small talk — it was one of those encounters that didn't really demand a meeting. It wasn't his daughter after all - and he returned the courtesy of allowing me to be left alone. A little past and then almost as if he was doing pantomime or improv he made a dramatic gesture from behind a stand of jackets to part them as if they were curtains and he were peering in at me. I looked at him blankly then laughed to myself as I turned to walk away.

Never mind the giants and their digital marketing agencies and the centralized platform whose feeding frenzy takes us apart into morsels so much the easier for minds to absorb. They are third eye blind in their semi-charmed kind of life. The eyes of the good Lord are upon us and his constancy has enough fidelity for the both of us. He alone is my King. My virtue? All reality.

I've never had much cause for worry and I've not got a lot to say. You'll never find me in a hurry, because I live my life day by day. People say that I'm crazy, but I'm not that way inclined, I know what I know and I'll happily show that madness is all in the mind.