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