New Namaste

New Blog @ www.future-saints.com !!

2011-03-19T22:37:00.001-07:00

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JOANNA

2010-10-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

I returned from India right before Christmas 2006. I treaded softly upon my Native New Mexican tierra. In the crisp, cedar smoky winter air I drove up to the University area to greet my old stomping grounds. I was three months behind—had unplugged from the creative culture I regularly was tuned in to.

I felt very soft, like a baby with a skull still un-hardened. It was like being born again, when you remove yourself for three months from the norm and then re-enter. There is great merit in purifying and cleansing your expectations and habits. Suddenly everything was in contrast to the great country I had just been a guest in.

Before I left I’d seen Joanna Newsom would release her second album while I was traveling. That second day back in America that was my first intrigue, to go listen to the cd. I was so patient, so relaxed, so drained of all aggression, after being trapped in the ashrams and the starkness of who we are in every moment, felt beat into submission by the challenging logistics of traveling and the ups and downs. I was so grateful just to have taken a warm shower and be able to drink water from the tap. To be back at Natural Sound, with all the possibilities of all the great albums there, was Heaven. And Joanna Newsom’s “Ys” was my monumental Angelic Soundtrack.

I asked for a listening copy of the cd and sat on a wood stool in the corner of the store and gazed out like a Buddha statue at the asphalt tinted day while Joanna plucked and swirled her warm golden harp and chanted her spirit songs.

I was open, receptive, prepared to take in and I absorbed that whole album. It was like watching an opera, something you just experience once and it changes you. I had heard about Terry Riley the classical musician arranging the strings for the album. It was exquisite. I was a sailor back on land after months at sea, taking in the pleasures well worth waiting for.

I watched families pass with shopping bags of Christmas gifts. Hands walked dogs on leashes and held paper coffee cups. I was comforted by the familiarity like the warm smell of pine fireplaces in the air. It’s amazing what a retreat from the normal will do to heighten your senses to life’s exquisiteness.

Reading Yoga Sutra 2.18

2010-08-10T07:13:00.000-07:00

Prakasha Kriya Stithi Silam Bhutndriyatmakam Bhogapavargarhtam Drysam

Prakasha -- illumination

Kriya-- action

Stithi-- inertia

Silam-- nature

Bhuta-- elements

Indriya-- sense organs

Atmakam-- consists of

Bhoga-- experience

Apavarga-- liberation

Arhtam – it's purpose

Drisyam-- the seen

“The seen is of the nature of the gunas: illumination, action and inertia; and consists of elements and sense organs, whose purpose is to provide both experiences and liberation”

Drisya is the reality of the world we see. The Yoga Sutras investigate into aspects of our experience and are always asking Why and What? What is the seen that gives us the experience of being a Seer? We are going to understand ourselves by our relationship to what is outside of us-- like a sounding board. The Yoga Sutras are inquiring into existence in that trippy way of wondering if there is a plastic reality or if we all have our own experience based on our own perceptions... What is the purpose of life?! Nature, the earth elements and organs (sense organs, mind, intellect) are here to provide: Experience and Liberation. Great, there we go-- life is Experience and life is Liberation.

In his commentary Swami Satchidananda, “Nature is here to give you experience and ultimately to oiberate you from bondage. Even if people do not want to be liberated, it educates them gradually so that one day they will come to feel, 'I'm tired of the whole thing. I don't want it anymore. I've had enough.” (p.104)

“Nothing in nature can bring the mind continuous, unchanging happiness, because the mind itself changes constantly”, therefore we have to accept changes in the mind, in the outside world, and not cling to anything in the outside world. The Sutras present these concepts for us to try, to test and see if they are true for us, if they resonate. What is nature and what is our relationship to Nature? The Sutras are saying that we are nature and nature is Us-- we are all made up of the same cells and energy and it is always changing, changing intelligently to teach us to live in harmony, to live FREE.

When we make the decision to seek Truth, our own Truth nature will guide us. We begin to find Freedom and Feeling healthy and complete are not apart from Nature-- that is unveiling Nature's harmony in us, to find our organic vibe, to return to union-- Yoga.

2010-05-26T05:39:00.001-07:00

2010-05-26T05:23:00.000-07:00

Walking from Wythe to Greenpoint

2010-04-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

The sun will be out, revealing
Flat infinite blue sky
Clouds scattered, Whispering
Caught you looking up at them

Instead of the damp concrete
You've bowed your head to
Guard your eyes from the rain

The grey streets are turning silver in the sun
You turn right onto Kent Avenue and sneeze
Two fellows passing you in Beatles jackets
Bless You

Walkway along the water
Gentle wind lifts refreshing swamp smell
Green algae microorganism vitality to your nose

Across the River
Gilded steeple shines in Manhattan
And architecture rises into the sky

From a rusted water tower
An American Flag taut in the air
Sending out songs of Freedom
Like Tibetan Prayers
Playful like a kite
And as long as a Chevy windowshield
Stripes made wider by the sun light
Stars made brighter against the borderless sky

@ Home Radio

2010-04-27T15:13:00.001-07:00

It's important to spend time at home.
I am enjoying reacquainting myself with some old favorite websites.
Are you familiar with Internet Radio and the pletura of free music online? There are songs of the day via podcasts on iTunes and I am reconnecting with Viva Radio. com
When I am home I often listen to the FM radio. I love listening to what others are programming, it's exciting to be at the receiving end; to have your antennae up and be plugged in.
Here's to staying at home, to doing simple, enjoyable things

Gurmukh's Kundalini Proverbs/ Yogi Tea, the Book

2010-03-31T05:14:00.000-07:00

I love Yogi Tea bag quotes. Now whenever I make tea without a cosmic fortune I feel slighted! If you too are more excited about the Satsang at the end of the string then the chai itself, you will love Gurmukh's book "The 8 Human Talents". I have been savoring it all month as we explore the Chakra system at Laughing Lotus. Here are a few highlights:

"I once heard someone say that the greatest prayer isn't in any scripture or ceremoney; the greatest prayer is simply to call out, "Help!".

"Fake it until you make it" ...
"With dinner, as with everything, it's a matter of understanding that if you just show up, everything will fall into place.
It's that way with money, too. I have known multimillionaires who are the poorest people I have ever met. They worry constantly about money. I have been privileged to be the guests of people who live so humbly it is impossible for us in the West to imagine, and their homes are filled with an abundance of food, laughter, and love. These people embody the human talent of boundlessness. It is about perception."

Sat Nam & Amen

"Birdwings" --Rumi

2010-03-28T08:23:00.001-07:00

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting to see the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in ever small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

These contrasting phases of the mind, like the phases of the moon, happen in our lives. The mind itself is a natural phenomenon. Like Nina, sometimes we think "We Got" sometimes we whine about everything we Ain't Got-- Rumi sees the pairs of opposites-- the glass half empty and the glass half full as part of the same whole, there is no shame in the flickering between the opposites because once you really look at the truth beneath the thought form there is always a unity-- "I GOT LIFE" is Ms. Simone's final exaltation! We all have the flapping of the birdwings of our thinking minds, be them open or closed with what we see as positive or negative thoughts, but at the base of it, when we look into the mirror of ourselves and give the whole game a little space, we FEEL the unity of our bird body, that there is wholeness beyond the fluctuation of the changing, flickering, kaleidoscopic day to day experience. Here's to that LIFE that is always with us and our commitment to FEEL it directly

McSweeney's Yoga Proverbs

2010-03-08T15:37:00.000-08:00

Angele sent me these weird and hilarious contemporary proverbs. I hope to pen some myself someday. Though mine won't be quite as cynical as:

"It's the squeaky wheel pose that gets all the attention from the instructor while the rest of the class suffers in silence."

haha check it out here: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2009/5/14schachter.html

"The Bloom"

2010-02-27T12:13:00.001-08:00

That which God said to the rose,
and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty,
He said to my heart,
and made it a hundred times more beautiful.
-- Rumi

Om Amme

Glorious Chores

2010-02-25T13:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I noticed a trend in my approach to manual labor—I spend more energy bemoaning it then I actually would spend if I just DID it.
My beloved room-mate, friend and teacher Lisa asked me, “are you tired from worrying over the housework or are you tired from doing it?” Bingo—she blew up my spot—I hadn’t lifted a finger, I'd just been procrastinating...

It was hilarious to see that only an hour later I was happily absorbed in the task of dusting and reorganizing the shelves. It is that first bit of momentum that's hard; getting past that resistance at the point of entry. The obstacle is mental but it feels like a fixed-gear bike going straight up a San Francisco Hill... But once you get pedaling through it you start to flow, right? My writing teacher Rachel Cohen said at some point you just get so familiar with this voice, with the resistance that you just don’t care about it anymore!! And you begin:

I passed down the tall vases and purple glass tea set from the highest shelves onto the counter top and then jumped back to the sink and cleaned and polished everything dry with a dish towel. How it all Sparkled!!

Then I did the thing I did this summer at the ashram when I was doing housekeeping: I would turn around and then turn back and be struck again by how great the polished glass looked on those clean white shelves. Or walk out and walk back in to the room—- bam, great job. I love the instant gratification of a job well done. And the power of our hands and our patience to do work well. I actually looked forward to the layer of sticky gray dust that awaited on the lids of the jars of grains on the middle shelf, and so I got back to work.

Karma Yoga, the yoga practice of just working without being attached to the outcome, is so effective because it brings up ego reactions. Usually ego reactions have a big “I” or “ME” as their subject, if your not already alarmingly familiar with what I'm talking about..! “I don’t wanna!”, "This is going to be hard", and "But I’d rather be..." are all ways Ego intercepts our actions and creates obstacles for us to just work and live. (It's hard to be a tool for divine energy to come into the world when you are blocking it with petty needs...) So doing Karma yoga, doing work just for the sake of working, volunteering at the ashram and yoga centers, has been a big part of my practice. It has started to make me look at the way I block myself by having expectations before I even begin. As I have recognized again, and again and AGAIN! So hopefully I am finally getting the point this time and in the future will see this type of procrastinating thinking as a useless habit. ("You DO LOVE to work! Remember the vases?!" You might have to remind me next time..) So the idea is to use the work as a means to move beyond the ME and the I. When we act outside of our ME thoughts things really get done and it adds to the sense of harmony and joy of all.

Then time started to fly by, my initial resistance weakened and floated to the past I was just in the present finishing up the counter tops and putting away the dishes that had air dried while I did the shelves. It helped that Lisa reminded me to chant my mantra to keep the mind engaged and present. The whole process was a purification, “A privilege not a punishment” she said, half jokingly.

Chogyam Trugpa talks about “Drala” the concept of bringing freshness and beauty into the physical world as a practice. My Grandma was a master of this art. In fact, my family is all sensitive to Drala and it is one of my favorite things in the world—to make things nice by caring for them. Isn’t it beautiful how something so humble can be made elegant by investing it with care and attention? Like a home in a foreign country that is swept and tended to everyday? It has that Drala sparkle! And Drala is not only visual, you can feel it—maybe more importantly is that Vibration that you FEEL. I felt like my Grandma, paying attention to the details, ironing table clothes and napkins, patiently organizing recipes, coupons and receipts, taking coffee grounds out to her rose bushes.

To have all these beautiful objects and a beautiful house to clean is a privilege and to cleaning it turned from a chore to away to worship and to enjoy it. Feeling awake and lively 2 hours after I slowly had started my tasks I felt in commune with my Grandma and that primordial MA energy within us all. It takes time and patience to care for our material lives, but can we step up and not let the I and ME hills obstruct our view of the expansive beauty we are capable of creating in our worlds? Because when we bring it in to the world, we share it with the world, and everyone is lifted up.
My room mate Brooke washes and collects her to-go cups (which she gets when she isn’t carrying an empty jar to drink her coffee from). I’ve really enjoyed using the cups for convenience sake, but also because of the palpable nectar of sweetness, the Drala, of the fact that she saved them. Let’s make the world a better place to live and begin with our own lives. Lets take time out to let the Drala flow!

Harness ur Chi

2010-02-20T05:51:00.000-08:00

"Mencius, one of the foremost sages of ancient China, speaks of Chi as the soul, the center of our spiritual nature. It may help us better visualize this situation if we understand Chi to be the field that radiates from a human being's soul. If this field is weakened or blocked, then it can no longer keep the body in the state of liveliness. It becomes afflicted and ill, lacking in orientation and strength. The soul in this body is in the process of forgetting what it really is, where it comes from, and to where it will return. If the soul is now reminded of its true nature by the presence of the divine within itself, then it can again become oriented; its power and joy; trust in life, intuition and healing becomes strengthened."-- The Spirit of Reiki

You can't love nobody else until...

2010-02-19T14:50:00.001-08:00

Is it just me or is the term “Self Love” taboo?
First off there’s the connotation of masturbation. As Woody Allen says in Annie Hall: "Hey, don't knock masturbation! It's sex with someone I love.” **Blush**!
Both the physical act of ‘self-love’ and the psychological version are surrounded by uncertainty—is it ok? If so how much!? It’s embarrassing to ask your parents growing up and our culture doesn’t speak openly about it-- so it becomes this indefinite question mark. Just as one’s relationship to auto-eroticism must be explored and defined privately so too we must uncover/ recover a healthy bed of self-love to lay our worries down in to when the going gets tough. Can we please stop being so hard on ourselves and love the one we’re with? We’re gonna be here for a while longer, so we’ve got to figure out how to make this livable and hopefully lovely.

In “The Art of Happiness” the Dalai Lama has a chapter on Self Love and he reacts with disbelief that someone could actually not love themselves!!

The ego takes many forms, in Hindu Mythology Ego is symbolized by the great transforming Demon Mahesvara that the Goddess Kali epically slays. In our modern Western psyche I feel we have this super critical, perfectionist mutation of Ego that when not sharply judging others, judges ourselves. We can be our worst enemies sometimes, right? In the Yoga practices we begin to see our life situation for what it is and see where we are being to harsh or too lazy—we discover our Sat- our Truth and soften to flow with OM the ever changing current of existence.

In his memoir Bhagavan Das writes that he chants kirtan because he loves to hear his own voice.
Isn’t that great?! Not because of anything esoteric but this simple, organic action of hearing and loving one’s own voice! Can we follow Baba D’s example and just love what we do and the simple pleasure of our lives? One of my beloved teachers Ali Cramer has said: “Let’s fall in love with our lives, and if your not in love with your life what are you doing to change that?” Amen.

So rather than see ourselves as good or bad we have to find a harmonious ground to move through life with. Sure, there is the risk of narcissism and vanity, but for a long time I avoided any sense of self love out of self-consciousness that I was not supposed to just enjoy myself.

We have to remember OM and the inherent ONENESS our Yoga practice is reminding us of! If we feel miserable all the time we should be working to make it better. Sometimes it is just a matter of thinking, we have to remember our problems are not the end of the world, and not WORRY ourselves so much. First we have to see the habits of our mind for what they are—we have to identify what shape the Demon Mahesvara has taken in our own psyche and begin to appease his roaring with the salve of Amrita—the eternal nectar of Love that resides in our own hearts.

I esteem and honor the yoga teachings because they lead me back to that Amrita—maybe not every single time, but I would say every week I receive some understanding that sincerely makes me feel lighter and happier in life. That’s why I keep practicing. Not because my life is becoming perfect because I practice yoga, but because it keeps me warmed up and close to my own Love nectar. Maybe someday I will be so familiar with the source of this feel good stuff I won’t need the practices, but until then I love asana, meditation and especially kirtan.

In my experience kirtan is a way to let the voice and life force flow and be really free and flowing. This has reconnected me more and more with my original feeling of freedom in loving the moment and just letting it flow.

I once asked my friend and teacher Prem Prakash how Bhakti yoga worked. It seems fake to try to make yourself cheer up by smiling but IT ACTUALLY WORKS!?! (Try it sometime). So in the same way, Bhakti practices, and any practice done with Love and Devotion draw us back into familiarity of that origin of action that is prior to the rational mind.

Now instead of getting mad about my faults and mistakes and challenges I see it as an opportunity to start a dialogue with the universe, and to trust that the Universe is at its base LOVING and to let my thoughts be an expression of that. In this way we add love to the world, instead of contributing to conflict and troubles. We have to fight the war within for the positive benefit of all. “Begin Within”. “A House divided among itself cannot stand”. As I get more into yoga I see how my thinking was weakening me, and as I get more into living life with Bhakti, devotion, and surrendering whatever is happening up in life to a cosmic energy, OM, the more I feel Love for myself and others, and things don’t seem so heavy after all....

Osho

2010-02-19T14:29:00.000-08:00

I am currently in love with this book “Wings of Love & Random Thoughts” by Acharya Rajnesh. I found it at the ashram and was blown away by the quiet sharpness of his words: “A point is reached when the entire universe ceases to appear as a gross object of perception, and the pure unclouded vision of the Supreme Soul alone remains. In order to achieve this we shall have to prepare ourselves. The farmer prepares the soil before sowing seeds. Persons seeking the realisation of the supreme must keep the ground in readiness and tune themselves within in order to hear the all-pervasive divine music without... Our vital breaths are all His, every limit is His; but we do not realise it, because our own hands keep the passage of entrance closed to Him.”

I was gushing to a friend about this amazing mystic author I had just discovered in the free shelf at the Ananda Ashram when she informed me Acharya Rajnessh is none other than Osho! (He changed his name at some point!) So, these words of Osho are so inspiring, but they came through as being really special because I didn’t frame them as being already familiar since I have read some of Osho’s books! (Funny how little things can keep you on your toes and show you where you hold your preconceptions and how to let go of judging a book by it’s cover..!)

"The Warrior"

2010-02-04T05:04:00.000-08:00

The warriors tame
The beasts in their past
So that the night's hoofs
Can no longer break the jeweled vision
In the heart.

The intelligent and the brave
Open every closet in the future and evict
All the mind's ghosts who have the bad habit
Of barfing everywhere.

For a long time the Universe
Has been germinating in your spine.

But only a saint has the talent,
The courage to slay
The past-giant, the future anxieties.

The warrior sits in a circle
With other men
Gathering the strength to unmask
Himself.

Then sits,
Giving,
Like a great illumined planet on
The Earth.

--Hafiz

Thanks Elaine for reading this in class last night and all your beautiful comments on it!
Indeed, the universe is germinating in our spine! And we sit in the circle, gathering together as we practice together and get ready to lift off veils of misunderstanding and become like our own great illumined planets! I am going to do my asanas now, orbit around like an illumined planet.. Om Shanti

Shiva & Shakti

2010-02-01T17:15:00.000-08:00

"There is no power-holder without power. No power without power-holder. The power-holder is Shiva. Power is Shakti, the Great Mother of the universe. There is no Shiva without Shakti, or Shakti without Shiva." -- Avalon, Serpent Power
painting by Ghulam Rasul Santosh
via http://www.koausa.org/painters/grsantosh.html

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter XIII commentary by S. Radhakrishnan

2010-01-28T06:22:00.000-08:00

"Ksetrajña is the light of awareness, the knower of all objects. The witness is not the individual embodied mind but the cosmic consciousness for which the whole cosmos is the object. It is calm and eternal and does not need the use of the senses and the mind for its witnessing.

Ksetrajña is the supreme lord, not an object in the world. He is in all fields, differentiated by the limiting conditions, from Brahma, the creator, to a tuft of grass though he himself is devoid of all limitations and incapable of definition by categories.

When we try to know the nature of the human soul, we may get to know it from above or from below, from the divine principle or the elemental nature. Man is a twofold, contradictory being; free and enslaved. He is godlike, and has the signs of his fall, that is, descent into nature. As a fallen being man is determined by the forces of nature (prakrti). He appears to be actuated solely by elemental forces, sensual impulses, fear and anxiety. But man desires to get better of his fallen nature.

The man studied by objective sciences as biology, psychology, and sociology is a natural being, is the product of the processes which take place in the world. But man, as a subject, has another origin. He is not a child of the world. He is not nature. He does not belong to the objective hierarchy of nature, as a subordinate part of it. Purusa or Ksetrajna cannot be recognized as an object among other objects or as a substance. He can only be recognized as subject, in which is hidden the secret of existence; a complete universe in an individual form. He is not therefore a part of the world or of any other whole. As an empirical being he may be like a Leibnitzian monad: closed, shut up without doors and windows. As a subject he enters infinity and infinity enters into him.

Ksetrajña is the universal in an individually unrepeatable form. The human being is a union of the universal-infinite and the universal-particular. In his subjective aspects, he is not a part of a whole but is the potential whole. To actualize it, to accomplish the universality is the ideal of man. The subjects fills itself with universal content-- achieves unity in wholeness at the end of its journey.

Man's peculiarity is not the possesion of the common pattern of two eyes and two hands, but the possesion of the inward principle which impels the creative acquisition of a qualitative content of life. He has a unique quality which is non-common. The ideal personality is unique and un-repeatable. Each person at the end of the road becomes a distinct, unrepeatable, unreplaceable being with a unique form." --S. Radhakrishnan

Please Comment!!!

2010-01-24T08:56:00.001-08:00

Let me know you're here!! xxooo

Sing to the Tune of New York State of Mind

2010-01-24T08:40:00.000-08:00

Sing to the tune of NY State of Mind
Triumphant. Every time I see the skyline through a slot between buildings in Greenpoint it’s a jolt-- “New York”—like someone turning around and recognizing them, such a sensual synopsis in the brain. NEW YORK!!! I screamed it when I got out of a cab with my Dad and Grandma the first time I set foot in this Dreamland at 9 years old. Electricity. Dreams made real—Dreams grown so high they scrape the sky.

Or I behold the Bridges and Steeples and Edifices and stop and pinch myself to wake up because I just saw this apparition of Dreams and blew it off... “Hey, you’re in New York” I remind myself... Just to still be here is triumphant.

I’ve lived in 3 apartments this year before finally settling into this loft I love in Greenpoint. In New York you have such bright dreams, but simply getting the bear necessities is a challenge. So thankfully She has opened herself up to me, invited me in by providing this supportive, sweet, calm living space.

Once you live in New York you outgrow fantasies about escaping your challenges by moving. There is a morbid finalization to living in New York—yep, this is it. This is the heart of Western civilization. The only place you could move after New York is the Amazon; some jungle that is an immersion into the pure life-force. Here nature is the way wind piles trash around the gutters, the landscapes of the human face you pass, and your strong, tired legs.

I feel peaceful in nature, I love to hear a river trickling near my window. But I love the friction of the city; the interactions between my spirit and natural rhythms merging with the mechanical drone of subways and buses and traffic signals. Oh! the concrete jungle!
I wonder if I'll I ever move?..
For now New York is fun because it is a challenge. Subway navigation. Making enough to pay the bills. Getting the best deals. Getting there on time. Helping out friends, connecting people. It comes down to the breadth of energy we experience in a day here. For now I love it.

Ram Dass says:

2010-01-21T07:35:00.000-08:00

“Now none of this detracts one bit from the incredible love I feel for Maharaji. Once the awakening begins, you can’t help but feel profound love for all beings who have helped you along the way. But my neurotic need for love has diminished, and what has replaced it is a kind of conscious, present love, in which every time I love you, I am loving Maharaji, because he is everyone and everywhere.” Ram Dass Paths to God, 171

Meher Baba said,

2010-01-19T05:52:00.000-08:00

"To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance, and to release the fragrance of inner attainment for the guidance and benefit of others by expressing in the world forms of truth, love, purity and beauty: this is the sole game which has to any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting importance."

Ashram

2010-01-16T15:22:00.001-08:00

My boyfriend told me to pack for a weekend out of the city for a surprise getaway.
I fantasized about Aruba, even though he hadn’t specified to include a bathing suit.
Instead, we met at Penn Station to take a train to New Jersey, transfer and head to Harriman to the Ananda Ashram. This was one of the first weekends of Sophomore year, August 2006.

This is our romantic weekend? It sounded like work, not like my idea of a sexy escape!
Ashram—it sounds so holy, so restricted—like we would be subject to commandments.

And our accommodations didn’t emphasize luxuriating... We debated whether to push our two single beds together but opted to sleep close knit in one bed; we’d become accustomed to sleeping in my dorm room’s twin bed over my Freshman year of college.

Our usual weekends consisted of quiet mornings of coffee and web-surfing, watching movies and reading. As we entered the gated country estate grounds of the Ashram I felt I was going to need to do something I was not yet equipped to do... It was the beginning of my knee-jerk reaction to the work and sacrifices that are necessary for growth. The communal dining hall and group meditations did not encourage laxity, they increased my self-consciousness—I felt ‘un-spiritual’ and suspicious—what was this place and who were these people??

Along with my averse, self-protective first-impressions, however, I was also immediately enchanted by the place.

I loved the wooden decks and stair-wells leading into the aged buildings. This place was a simple establishment to contain something light and peaceful. Ananda means bliss and really you can feel it in the air. Jordan wanted us to be able to escape to nature. We lived a very romantic, story book existence at that time. A living poem. So of course we walked in the woods and imagined the films we would make on location there. There were vines with blooming flowers creeping around and long, tall Pine trees shading the walking paths around the place. I went to yoga class on Saturday and felt light and free.

Jordan and I stuck out like sore thumbs, or so I thought in hyper-self consciousness. People stared but didn’t really strike up warm conversations, just maybe, “Where are you guys from”... Are you brothers?... No, friends... It was nice that we were given space to simply enjoy the place but I was also thankful when Kamaniya, a gorgeous, large woman with long chestnut brown hair introduced herself and truly welcomed us. After that I felt at ease, that this place was open for all to visit and enjoy.

On Sunday morning we sat in our cut off shorts and rugged curls on the deck of the boat-house as we wrote in our journals and took photos of the lake. We befriended Isa, a father of a little blonde boy named Amadeo. Isa had a blonde pony tail, a hoop earring and a Moon shaped, smiling face. He asked what we were writing. “A screenplay”, replied Jordan. “Hey Ama, look, it’s not everyday that you meet a screenwriter”. We did stick out but I sensed the place truly was open to anyone. I have discovered increasingly more over time how the Ashram welcomes all kinds, the teachings attract all walks of people.

I was ready to leave after the weekend immersion into this radically different days of contemplation. My body sensed the importance of what I had experienced. I was charged and exhausted at the same time. I felt like a bull on a short leash. I wanted to know everything about yoga immediately! I wanted to be there with the ashram people but keep wearing my cut offs and writing at the same time. The seed had been planted. I began to grow into my way of living and practicing towards the divine.

Ananda resonated like a gong over the next year as I began to change everything in my life—becoming vegetarian, doing yoga and studying Sufism. I wanted to be connected to that source I had felt there. I will forever crave to repay Jordan for many things-- so many gifts that sprang from the Love we shared. He introduced me to Ananda Ashram and, in the process, to my marga, my path of yoga. I would have never seen this different way of living without Jordan choosing it for us to explore. I wouldn't have been brave enough to venture into that unknown territory without him. For all those reasons, he and the ashram are connected as places my heart has known home.

Dance, Dance, Dance

2010-01-07T14:09:00.000-08:00

I started reading Dance, Dance, Dance while dog and house sitting for a friend in Williamsburg. It was the Holidays and I was looking for something light and engaging to while away the days with. I had no idea this book would be so captivating. Her copy was creased and dog eared, which was surprising because I feel like 400 page books like this don’t always get finished. I had written Murakami off after I put down Norwegian Wood which I had started while in India a few years ago. I remember its pace being very languid and describing a beautiful girl in summer light, it was nice but was not at the same momentum as the excitement of my trip. I ended up reading the classic sci-fi escapade DUNE which I had picked up at the same free book exchange shelf at a cafe in Goa.
Dance, Dance, Dance echoes Hesse’s Steppenwolf in the narrator’s passages into Hall of Mirrors surrealism. The plot and characters are solid but the landscape itself is fluid, it is the flickering backgrounds that punctuate the plot and make for an intricate and captivating experience. There is nothing unsure about it, you are lead right through the story, there is no uncertainty of which world we are in—Murakami allows you to be certain in the uncertain, it is beautifully executed.
Murakami’s novel is about his characters’ constellating but it is also about the space in which they revolve. There is a strong sense of place in every moment of the story, and it gets extremely subtle how both the characters and the places begin to dissolve into another super-reality. We are familiarized with a place, the old Dolphin Hotel, and then we experience it’s replacement by the Modern L’Hotel Dauphin. The mystery begins as narrator tries to unfold the story behind the deal. It is out of longing for the familiar and for the real. The old Dolphin Hotel was one of those joints run by disgruntled but real characters. The type of place you can rely on. Much of the book is a yearning for the authentic and the reliable.
When the narrator first describes the now-extinct Dolphin Hotel with it’s familiar and comforting worn-in fixtures I could relate to the nostalgia of a place loved and lost. There are places that shaped who I was, not only by the experiences that happened inside, but by the personality of the whole place. Murakami loves our ability to feel a place like that, to know it’s atmosphere, it’s smell, and he goes one step farther to prepose those places not only resonate with our inner essence, they are projected from our essence—they are the rooms of the soul, the Hotels of our hearts.

The Narrator’s dance through these locations and situations inspires us to undertake our own dance. In the end their is no answer but only the afterglow of the enchanting movement through the inexplicable play of life.

2009-12-14T20:38:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-04T07:56:00.000-08:00

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”

2009-11-25T18:06:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-18T08:30:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-04T09:56:00.000-08:00

... 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

2009-09-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-29T05:17:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

Iced Coffee with a dash of Coconut Milk

2009-08-16T08:22:00.001-07:00

Who Knew?

Bhagavane

2009-08-05T07:04:00.001-07:00

“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...

2009-08-05T06:37:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-28T19:59:00.000-07:00

Melt the Mind into Butter

2009-07-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-05-29T06:11:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-25T21:33:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-25T21:02:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T12:09:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

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"

2009-04-21T12:43:00.001-07:00

"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

2009-04-15T05:38:00.000-07:00

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

2009-01-21T06:42:00.000-08:00

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.