Tonight I needed yoga more than I have in a long time.
I got a ton of work done for the apartment today. When I go upstate to the ashram it always gives me a shot of energy to refresh what I am doing in the city. So today I left the house early for Manhattan Ave. to look for a hardware store. I ended up finding 2 within blocks of my house; Greenpoint is such a great community. I ended up going to a lumbar yeard on Clay Street—right on the Riverside. There was a daper older woman at the desk of the quiet warehouse of wood. I didn’t assume she was the woodsmith, and was surprised when she asked for the measurements of my shelves and put on her work gloves to get ready to grab the planks and take them to the table saw. She was really pleasant, a true Brooklynite, maybe inherited the business from her family. She was wearing a button down salmon oxford shirt and pearl earrings. She was annoyed by people calling for exotic woods—that’s not her expertise, if they want Redwood they should move to Caslifornia—amen sister. She was not a soured soul though. She was happy to share her fascination with a local puppeter who comes to her for weathered antique wood and mahogony—he carves marionettes the old way. She told me his finished characters are hanging in a nearby restaurant that is only open when the chef feels like cooking. I walked back home with my two planks and my brackets, excited to further compose my microcosm of a bedroom.

I went on to start brown rice in the rice cooker, go back out for paint supplies and groceries, cook a burrito for lunch and paint half the bathroom.

After all this activity I was in a weird space, worn out, out of my body. I had fun doing all this material stuff but I definetley lost my connection to spirit. I made it out the door just in time for 6:30 class and was so revived by the teachers offering. I remember now how powerful it is to be in someone else’s hands and to let them bring you back to the point. The class started simply with breathing and sitting. I needed that. That was all I really needed, someone to hold the space, to remind me and allow me to open back up, because all day I had been gradually collapsing into broken records of thoughts and schemes (and probably high off paint fumes!). So the child's pose melted me, and downward dog was a revelation! I remembered my body and I was so ready to move. I love being in the body! And like the Sufis say, union is beautiful but the longing for union is also beautiful. When you are not in it it makes it all the more gorgeous when you get back your yoga bhav. Om shanti

Tolstoy

Two weeks ago I had a fever and had stayed in bed for most of the weekend. On Sunday afternoon, I motivated my achy body to take a walk. It was such a lovely day—65 degrees in November-- and it had taken me the whole day to get rested enough and ansy enough to journey outside. I piled on a few sweaters, scarf and wool beanie and took baby steps down Franklin Ave. towards the neighborhood bookstore. I had been wanting to support them and now was the time, as I was in need of a reminder that a life outside my small, sweaty bed existed.
Word, the bookstore on Franklin Ave., is small but has a great selection. I was so happy to be there, I looked at almost every bookshelve—partly because I am an indecisive Libra and I like to make a fair, balanced decision. But also partly because I was enjoying browsing so much. So after about an hour and a half, as I got hotter and hotter in my layers, I decided to go with a book of short stories by Leo Tolstoy. I never read him in college, and friends of mine raved about his classics, but I feel like I missed the boat and that I wouldn’t enjoy War and Peace or Anna Karenina as much not in a class setting. I still don’t have a huge desire to read these myself, they seem so overbearing, but I am falling in love with Tolstoy for another reason...

At the checkout counter there was a display of newly designed covered for a series by Penguin Book’s called “Great Ideas”. One was “A Confession” by Tolstoy. I am always attracted to small books—you can carry them in your coat pocket and easily take them in and out on the subway. The quote on the cover “Where there is Life there is Faith”...

“A Confession” is so potent. Tolstoy reports his soul seeking plain and simple. It is such a revolutionary work because he is so candid and ruthlessly direct about his experience. His rational mind took him to the brinks of suicide, feeling helpless and meaningfulness in life. What he experiences is that you reach the edges of what you can know and still there is a light that sustains us. I highly recommend this book to everyone! It is so good.
This is from his eureka moment at the peak of his questioning: “Live in search of God and there will be no life without God!”

Reading “A Confession” verifies that we all have to understand life on our own terms. It is so beautiful to have such an account of how someone else did it, and that even the people who we hold to be super human went through dark dark searched to come to their understanding. He gives you permission to be pissed off and lost and you can see how important it is to make the confession, to be honest and really approach your path genuinely. As he writes “To know God and to live are one and the same thing. God is Life”

I do not wish to burden you
I only wish you would enjoy this
This part of me that wants to meet you
I do not wish to burden you
I do not wish to waste your precious time
But to give you some of mine
My precious time is a gift for you
I have pruned my bonsai
I have watered the lily
I have blossom the lotus from the mud
Won’t you give me time to bud and bloom
To root and exude Bloom Flower Flower Bloom!
Flower! Just your own Flower! Bloom
Petal by petal! Know how to nourish, know how to bloom
The world wants you
I want you, and your only desire is your self
Stop peddling silly stuff
Stop wasting silly time
Get pen to the paper- write
Cut things open expose reveal
Shape sculpt see the real
Material Material Make Dreams Material
Bring dreams into waking Flower Flower Bloom

Time for Art

When you’re a painter you paint with the ease of morning glories opening in the morning.
There is something elemental to effortless art. Maybe there is no such thing, maybe everyone struggles to be born and to give birth. What makes an artist though? I have studied their ways and paths looking for clues. Too often we afford powerful artists super-human honor. It seems they are gifted with brilliant ideas and skilled with handling matter while the rest of us exist on a mundane plane of earthly existence. In some ways this is true, there is a Magician’s mastery that artists possess. But it is not a exclusive power, as we can see in all cultures, art can happen anywhere. I think it comes down to a spiritual choice to make art and not waste energy on petty hold ups. So in a sense, it is sacrifice that allows art to happen. For example, time, I have been meaning to sit down and write for the past week and only now have I sacrificed the time to do it! Artists step aside of accessory impediments to allow the creative to flow! In that way the artist is mystic, the mystic is artist.
Art is a verb. And living is an art. Everyday we should savor the aesthetic experience of life. However the human race unanimously agrees that something special occurs by creating, that it is a special attribute of ourselves.

CG Jung was interested in Active Imagination. He pioneered the technique (which was an intuitive urge to create) as a means for healing his soul, overcoming fear and beginning to enjoy life again.

Tonight I’m going to see Philip Taafe speak at the Rubin Museum with a Jungian psychologist tonight. It is part of their Red Book Dialogues, the large, red bound illuminated journal that Jung compiled of his dropping into his imagination. It is penned in calligraphy in both Latin and German and bears the sensation of his own Bible.

I have always adored the experience of visiting artist’s studios—there is always a fresh feeling in there, something electric. And it makes it real, it connects the dots of what goes on between the human being as person and the works that get displayed. The Red Book exhibit is like this—you see Jung’s desk and his drafts and finished work is hung on the walls. It’s amazing how committing to your imagination, to giving birth to your creativity through the sacrifices of other involvements, can bring works that defy the transitory nature of time.

Letter to Brandon

... Yes, enlightenment is imminent! Summer at the Ashram rejuvenated my joy d'vivre and curiosity about life. Feeling wild and free and happy to be taking part in New York, but with less needs and desires now for NY to fulfill me-- happy to be here for the day to day, accepting the amount of a day as perfect and not craving MORE. Because that's how city became a demon, roaring and overwhelming. Now I feel I am riding the demon happily; grabbed on to a spike of its spine, near the tail, simply enjoying the ride. If I meet someone fabulous then fabulous; if I am bored then I am bored and I would be so anywhere else, so no use trying to change it. I think 'boredom', our modern word for 'space', is natural and necessary. By re-defining it outside the boredom/stimulation binary, seeing that life is a steady current of experiences and transitions, there is a subtle shift.

The idea that enlightenment is a summit to be striven for is an introductory symbol. Really we are always in Nirvana, there is no mountain top to reach up to with effort, but practice to release the thinking and conditioning that clouds us over. By simply enjoying life, pretending we are enlightened, practicing the posture of enlightenment, we reattune ourselves with our basic goodness. The posture of enlightenment is just sitting-- or for Jesus, hanging(!), and enjoying! How do you say "Enjoy" in french? Like when we serve a meal and say "Enjoy" in the same tone as we say "Bon Appetite".. "Enjoying" --That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

Tapestries

The mind is tangled up in attachments, it is bouied to the surface; preoccupied, distracted, delayed by the paper light layer of daily detritus. The gurus tell us we are a part of eternity, a whole, and that we would always feel this if we weren’t busy with these little messes. We keep attending to small things and getting tangled up and delaying our deeper delight. What we really want is the ever burning spark inside us; the discomfort we feel is the ache of the extras that are smothering our sparkle. Yoga allows us to see where there is tension and unwind it. Then the mirror becomes more clear-- the ocean is not covered with floating plastic bottles-- the necklace is not tangled, it can be worn and enjoyed. You improve your mental sewing so there are less new knots keeping you buoyed to the surface. You flow along with the activity. You don’t worry too much about untangling, you stitch, you keep moving forward, learning to sew with experience. Then you can go below the level of the stitching, betlow the surface agenda and enjoy the warmth of your spark.


Vinyasa means to thread. The practice is always flowing, teaching us to keep moving. Don’t get tied up, loosen up. We want to thread ourselves into the moment, into the real and into happiness! This requires unstitching ourselves from the other ties we have to less noble, wasteful uses of our threads and needles. We stitch towards the highest in the yoga practice.

We warm up muscles to let them release and soften. Same thing with our mind, we just give it time and space and exercises to direct, focus and move on.
We are together for an hour and a half to enjoy and to be here, no other agendas, no need to get tangled. Let it be a game, let it be an arts and crafts activity. See how you might be able to thread your life differently.

Shri Shivarudra Balayogi Maharaj, the great and sweet meditator, said this summer that we use so much more thinking than we need to. Trust. Allow the energy to just flow and it will magnetically align. Don’t you worry so much if you are doing it right and wrong. Don’t you get tangled up, keep moving, keep stitching yourself to the divine.

Shuffle

Listening to the radio is like sitting in meditation: you tune in to receive the energy current of what’s being transmitted now. If you are tuned in to the most beautiful song ever you simply enjoy it, because it’s unsure whether you will get to possess it. Maybe the DJ will announce afterwards the song or maybe he won’t and you will have loved and lost the most beautiful song you’d ever heard. Songs stream constantly out through the radio like water through your fingers, it disperses organically into the air, without a trace, just like the always flowing stream of the moment.

There is this hanging on the edge of the line feeling radio gives.
It keeps you engaged because you never know what will come next.

Or you wade your way through the radio waves for the sake of your favorite song—you listen all day, maybe switching between channels, just praying to hear your jam. This cultivates patience and perseverance, and when you finally do hear the song it is so rewarding. I remember listening to modern rock radio all night long impatiently awaiting my favorite songs. We would call and request and wait hours for the song to shuffle in the mix. Now we never have to wait longer than our slowed down broadband download time to hear or watch whatever we can think of. But there goes the relaxing quality Lately, I have rediscovered ‘Shuffle’ and it is reconnecting me to this spontaneity of music listening the iPod and digital music has made me forget.

Letting go of control
Relieving the responsibility of doership, knowing what you want
Ordering, sometimes it is nice to be surprised, to be served the mystery.
In our modern sense that only we know what we want, we have cut off the open-endedness of gifts, randomness, surprise. Just let life’s jukebox play, there’s a pressure to make everything the end all and be all, but it limits the possibilities from the beyond.

NYC Stranger

First I saw him walking under the hard shade of scaffolding on a hot day in Chelsea. He walked upright with a current of energy; like he was floating on the wake of the one way traffic down 19th street.
An honorary tribesman arrived in New York after some wrinkle in time unfolded and magically materialized him here and now in Manhattan. Crocodile Dundee, Coming to America, the type of guy that stands out and makes the city look out of place, like he was here first.
He has a doll face, with intelligent eyes, the kind that aren't just organs, they are well experienced tools of multiple perceptions. In Lehman's terms: he owned the street with the twinkle in his eyes.

He was shirtless, which drew me to him even before his face. His light and floating torso was a copper shield against the city and a welcome banner. His hair was parted and tied back in a long, shiny tail. He walked with purpose but did he have a destination? His mission was more like a parade-- he was simply spreading the news about himself.
But even before seeing all this, I had the sense that a badass loomed. He perspired a hormonal message through the streets to take heed, the King was near.

The arm action in his powerwalk showed off two gaping scars on his elbows. The upraised fault lines of puffy, soft flesh on each elbow were so exact they looked intentional. Who was he?: a mutant? an apparition? a shaman? an actor? He looked familiar to me, he atleast has family in New Mexico if not a native himself: the type of guy who walks down the road in black sunglasses not because he can't afford a car but because spirit told him to. I perked up once I saw him, I offered a nod as we passed each other: "Thanks for Being".

The second time I saw him he was walking in Williamsburg, why in heavens brought him to Williamsburg? Still shirtless-- who is he?

The third time I saw him, two monthes later, he was running across the street as the red don't walk hand flashed and then asserted a full STOP. He jogged past me and I felt a gasp of his energy in me. What a stranger- have you seen him? I hope to again.

Old Cabin in Ananda Forest

Iced Coffee with a dash of Coconut Milk

Who Knew?

Bhagavane

“There are many ways to reach God, I have chosen the path of dance and music”-- Rumi

Before they were Gurus so many cosmic beings were singers. I thought of this while reading Amma's Biography: “The Biography of Mata Amritanandamayi Devi”.

It is no coincidence that Amma is always surrounded by song; She is introduced as a humanitarian and a saint but it makes just as much sense to define her job title as what she has been for the longest time: a singer.

Since she was a little girl she spontaneously wanted to sing to God with the name of Krishna. She composed songs then and still writes them now. Song is a direct expression of her bliss. “Love is my religion”, She says, and Her singing is the direct expression of that love. So it goes for so many divine voices-- love, god and song all go together. Even the essential vedic text is called “The SONG of GOD” -- .

There is a beautiful song by Amma “Bhagavane” (Oh Lord), and Amma's biography recounts the circumstances that inspired the song.

In her teenage years, after already meditating deeply throughout her early life, Amma started to go into deep spiritual experiences and would be able to interact with people from a deep level of meditation. People were healed, people felt the divine energy, and word began to spread. People were travelling to see her, witness the Krisha Bhava and be showered by Blessings.When she had started going into Krishna Samadhis-- where she would dissolve in to the presence of Krishna, embody Krishna- representing him in human form.

When Amma sang out to God what would become the song “Bhagavane, Bhagavane”, things had never been so good and so and so bad for Amma and Her family. Their quirky daughter who preferred to sleep under the sky and had sabotaged multiple wedding arrangements was now in touch with God and making quite a stir. Amma had come in touch with her cosmic love to spread in the world, but there were skeptics.

People came from all over Kerala to see Her in the early days. Some just wanted to see what the fuss was about. Others were against Her. Amma learned from an early age that there is always going to be someone raining on your soul's parade. But she just wiped the dew drops off her shoulder and kept bringing her bliss, trusting Love conquers All.

The song “Bhagavane, Bhagavane” is lulling and melancholy. Like a funeral hymn of deceased false beliefs, it is sung with a triumphant heart but a bruised body. It reminds me of the songs Bob Marley wrote when going to prison or when Tupac would get serious.

In life there are times when something cuts to the heart and then there is this wide open call: this song sings from all all that is there:
The lyrics say: “Are there only unrighteous people in the world?!
O Lord, O Lord! (Bhagavane, Bhagavane!)
Who is there to instruct us in the righteous path?
The essential principles of the Vedas are only found printed on the pages of books...
O Lord, O Bhagavan! What one sees is just
False costume and trumpery.
O Kanna, please protect and
Restore righteousness!

It's often echoed that the bliss of resting in the Heart cannot be put into words; it's also agreed that song comes closest to the experience. For this reason so many pilgrims have broken out into song to express the feelings that want to rush in to the world.
Those souls who have tended to the gardens of their hearts pour forth with words like nectar. My our hearts follow the path of blossoming in their right time, too.

Summer sails by...

And sometimes you just have to enjoy the in between.

Are we ever really “there” in our lives? It is rare and precious indeed when we feel the moment is all there is and all we need. These peak moments are blessings and between them we just have to enjoy the steady stream of life. I've hankered for explosive experiences and am having to accept that sometimes life is just life, it is a coat of many colors and the florescents wouldn't look so bold if there weren't grey days for them to stand out against.

Yesterday I ate lunch with a gentleman visiting from the city. We sat at a wood picnic table shade provided by a mature pine tree. Doesn't this in itself sound like enough? But of course in that moment it seemed very ordinary, very fleeting, just another moment in my long, busy day. He was talking about Walden Pond, which is near the Ashram. The book, he thought, was actually pretty boring. It is essentially Thoreau's journals and they are often mundane and tiresome: lists describing provisions he brought or wildlife he saw that day, and simple descriptions of daily routines. It's no Sex and the City-- but shouldn't that be enough? Chop wood, carry water the Zen saying goes, just 'being here now'.

I heard about the singer Vashti Bunyan in a magazine interview with Devenda Banhart-- she is his favorite singer. It was one of the greatest music tips I ever got, thank you Mr. Banhart. For the next 6 months I listened to “Just Another Diamond Day” every morning when I woke up. It was like a prayer at the beginning of my day, an invocation. It describes the elemental beauty of the cotidian: “Just another Diamond Day, Just a blade of grass. Just another diamond day, and the horses pass”.

“Diamond Day” is suggesting the same way of seeing as Blake's famous line's:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour.

Blake celebrates the human talent to transform the banal into beauty. This is the great action of art-- a transfiguration by the fire of imagination. Our mind's aren't trained like this, though. It is a potent soul who is able to keep their power to see the beauty of the world in the rush and hub hub of our disposable modern age.

Being in nature reminds us how we are organic, too and we're part of this organism called Earth; we are connected. It's so easy to lose this connection and just vacuum up the grain of sand in the weight of our daily chores. We have to keep remembering and revering the sand, Tipping our hour glasses of conciousness towards eternity.

Melt the Mind into Butter

The mystics say the mind is a glorious tool, we just haven't learned how to use it yet. The great distinction between disciple and master is the mastery of mind. What is mind? Psychology inquires into the thinking processes but never asks what the basic primal energy of a thought is. Researching the role and nature of mind in our lives is the individual project of Yoga.
Amma, the hugging mother, says she holds her mind gently in the palm of her hand. The Bhagavad Gita offers that mind is like the wind, one cannot control it, only know how to allow it to sway. I hold that the mind is a laboratory of intrigue and mystery, one to be discovered, observed and clarified to make room for illumination.
One conclusion of meditation is that the mind is annoying, an obstacle that must be overcome. Vedantic philosophy from Sanskrit texts that have survived over thousands of years give our mind something positive to absorb itself in. Higher knowledge is as much about the meaning as it is about pacifying the mind with something positive. lt is like saying: "Here mind, rather than tangling yourself up in that non-sense worry, why don't you start untying this golden knot of existence and understanding your place in the cosmos!?" Ha, quite an invitation! But such is the splendor and adventure of Yoga.
Like the Sly and the Family Stone song, the refrain of the yoga tradition is "Everybody is a Star". A drop of God sustains every being. Our minds are ways back to the source, but they are currently off track and leading us away rather than towards. Our job is to tune up our minds and take higher aim by means of commitment and eagerness to our path. In this way life becomes not so much a riddle to be solved, or a problem to be fixed, but a path to unwind, a dance to take part in; we just have to listen foer the rhythm and get up onto our feet.

 I started studying Eastern religion with gusto. My first delving was during my slow morning shifts at a summer desk job in a Manhattan yoga studio. Back in college that fall I was nourished by a course in Sufi poetry and philosophy.  

I kept gaining momentum, reading Ram Dass' Be Here Now and starting Autobiography of a Yogi, which I have still yet to finish.

I'm sitting now in my room which has a high book shelf across the widest wall filled with my many books, most somehow related to Yoga. I love these books but lately it seems the brilliant insights of others are not enough, what I really crave is my own feeling. These words lead you there, inspire you, but you still must invest your own time to see where their words point to.

This morning I opened a book of quotations from the Hugging Mother Amma: 

"The Divine is Present in everyone,

in all beings, in everything.

Like space It is everywhere,

all pervading, all powerful, all knowing.

The Divine is the principle of life, 

the inner light of consciousness,

and pure bliss--

It is our very own Self"

Inviting insights, but let's make the next step and sit with them, allow the words to resonate and move us. What happens next? Not just letting the words drop like heavy matter, but following them as the drift and lift into other ideas and feelings.  What chords do those notes strike with in you? The words alone won't transform us, we must invest them with curiousity and interest to bring them alive for ourselves.  What does it mean to us? How do we know this in ourselves, so we aren't just parroting these lofty spiritual fantasies but we make some connection to what speaks to us now. 

At some point you have to use your own eye; use your own spark of your heart to see for yourself. How do you recognize yourself the Divine that is said to be everywhere? It takes a basic level of consciousness to hear the idea, but it takes another level of energy to plant it and water it and see what grows. 

We want the teaching to resonate within us, we want the seeds to sprout from within. Why keep planting seeds of knowledge? We have enough, at a certain point you just have to water them and nourish them to grow.

My friend Marjory was talking about New York as always growing Upwards and she craved to grow Horizontal, expand wider rather than just ascending from one point.  

Another Amma quote resonated with this:

"When huge trees are uprooted by a cyclone

and tall buildings collapse, the grass remains

unscathed-- such is the greatness of humility"

Her words keep pointing me back to my own simplicity. They don't satisfy the sensationalism of my intellect, don't promise mystic transcendance of the higher soul after a metamorphosis of the vital energy. No, these words point back to us, to what we have, to growing what we feel, our own spark of self knowledge. We already have spirituality, there is nothing to gain from the knowledge except the action of bringing the focus back inside.  

Shri Brahmananda Saraswati asks when will you stop speaking a foreign language? When will you come back to the language of the heart?

The teachings become less and less esoteric and you are brought to the issue of evaluating things for yourself, for taking responsibility and opening your life as your spiritual book. Investing it with the love and curiousity you have invested in the book and living examples, gurus, teachers, friends you have known and loved.  You must recognize your own spark and privelage it, bring it into highest reverence.

Surya Namaskar

The sun is reliable, it rises everyday. It is the spark floating at the heart of the universe.

Rays of the sun don’t discriminate, it’s Godly presence is always available to anybody.  But sometimes we are clouded and the sun don’t shine through. The sun salutations raise energy to melt away our goo. By linking movement to breath we reconnect with our inherent gifts of physical vitality and the pleasure of being in our body.

The chain of movements that compose a salute are like machinery, gears and motors. The strong arms lower you down from a stiff plank and then you arch the shield of your chest upwards to a cobra and then curl your toes under and raise your hips back up to the well supported downward facing dog.  It is like becoming the mechanical gears inside the sun, we are imitating the energy of the universe and inviting it into our bodies. We generate and discover our own stamina and untapped resources.  Our sun shines through.

The efficiency and practicality of solar energy is symbolic of our inherent completeness. Why go looking for outside additions? We have a full body of possibilities. If we could only remember to be grateful for what we have. The simplicity of sun light. The sun salute at the beginning of asana practice is a reverence for the body, the energy and the moment we have been given. That great star is always brightening space, but our inner guiding light is said to be even brighter.    

poem by 18th century nun ryonen

Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the changing

scene of autumn

I have said enough about moonlight,

Ask no more.

Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no

wind stirs.

NxD are BACK

No Doubt is back on tour after a 5 year hiatus. Their playing Jones Beach June 27th. It doesn't sound like Gwen is doing her solo songs with the bands, just oldies and goodies. She is such an original, they all are, what a great band.

Chance Meeting with Shri Shiva Rea

Sometimes wonderful things happen to you in New York that make the day in day out stresses worth it...:

On Friday night I was working at the Rubin Museum and I went to say hi to the bartenders. They asked my friend Trudie to deliver this plate of dumplings but she didn't want the table to think she was a cocktail waitress, ah-hem, so I offered to take it over. Which table? Those three people straight ahead? No problem. I delivered the appetizer to the the two men and the handsome blond woman with them asked if we had chopsticks or forks. Sure, be right back.
As I turned around it registered-- That iss Shiva Rea! Right, this is the weekend of the Yoga Journal Conference, she's in town teaching!
Haha! How lucky! I grabbed the chopsticks from the bar and went back to the table and asked, "Are you a yoga teacher?"
"Yes I am", the two men with her smiled
"Shiva Rea?"
"Yeah" she said sweetly, invitingly, I went around to her side to introduce myself and shake her hand and she opened up for a hug.
She was wearing gold Indian filigree teardrop earrings that looked so gorgeous next to her soft sun warmed skin. Her skin looks like she has been lightly tanned her whole life, it is just a layer of who she is. She was beaming but it felt completely ordinary, she didn't exude a sense of untouchable glamour or importance, she was very quiet and steady. Didn't seem perturbed to have been recognized, or feel any pressure to handle the situation in any way or another. She was very friendly and caring. It was so reassuring that such an accomplished yogi would truly radite the qualities of the scriptures, being steady and open. She introduced me to her husband and their friend from Boston.

We had a really nice conversation. We talked about the museum collection. She asked me where I practiced and I told her about how much I love Laughing Lotus and that I feel like a warrior after the rigorous training. It seemed sort of reassuring to have this vision of Goddess on the eve of the final exam.
She said she would be at Omega and Kripalu and corrected when I asked "You always teach in LA though, right?"
"Malibu" she said.
haha! Of course. It wasn't mean, just a fact, of course she dwells in the most beautiful place in the country. She is quite a creature , she seems like the head of a Lord of the Rings kingdom, she has that clarity and exactness. It was really inspiring to meet her and I hope to do yoga with her someday.
I love this video of her. I've heard actively observing the asanas can give you the same effects as doing them. I feel clear and invigorated watching her body. She reminds me of watching Dana move, you know they are sending their bodies messages of what to do next, but it seems like they are leaves in the wind, just being carried up and down and into lunges and pulsing up and down, just riding on their own breath.

Tapas--Building Fire

It was a sauna tonight in Jen Guarnieri's Basics class - Even the walls were sweating ! But, this is a good thing. It serves the same benefit as Sweat Lodges. Burning things away is the most direct way to remove impurities, you just gotta melt it, ease it up so it can slide right out through your bloodstream and go back to where the good Lord found it from. I'm not a proponent of heated yoga, but it is really satisfying to practice in the heat the classes bodies generate themselves. We are conductors-- 100% E L E C TRICITY ! Yoga is so Parliament Funkadelic. 

How to be a Warrior: Letting Go

When discipline begins to be natural, a part of you, it is very important to learn to let it go. For the warrior, letting go is connected with relaxing within discipline, in order to experience freedom. Freedom here does not mean being wild or sloppy; rather it is letting yourself go so that you fully experience your existence as a human being... As long as you feel that discipline comes from outside, there is still a lingering feeling that something is lacking in you. So letting go is connected with letting go of any vestiges of doubt or hesitation or embarassment about being you as you are. You have to relax with yourself to realize that discipline is simply the expression of your basic goodness.-- Chogyam Trungpa, pictured in Bhutan 1968

Reading Yukio Mishima's "Temple of the Golden Pavillion"

"I leaned against the slender railing and looked down absently at the pond, on which the evening sun was shining. The surface of the water looked like a mirror, like an ancient patinated copper mirror; and the shadow of the Golden Temple fell directly on this surface. The evening sky was reflected in the water, far beneath the water plants and the duckweed. This sky was different from the one above our heads. It was clear and filled with a serene light; from underneath and from within, it entirely swallowed up this earthly world of ours, and the Golden Temple sank into it like a great anchor of pure gold that has become entirely black with rust." --Temple of the Golden Pavillion p.26

Do Easy-- the Bullseye of Soul

William S. Burroughs wrote an essay called Do Easy that Gus Van Sant made a short film of.

The premise is how much effort do we have to put into action?

The Do Easy voiceover references the "ease with which an archer can hit the bullseye in darkness", a reference to the early 50s book "Zen and the Art of Archery". In the book learning archery is a tool for learning how to act without trying to act-- to let the bow shoot itself. Herrigel, the author who was one of the first Westerners to study zen in Asia, comes to a point where he is paralyzed, commanded by his master not to make any attempt to shoot the bow. He goes through endless frustration and eventually it loosens and starts to shoot through him, spirit takes over. He has learned the art of Do Easy. He can now apply the ease of just preparing the circumstances and allowing the bow to shoot itself to the rest of his life.

This re-connection with the natural intelligence, the spirit mover is what yoga is all about.

But how to get to Do Easy? We ca try to do things Easy but it takes time to let go of habits we cling to.

By sitting down to be with ourselves we begin to gain clarity. But there is a major transition period not enough literature touches on. The grey area between seeing the state of your life and it naturally settling down is like dusk, its hard to see either way-- are you making progress or not? What is changing? In Zen and the Art of Archery he refers to how hard and long the struggle was, how much resistance he faced, but it is pretty vague. We all meet up with this resistance, do we just have to accept it as paying our dues?

Friends often tell me they try to meditate but they just can't-- their minds are too busy. Another friend leaves yoga classes early because she cant lay down in Svasana, the corpse pose because she is too anxious. It's not like you aren't made for yoga-- that it just isn't for you, it is that you have to realize this is the current forecast of mind and it is ok and it is not uncommon-- you just want to become non-judgmentally aware of it. Space, peace, clarity and openness are cultivated by sitting with what is. The mind by its design is spastic. By meditating we get intimate with this rascal so we aren't so easily duped by it. It is hard to sit with ourselves, but we have to remember our goal, Do Easy, not force it, just trust our natural intelligence and sit.

If I could change one stereotype about yoga it would be the sense that it results in a monotone calm glaze over your life-- that suddenly all problems are smoothed out. It is like sitting own when you realize just how wild your inner processes can be, life can seem more uncontrollable, so raising awareness proportionally requires you to surrender control, to get more and more trusting in DE-- doing it easy. In this way yoga is the art of life-- how to DO . The Bhagavad Gita is all about this, how to perform ACTIONS in the world? It can be so hard to know what's right and wrong and when to act and how to act, but the Gita says to do everything for God, it requires a high level of engagement with life to always be referencing a point of devotion for your actions. But it is asking us to Surrender our actions, to let go, and I think Do Easy puts this quite simply, just do it, with clarity. Its about returning to that natural alignment of action with spirit. Yoga helps because it realigns body, breath, with mind. It's not about controlling the mind, or silencing the mind, or forcing yourself to act a certain way. Its about Doing it Easy, the path of least resistance, getting back in touch, yoga-- re-union with your inner Self.

In my experience with Masters like Amma and Shivarudra Balayogi, I have seen they are so dynamic and alive, they really live with a spark and a spontaneity. So yoga is about letting stuff flow through you, living wide, opening up to what is true, the yoga tradtion believes is Ananda-bliss, and letting go of what is untrue, the false sense of lower self, seperateness.

\The Sufis say the world is a book to learn from. Meditation asks us to engage with what we have, to take a moment to stop and just BE. Our culture is so quick to BECOME and we forget what we have. Yoga says we always have IT, we just don't remember it. The Yoga Sutras talk about returning awareness to Purusha-- our original light, the inner sense of I Am the unique light of you. Meditate to remember this. You will see there is so much in the way- so many weather systems of thought. But the clouds will clear, you start being able to let the thoughts pass y like clouds, letting them settle to the bottom of the lake and then you can feel the reflection of your spirit again. It is a great feeling, so natural, and it is always there.

People don't talk about the hard part, how to get from all our trying and failed attempts and missed oppurtunities. If I could change that stereotype about yoga it would be to let people know it is ok for t to be hard, that is why there are Gods like KALI, the insane Goddess mouth dripping with blood with wild black hair. When we start seeing ourselves it can be frustrating that we arn't at the goal yet, Ananda, but the discomfort of sitting with our minds and feeling what we feel even if it isn't pleasing, that is part of Yoga.

So we want to get back to a simple harmony of just existing, “Do Easy”. But it takes experiencing the ways we do things otherwise-- seeing how we over analyze things or how we prepare too much and don't allow for unexpected possibilities. As we get to know the bow and arrow of our lives through meditative observation we can start to surrender the effort more and test the water of surrender to Do Easy. And through this life blooms anew, the lotus that's always connected with yoga, reminding us that no matter what happens, its always as beautiful as the lotus, and all is headed back to the light of Do Easy and Light. Om Shanti

How to turn lights Green

Looking at apartments the other night our showing agent Andre flashed his brights while we were at a stop light and the light changed. I was amazed and asked him how? His dad was a police officer in Cleveland and apparently all traffic lights have sensors so a cop is coming down with her siren and lights on will trigger the light to change green. He said some are set to react to the siren's sound, but 90% respond to light and will change if you flicker your brights. I love secret tricks like this, little codes you can learn.