little thought

i am thinking about the name for my website, which will be done by Easter (now its in writing and public!) and I had the thought:

Yoga is not a noun. It is not a form. It is not a technique.
Yoga is not something you do.

Create a home for yoga in your heart.
Cultivate and tend it.
Be present and watch.

Yoga is something that happens.
Like photosynthesis.
Like the blossoming of a flower.
Like the sun emerging from the clouds,
on a deceptively cold february day.

On teaching

I wonder what khalil gibran would write on teaching. this is probably a sacrilege but it is the tone that comes to mind.
here's mine.

On teaching yoga on a saturday morning.

Your students are not your responsibility. Your own energy is your responsibility. Be neither attached to their success, nor distressed by their avoidance. They will receive what is needed when they are ready. It is their path, not yours.

Just as you let lose your words into the studio, so you let your soul. But do not be distressed if the student does not respond. For their own filters cloud their ears, and they may choose not to hear what displeases them.

Stay true to your truth, for even if you amend your statements after learning more, so you will learn more by being true then by censoring.

Do not answer too many questions, but keep asking questions. The student will easily flow forth with their own insight, but leave and make space. Throughout your teaching, create space, spaces for discovery, insight and deep breath. But guide that space with care and precision to lead it to optimal insights.

Worry not for what they may expect, because it is your duty to teach at every moment, not just deliver instructions to a vacuum. The words and instincts you are given are not from you but from the divine, so do not hold back.

Be neither authoritative, nor overly passive. Do not force your own technique nor let the student do whatever he wishes. Do not attach egoistically to your own perspective but do not accommodate the student's ego either.

DO not look at your students for validation or for praise. Make each class an offering and have no attachment to the return. The connection you feel to source is the validation you seek.

Be here now, open yourself to the flow and the flow will guide you. trust both your instinct and you knowledge.
And be grateful, for this is a beautiful job to be given.

Hari Om, Tat Sat.

innocence mission

Listening to adyashanti the other day doing my practice, it came that the next theme (after this month of forearm balances) is innocence. More to come on that in words, but in the mean time, I am playing with approaching everything in life, from the ever present overdancing thoughts, to the things I think i know, with the spirit of innocence. Wondering just what is, not what i want or need or am trying to do.

Not do, just wonder.
Nothing but the innocence of love.

New facet of the journey, and big potential.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
A new world is possible.
Peace.

Workshop next week

aligning

Sometimes I am so precious about blogging, like everything has to be some kind of masterwork before i can post it. This one is not, it is very much about me, in process.

The last few weeks, or years, or lifetimes, i don't know yet, i have been caught in what feels like a whirlpool of thinking. that every time i sit to meditate, or go about my own life, these thoughts become so haunting, that i start to feel debilitated. I feel like I know what I should be doing, but instead get caught in patterns of self destruction, patterns of negative thought, patterns of over thinking. and what it feels like is a shadow of me flying in circles in my head, while another little me is hiding in the bottom of the closet.

I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS. Not eliminate, but not live in this pattern. What I am slowly recognizing is that I have to learn how to love. Love all of it, fully and with the greatest compassion. Love the hiding girl and her voice of fear. Love the flying witch and her insane mutteringsings, love the driven Sagittarian/Capricorn and the double sided Gemini. I don't even fully know what it means to love all these bits. But I know that that love represents coming into wholeness and growing up, and then having the beautiful life that I want.

It's difficult to say these things publicly. Really difficult. They feel big, and right away i can hear the mind chattering saying, how dare you write that. What if people...
But that is part of it. Accepting my vulnerability, and letting you see it too.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about aligning.

The other day I was sitting at the beginning of a class, with my teacher Ana Forrest, when one of her assistants came and moved my body backwards in the simple sitting (meditative) pose. Ana's comment to me was, "What would it feel like to get your head in alignment with your power?". I suppose this echos something I have been told before, "you act with your head pointing." I think this means the same thing, that the head goes forward, sometimes too the chest and upper body into an ungrounded and over directed, unaligned place.

So I have been doing lots of abdominal work, a la Ana Forrest. I have been also chanting Har. Building the power in the navel centre for that energy to make change. But more than that, I am also learning the role and perhaps art of mental containment.

In yoga it is sort of obvious, a stage of the practice where the mind comes up with all kinds of reasons that you cannot hold this pose anymore, or you really need to repaint your fingernails instead of going to the mat or all kinds of stories that we put in front of actually doing. The class is too early, the class is too late, its too hot, its too crowded, i can't because this, that this that this that and the other. And then at some stage, or for a moment another part says, shhhhh. Go to the mat. Hold the pose, one more breath, just one.
which becomes two
which becomes another day when you woke up extra early
then another week
which becomes the practice.

For me, it goes in waves. There are moments when I feel so clearly and strongly the hushing presence. And there are other times when the mind wanders so completely on its own. And in those wanderings sometimes I forget that it is the other voice, the shhhh voice, the parent voice in the head, that must not hush the mind entirely, but look at it with the greatest love and say, no dear, you cannot have cake for dinner. no dear, you do have to go to school.

I feel like I have confused loving with a kind of self indulgence, really wallowing, that allowed sloppy thoughts, unfinished projects and self sabotage to become a habit.

This month I am working on forearm balances, in my practice and in my teaching. It is showing me many things -
the steadiness of practice needed to build up enough strength to improve
the steadiness of thought needed to maintain balance when it wavers,
the integrity of the body and mind needed to hold my sometimes floppy body as one unit
the sheer enjoyment of the challenge and how joyful it can be to grow.

So i am sitting with the intention of bringing my head heart and navel in line, the mind, the guiding heart and the power to work as one.
Here I am, work in progress.

We close the practice with three times Om to come into Harmony with each other, with all beings and with our own true nature which is divine.

Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
Peace and that Greatest Love, ever expansive and also containing.

Everything you give with love

Last year at this time I was working in a Primary school in North London, predominantly non-English native children, predominantly Muslim, many Turkish, Somali or East African. Still at Christmas, it is tradition to do a Christmas play, a nativity or something like it. What I loved about North Harringay is that they did not insist that the plays be nativities, and in fact chose beautiful plays to put on.

The younger children did a show called Babushka, an adaptation of a Russian folktale, about an older woman who obsessively cleans to fill a hollow place in her heart. She learns from the traveling kings, who ask for rest in her home, and an angel pasing her window that a baby has been born in a dirty stable in Bethlehem, a special child. Mortified at the thought of the child born in a dirty stable, she packs a doll, a blanket and a bottle of cordial as gifts, as well as some cleaning products so she can clean the stable. Following the new and brightest star, she begins her journey.

On the way, she meets a little girl with no toys. To her she gives the doll. She meets an elderly couple weary from their journey, and to them she gives the cordial to drink. And as she is nearing Bethlehem, she meets a shepherd boy who is cold in the night and to him she gives the blanket.

When she arrives at the stables, she has no gift to give the baby Jesus. She almost turns away, when Mary calls to her, and invites her in. Babushka realizes that the baby in the manger has the doll by his side, is sleeping on the blanket, and Mary and Joseph bring her a glass of cordial. The children sing:
"Everything you give with love, you give to him: AMAZING.
Everything you say with love, you say to him: Amazing.
Everything you do with love, you do for him,
because he is love.
Yes, he is Love."

I have been thinking about the practice of bhakti, (practice does not seem exactly like the right word...) and this Christ consciousness, or this true understanding of love, incarnate.

My all time favorite book is Franny and Zooey, by JD Salinger. It to embodies this sense that if we attach to the external, beauty gets parsed into intellectual exercises, the great thinkers reduced to phony ego serving activities. And that even prayer can become that when its intention is not aligned. Franny in the throws of her own mental drama, comes to realize that it is not only through becoming reclusive and praying, or breaking down inside, that she can best serve. And her greatest service was in the actions, for her acting. And that in the moments of doubt, to do it for someone else, someone with little else, is what true inspiration is. Or more accurately, where she can eventually find peace and rest.

Like Babushka, when you make offering to anyone, you give to all. When you act in service of of any one aspect of humanity it becomes manifest in the greater sphere. And like Franny, if you act as service, it aligns you to love in the complete, universal and unconditional kind. We stop separating ourselves and start acting in alignment, both with our own particular role in the human incarnation, and with the entire universal energy.

Its about doing and acting from love. It is about doing what is required now. It is about loving that role.
It is about creating with the christ consciousness of unconditional love, with detachment from return. Or with simple knowing that the urge to keep acting, praying, living, being is the return message. (Rumi)

So this year, at this time, I am meditating and thinking through the messages come through from the universe, through the language ofo the emotions and the heart. What successes are coming, where I feel most aligned and content? Where has love comes through, and given courage? How to not discriminate in my own actions so that they become in service of the highest good of all.

Obey, serve, Love, Excel. Obey, Serve, Love, Excel. Thank you teachers in every form you come, from children's stories, to yoga gurus, to sages disguised as beggars, to messages from the heart.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
Love and Peace to all.

Mighty Ganga

I intended to write in my blog in India, but somehow every time I was on a computer, I felt no desire to write. The words came instead from a pen to a private page or in conversation. But now, as time goes on, I think some of the stories have to be told in this form. The form of making meaning out of experience and putting it into written word, and making them public. Please forgive if this is all very abstract or doesn't all fit yet. At the moment this is just me trying to make some sense of it all.

Instead of just traveling alone, I joined a group yatra for the purpose of traveling to Badrinath, a sacred town and temple in the Himalaya. In my mind this pilgrimage was one of the main points of my travels, a special darshan, prayer and offering I wished to give. So leading up to that journey, I made a number of choices, let go of other opportunities to make that trip with that group of people.

We left Haridwar on the road to Badrinath on Yom Kippur. It was too late in the day, bound by the need to eat in clean places, we waited until after lunch to set out. By evening we were nowhere near the intended destination of Rudraprayag. In fact we had only made it about 30 km past Rishikesh, up the road to a small town/rafting drop off point/intersection of power lines called Kaudiyala. We took rooms in a hotel shaped like a motel, with doors and porches just a few meters away from the Ganga's edge. Those of us observing broke our fast on the porch next to the river with fruit, incense, Indian perfume and a Shabbat candle. We then ate dinner in the dhaba by the road. The water was already high as the monsoon was heavy and lasting deep into September, and quickly flowing in the rains. We went to bed early, preparing to continue driving early the next day.

At about ten o'clock there came a knock on the door, pounding really. 'Pack up your things. The water is rising.' We made our way uphill to the dhaba, as the Indians packed up the televisions and other movable valuables from the rooms. The water rose quickly, reaching up to the porches of the rooms. As we stood and looked out, one man says, 'Now she turns to Rudra'. (Rudra
In ancient Vedic myth, Rudra is the malignant god of storm and wind, and is also considered the god of death. He is the personification of the uncultured nature, the symbol of unculturedness.) The angry, the howler. The dark face. The raw and uncontrollable. It was an incredible sight, the water rising. Rudra perhaps, to some, but I couldn't help thinking of the bible, Job and the tests sent repeatedly. I couldn't help think of the Sea crashing over the heads of the Egyptians, or Jonah in the belly of the whale. This is the God that can send plagues to a civilization, the God who can flood the world, and take first born sons. This is the God we pray to out of fear, hoping for the sparing hand, the easy transit, the peaceful life. When this God comes out we cry and beg, "why, God, Why? WHY have you forsaken me?"

These are our prayers like a pleading child, the God we look to like a punishing parent. We plead our case, 'I have prayed this much...' or 'I must have earned...' or we curse ourselves or our circumstances. We beg like children at the hems of our mothers dresses: I want a sweet, I want a toy, I want, I want, I want...

Of course, there is no great prayer bank in the sky, where we can withdraw our prayer merits when the going gets tough. And of course the great universal workings are beyond what we can comprehend. The fires that burn houses, burn the parasites from trees, the floods deposit fresh minerals, the destruction gives way to new life. Here she is the mighty flowing river bursting her banks till she rises up to our feet, over the bushes, up to our lamp posts. This great force washes down the mountainside, smashing the statue we built for the very purpose of remembering that God is always here. God will always be here. And yet now we cry out that she is forgetting us, or in our way!

My God did trouble the water, the water rising angry to the edges of the road, and cracking through the rock, tearing down the side of the mountain. What I don't know is if this is a test, of strength and perseverance, or faith, or some other 'lesson' wrapped up in an event.

At the moment, I am struggling with the idea that everything happens for a reason, as I feel that it personifies God. Destruction is part of the cycle of life, but is it predetermined by a plan? Meaning is overlaid after by our reflection and the wisdom gained from hindsight and the knowledge that life has gone on despite the challenges and suffering endured. A lesson has been learned, or some other unexpected benefit has arisen despite the 'failure' of the intention that we had set. But was that meaning always in the event when it came?

On the road down from Dharmashala to Chakki Bank, there are many tiny temples, sometimes just a painted rock or two, along the sides of the road and the sides of the rivers. All these little reminders that God is present, and to be praised in all her forms. When we see this rock we remember him (usually Shiva) and offer and pray. It is easy where the flowers grow, or a stream pours out of a mountain. But sometimes nature's face turns to overpowering might, the stream you bathed in rushes and destroys the structures you built, washes clean away all those earthly possessions. Even the spiritual desires are not spared, your wishes to reach the mountain, to see the temple, to make the offering. For all you can see is your own small desire, the sweet you crave. You can't see that this is so much bigger than you.

God is intelligence, but not intelligent, and presents us with challenge, setbacks, floods and broken roads. But not intentionally, to teach us as a parent would, but because that is nature, creation, sustenance and destruction, all the time. In this is how teaching arises, how wisdom unfolds, and that is the nature of the exchange between the human and the world.

That is, if there were a separation between me and not me. Which there is not. This flood itself is empty of meaning. The challenge arises not from the flood, but within me, and exists only because I hold this goal in mind. It only is reasonable if I make it have reason, and learn and grow from what is presented. The test of faith is that I need my faith to give sense to what is senseless, I need a bigger picture, I need something to hold onto while forms come and go.

I look on the swirling, brown waters, the trees and plants whipped by the power, the torrent of rain and the swirling current. God did not cause that, God is that. She is the vikalpa and the sankalpa, the intention and the obstacle. She is the teacher and the lesson, she is the river, the mountain, the flower, the drive in my heart, the sadness in the loss.

To pray then is to accept, to surrender, and to love. It is to meet the challenge with the detached awareness of what is given at this moment, and what I do with it is only what I can do. If tomorrow I awake to the sun and the repaired road and the magic of the temple, I must still remember that God is no closer than she would be if there is no road and no where to go. Its not that Because the intelligence is the journey and the changes we must endure if the journey is to make us grow. Because the consciousness is the light that illuminates the darkness of separation: the thinking that an object is somehow separate from me. This is a test because i am still wanting to get somewhere and seeing forms as reality, and seeing a geographical place as the goal of my travels. In that way the river is not a river, but a fickle guardian of the temple, or an obstacle in the way.

So I bow to pray. Not to get through to the other side. Not to reach the promised land. Not to intercede and give me my way. I pray to as an act of connection, a union of my own consciousness to the divinity in all things. I pray because there is no separation, and the act of loving what is in all her forms is an act of unconditional love for my self. Not my personality, but soul, which is divine itself.

It is the act of love that matters, the co-creation and the humility. Maybe in the prayers, the forms will be burnished until they shine only the divine light. Maybe in the act of loving, the resistance will fall away. maybe in the dark of this storm, the light of consciousness might bring me clarity, humilty and the deepest recognition that I am that.

I did make it to Badrinath, in a Jeep that took 12 hours from Rishikesh to reach the town. In my finest mountain clothes, I went to the temple at dawn, made my offerings and prayers, sat next to the sages and pilgrims, honoured the ancestors, looked to the mountains and the valleys and bowed my head. To the divine in all things, I bow. To the teacher that takes me from darkness to light, I bow. And life is the great teacher. Thank you mountains, thank you river, thank you roads, thank you rains, thank you driver, thank you eyes, thank you heart. Thank you love for all that is given and for teaching me that all is one.

Hari om, tat sat.
Om Shanti.
I love you.