Blog Posts

On injury and health, life and death

9/4/2021

Photo credit: @julialehmanfineart

On injury and health, life and death

I injured my knee at the beginning of August. A month on, I was asked:
‘How is your knee?’
Well, it is not yet functioning to allow full range of motion. Plyometric training not yet on the menu. Neither am I yet playing football or basketball. But ‘how is my knee?’ I have to say, ‘it is magnificent!’ It is showing me the amazing regenerative power of this conscious, bodily vehicle. It is healing well, and the healing continues. I can just about walk again, such that injury is not apparent to an external observer, no longer needing to limp. Extension and flexion are improving. The ligaments are meshing and strengthening back together providing more supportive cohesion and all kinds of alchemy are happening as the meniscus is repairing.
When I first saw the local osteopath whose energy and holistic approach I greatly appreciate, he suggested that I look to nature and the example of a wild animal. ‘Take yourself to some quiet, sheltered place, and as far as you can, do nothing. The body is in healing mode. Allow it.’ Several days I was extraordinarily tired, as it felt as if the body was directing a lot of energy to healing. The injury and ongoing recovery process have brought many invitations: to be still now, to slow, to tune in more deeply; and as rehabilitative practices now come more to the fore, to feel awe and wonder at the body’s regenerative and curative capacities.
Today, this reminds me of a couple of things:
i. You are a self-healing system!
ii. How fragile we are! What takes so much energy, intelligence, time to build/develop/grow can be destroyed or lost in an instant.
In turn, this reminds me of Paramahansa Yogananda saying ‘meditate as if your hair is on fire!’ Or as a friend shared in the words of another master the other day: ‘I try to live remembering that I have a great dagger hanging just above my head, by no more than a thread.’ In other words: give up this living for tomorrow, this ‘oh, I’ll be happy when I get x,y and z,’ this ‘oh, I’ll do what I want once I’m retired…’ Walking in life, death is our constant companion, always a hair’s breadth away, as close to us as the resonance of our beating hearts. Expansion, contraction, inspiration, expiration, life… and death, reality.
There is a famous passage in the Mahābhārata epic where Yudhiṣṭhira is asked a series of riddles, or almost impossible questions. Perhaps the most famous question of them all: ‘What is the strangest thing in the world?’
To which Yudhiṣṭhira answers: ‘that death will come to all of us, yet we act as if we are each the exception.’
How true. And how easy it is to live lackadaisically, absently.
So, this moment, this day, this life, let me live it fully!
In yoga, sometimes the crowning achievement of a human life is said to be to die in peace, fulfilled, free from rancour or regret. How is this achieved? By making life a steady, cumulative practice of sleeping in peace at the end of every day. How? By attuning to and heeding the gifts of conscience, by living wholeheartedly, welcoming to the gifts of the present.
The recovering injury obliges me to pay closer attention to how I carry myself, how I use the gifts of this day. Sometimes people say that injuries can be great teachers. This accords with something I often say - and need to remind myself of! - Nature is the greatest teacher. And She is always guiding us if we will but open ourselves. Right now, is Mother Nature not singing a clarion song, with a seismic bassline, booming phrases and searing refrains? How loudly must she cry to penetrate the miasma of our busy-ness and conditionings? Can we start really listening and heeding the guidance that the broader web of life is instructing us with? Can we empty out the hubristic human ‘know it all’ and negligent ‘what can I do about it?’ tendencies, and apprentise ourselves, humbly, to the beautiful teacher of Life, while we have the chance?

0 Comments

Fighting Monkey reflection - 2021 Zero and Wholeness Injury and Health

9/2/2021

0 Comments

Fighting Monkey reflection - 2021
Zero and Wholeness
Injury and Health

I had been interested in Fighting Monkey for several years. 2020, with all my in-person work cancelled, I was able to join their summer intensive. This year, I returned to Ancient Olympia, looking forward to another week immersed in the Fighting Monkey method.
Now, speaking of the ‘Fighting Monkey method’, I must make clear that I am in no way an official representative of Fighting Monkey (FM). Also, as I understand it from its founders/principal teachers Jozef and Linda - its ‘monsters’ in their words - FM is a method that by design is not fixed, but is intended to help us be more real-world-adaptable. I have heard Jozef emphasise more than once how humans are not machines, and that a good human practice, whatever outer forms it takes, needs to be responsive and adaptable. This accords with my own conviction that practice has to acknowledge and work with the dynamic complexity of natural life. This natural life that includes of course ageing and death. I once heard a beautiful description of the FM method from FM teacher Elke Schroeder, I prapraphrase from memory: ‘I think of it as a method for longevity with virtuosity.’ It’s a method to cultivate growing old gracefully in the sense that it can help us keep celebrating life, however long we are blessed to be here. As Jozef has said, ‘being in love with life, more and more, this is health.’
As with much of the other movement work I have explored I ‘read’ FM through the ‘yogic lens’ that I have come to see the world through. I see it in the context of whole life yoga practice: cultivating harmony, resilience, robust responsiveness, equivision, equipoise in the dynamic field of life; deepening practical, embodied understanding of ourselves and broader life; working with the reality of human nature; honouring the pulsations/cycles of life and cooperating with the nature we are.
One of the constituent elements of FM practice is Zero Forms. There is a lot one could say about this. Again, let me make clear, this is my take on it from my experience of it. Others, especially those who have worked with the FM method in a much more immersive and long-term extended way might have very different things to say. Anyway, amongst what I understand about it: zero forms is a part of practice that allows us to tune in to where we are now. Moving the body in a fairly measured, often (though by no means exclusively) slow, always attentive way, allows a practitioner to check in with the anatomy and physiology. Zero Forms often involves moving the spine and the joints, observing the quality of flow and connectivity through the energy ‘corridors’ of the body. It is a great example of what is sometimes referred to as ‘stacking’: doing many things at once but not multi-tasking. It is a focused practice, yet it aims simultaneously in multiple directions. It brings a broad spectrum of nutrients into the system all at once. It tonifies the organs, it cultivates concentration, multi-sense observation and integrated awareness, it begins to invite fluid, rhythmic coordination between different layers of the body’s intelligence and constituent powers; it stimulates the immune system, and depending on how one works with the movement, it can be used to ground, to quieten, to stimulate, to energise, to strengthen, to cleanse and so on. In other words, while some of the outer forms and some of the subtle aspects of the discipline are different, zero forms has a good deal in common with my morning ‘yogic movement practice’ of the last ten-fifteen years. I draw on lots of different modalities: from the realm of ‘classic modern yogāsana’, from things I learnt playing and training for sports, things I have learnt from various teachers over now more or less forty years of daily movement practice. In the last decade or so, people encountering the way I work with movement are sometimes surprised, puzzled, excited, inspired, and sometimes disappointed! ‘Is this yoga?’ ‘Er, is this tai chi?’ ‘Mmm, is this some kind of dance?’ ‘What style of yoga is this?’ ‘Where can I find this type of yoga if I’m not practising with you?’
When I give myself to yogic movement practices in the morning I am doing my best - which is often so far from what I aspire to - to cultivate steadiness and harmony, to set myself up to navigate the day a little more skilfully and joyfully. So the outer form of what I do can be very different day to day, week to week, and may vary considerably depending what environment or climate I am in, what other types of movement or exertion I am likely to experience that day or during that period, and more basically how I am feeling/doing/experiencing.
When facilitating movement practices, I share what I feel is appropriate then and there, depending for example on the setting, the context, the time available and who is in the group.
However, whether in personal practice or facilitating group exploration, I might say that I am aiming towards the ‘zero state’. What do I mean? To answer this I am going to refer first to something that has landed with me from this year’s FM intensive experience, and then share below a section of the notes from a course I gave earlier this year on Indian Mythology.
This year, my experience of Fighting Monkey was somewhat different from what I had been anticipating. I returned motivated to immerse myself in the embodied, active, participative learning experience. Though challenging, I had found the work, especially in the realm of rhythm and coordination deeply valuable, and with the various restrictions over the last months, I had not accessed any of this type of work in person since the previous intensive. So I booked my place, and traveled to Olympia looking forwards to working in a group and to inhabiting the empty vessel, blank slate, receptive state of studentship as fully embodied as I could.
However, before Linda even demonstrated the first steps of the week’s coordinations on the first morning, I injured my left knee, quite badly. The how, why and what of that is a whole other reflection, but suffice to say, I was not thereafter able to participate in so much of the physical practices. Nonetheless, I attended everything and continued to practice zero forms in the morning within the limits the injury described. One afternoon though, feeling the need to buoy the damaged joint in the water, I left the session early.
Later that evening, another man on the course told me how Jozef had ‘been talking about me’ in what he thought was ‘quite a nice way, when speaking about the thinking behind zero forms. I didn’t see you there, but I thought I should tell you.’ From what was relayed to me, I understand Jozef said something like:
‘Zero is different every day. What is my zero now? Look, if James comes to zero forms expecting his knee to be as it was before Monday, he is destroyed, desolate, but he comes and works where he is, where he can.’
What I understood reflecting on this, is that if I show up as ‘zero’ as I can, I give myself the opportunity to experience as fully as possible.
I did not have the FM experience I had anticipated, but I still had a great time, it was still a positive, nourishing, instructive experience.
Zero and whole, fullness and emptiness.
Are these really such opposites?
Perhaps we can see them as different ways of expressing or allowing the same totality of experience.
But do I allow myself a total experience?
Or do I confine myself in partiality?
Do I cling to ideas or thought forms that block my total presence in the here and now?
Do I hark back to previous ‘golden times’, or fixate on some imagined future state and so basically rob myself of the chance to experience fulfilment in the only moment I can ever experience anything which is now?
But letting myself be zero, letting myself be present, this is not always so easy. Which is why Fighting Monkey is a practice. Which is why yoga is a whole life, lifelong practice.
Yoga is a practice that invites us to work with the whole cycle, the full spectrum of experience.
And the full spectrum of experience includes death, the only certainty in life.
Reflecting further on the zero, I wondered, what will happen if I do not practice the zero regularly?
Will I be more likely to clog myself up with unhelpful thought forms and restricting patterns that hinder my living authentically fully?
If I do not practice zero, what happens when things get taken away ‘unexpectedly’?
The crowning achievement of lifelong yoga practice is sometimes said to be the capacity to die in peace, in fulfilment, at ease, in a state of at-one-ment, devoid of rancour or regret.
If I do practice the zero, surely I will be able to meet death and the inevitable losses of life that little bit more easily.

0 Comments

On fullness and emptiness, pūrna and ṡūnya, wholeness and zero

9/2/2021

0 Comments

On fullness and emptiness, wholeness and the zero, pūrṇa and śūnya
- excerpt from course notes for an Indian mythology course I gave earlier this year. Here and there the text is referring to ideas we explored in greater detail in the class, but I think what I share here makes decent sense

One of the magnificences of the Indian system is that God/the ultimate/the source/the essence is recognised very overtly as being beyond name and form. There is nowhere God is not. The source, the wholeness is everywhere. This is one of the reasons why God is represented in so many ways, to remind us: the name and form used to represent it are not it! Thousands of (countless) names, thousands of (infinite) forms. They remind us that no particular name or form is it. The names and forms just help us orient towards that which is beyond name and form.
One way this fullness, completeness, wholeness is represented is by the circle. All at once a symbol of wholeness, of the all-encompassing womb of existence, of the ceaseless motion of the cycles of life, and of the zero state of undifferentiated pure consciousness.
In its practicality, the Indian tradition recognises that generally, it is not so easy for humans to orient towards the formless absolute, or to worship the zero state. The zero state of fullness that is evoked by the mantra:

pūrṇamadaḥ pūrṇamidam
pūrnāt pūrṇamudacyate
pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya
pūrṇamevāvaśiṣyate

pūrṇamadaḥ - that is full
pūrṇamidam - this is full
pūrnāt - from fullness,
pūrṇamudacyate - fullness emerges/comes out/up
pūrṇasya - of/from fullness
pūrṇamādāya -when fullness is taken away
Pūrṇam - fullness,
eva - only
avaśiṣyate - remains

All that is full, all this is full, it is from fullness that fullness emerges; when fullness is taken away from fullness, only fullness remains.

Some people prefer to think about this pūrṇa as śūnya, that which is devoid of characteristics or distinguishing marks, the zero state of unalloyed pure consciousness/infinite creative potential.

When singing/reciting this mantra, I find the sound quality very lovely. I would say that we can feel the energetic invitation to relax into the underlying wholeness. The Sanskṛt here brings a calming and assuring quality. Energetically, the meaning resonates.
However, when we alert ourselves to the ‘intellectual meaning’, it can feel like a bit of a mind-bender. Because, well, I do experience separation, differentiation and ‘less than wholeness’…
However, the mantra still carries a lot of practical instruction. Here as so often, we see the combination of description and prescription.
From fullness comes fullness.
How am I? Day to day, where am I acting from, moment to moment?
Am I bringing myself into wholeness, togetherness, integration as best as I can, and acting from there?
Am I cultivating coherence between my mind, heart, gut as sincerely as I might like?

From Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount:
‘Ye shall know them by their fruits’ (Matthew 7.16)
What is the ‘seed’ of my actions? What type of fruit am I sowing? For as the saying goes, ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’… How clear is the clarity of my intent? What is the quality of my intent? Practically, how might I seek to clarify/purify it further?

Paraphrasing a student of Osho:
‘Only that which is created from a place of love will have a truly beneficial, healing effect…’
From fullness, fullness comes.
The mantra gives us a description of ultimate reality, but also a prescription for practice.

As the Yoga Sūtra reminds us, practice is everything we do, all the time. And Patañjali encourages us to practice wholeness. Just as pūrṇāt pūrṇamudacyate, so abhyāsāt vairāgyamudacyate.
From abhyāsa - practice as the long-term, constant, wholehearted, dedicated effort to foster steadiness - comes vairāgya - the ‘fullness’ of no longer thirsting for the external, ephemeral things that come and go as we become established in the richness of attunement to that underlying conscious awareness which is always full.

So, cultivating wholeness:
-Where am I acting from?
-Am I acting from wholeness/congruence?
-Am I acting devoid of expectation and its ‘tinting’/veiling effects?
-Am I acting from (a sense of) lack?
-Am I reacting and perpetuating the ism-schism game?
-Am I ‘vengeing’, ‘resenting’, ‘scapegoating’?
-Am I ‘outsourcing’ or ‘offloading’ responsibility?

To paraphrase some of the timeless wisdom encoded in Bob Marley’s lyrics: ‘Now me sick and tired of the ism-schism game… of the fussing and fighting divide and rule game… aiie… you can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time, so now we see the light, what we got to do? Stand up for our rights!’
No more going along playing somebody else’s tune, towing somebody else’s line, a line that has been produced not from love but from fear.
So what we got to do?
Stand up, samasthiti,
Stop, look, listen, 360degree equipoise,
Claim sovereignty
Pūrṇam! Let me see, let me uncover it, let me recover, let me look deeper!

pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya
pūrṇamevāvaśiṣyate

Take fullness from fullness and only fullness remains:
Who am I? When I strip off? When I strip away my conditionings? When I unmask, disrobe, step out of my personae?
How might I shake off some of my veilings?
How can I let go of these blocks?

One practical way the Indian system offers us is to focus on an aspect of reality that is ‘proximate’ to ultimate reality. Through the focus, we shed the distortions and quiet the noise. This type of focus can then become a vehicle we can ride home to wholeness/completion/zero.
For example, Gaṇeśa and his vehicle Mūśika, let us make ourselves a portal for the mahākāya, the great body of mahāgaṇapati, to carry us home, with the skilfulness/ingenuity of the rat and the grace and ease of the elephant.
For another example, Śiva. Let me orient to that which is a symbol of THAT: that whose name, form and stories help me, in this vehicle of a human body that moves and experiences in the realm of name and form; let this be my support, my means to recognise that which really is, that which remains.

0 Comments

Life, Yoga and Contact Improvisation AND I want to live in a world where people dance on train station platforms

6/13/2021

1 Comment

Photo: I really would have liked to use a photo of me dancing on York train station platform, but I do not have one, so have used this one of the meadow dancing under the sunset last week.
Life, Yoga and Contact Improvisation
AND
I want to live in a world where people dance on train station platforms

My friend Paul, with whom I have co-taught a few times in different places, is a long-time Contact Improvisation practitioner. We have usually taught in relation to yama-niyama, the foundational yogic principles of how we interact with life, how we channel our energy and awareness, as laid out in Patañjali’s aṣṭāṅga yoga - the eight limbs or eight mutually supportive members of the collective body of classical yoga practice. The yama-niyama and the aṣṭāṅga are incredibly rich and robust. They provide such a beautiful resource to help calibrate to conscience and invite our life and experience more into the ‘central space’, the space of yoga, the space of the junction or the cross, where dynamism and stillness, rising and falling, expansion and contraction, can meet and draw out each other’s complementary and expansive potential; the place where the emergence, the sustenance and the falling away can all be witnessed, allowed and integrated.
The yoga perspective, the ʼdarśana’ - way of seeing - of yoga philosophy, trains us to work from gross to subtle and from micro to macro, to do what many mystics in many traditions have done through the ages, which William Blake enshrines in the opening of his ‘Auguries of Innocence’:
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.

My friend Paul pointed out, and I fully agreed, how contact improvisation was such a great lens to explore being human, such a great microcosm of life, and such a rich means to explore our understanding* and embodiment* of yamaniyama and yoga principles more generally.

*A note here, more than a side note:
on knowing, understanding and embodying;
on information, knowledge, understanding and wisdom.

Example One: a person takes a course on bicycle maintenance. The technician/bike mechanic teaches the person ‘everything I know’ about fixing a puncture… the thing is, everything the technician knows is beyond what can be distilled into the comprehensive tutorial. Having fixed thousands of punctures and dealt with all manner of wheel, rim, tyre, inner tube, valve, and puncture type combinations, the technician has come to an embodied understanding of the art of puncture repair.
Example Two: A person reads about swimming in the ocean, watches swimming tuturials on youtube, thinks he knows how to swim… only to find on diving into the ocean that there are all sorts of other, predictably unpredictable factors to be dealt with.
The idea: there is such a huge difference between knowledge and understanding.
One movement teacher I have benefited from working with is Ido Portal. It was from him that I first heard laid out the journey from unconscious incompetence, through conscious incompetence, through conscious competence to unconscious competence. I do not know, but others have suggested that his explanation was influencesd by Nassim Taleb’s describing the difference between the unknown unknowns, the known unknowns, the known knowns and the unknown knowns. What has this got to do with yoga, the dance of life, and the art of living and dying? Please keep reading:

Illustrations:
Unconscious incompetence:
i. I do not know that I would be clueless as to how to safely, effectively fix a puncture on my bicycle
ii. I do not even know that I cannot swim, for example, I have never seen anyone swimming or perhaps ever even seen an extensive body of water
Conscious incompetence:
i. I take my bike to my local bicycle repair man. He performs the whole operation with awe-inspiring ease, executing scores of precisely intentional procedures and checks with such competence that he makes it look so easy. And yet I know I could not come close to replicating his skill
ii. I see people swimming - that looks fun - I get in the water. They were gliding apparently effortlessly, I am splashing, thrashing around, not getting far at all, tiring quickly. Ah, okay, I am incompetent at this ‘swimming thing’ and now I know it.
Conscious competence:
i. I ask my local bicyle repair man if he might instruct me. He does, I learn some of the checks and maneuvres that he now performs ‘automatically’. They are by no means automatic for me, but if I pay close attention, perhaps work through my checklist, remember the key points, I can change the inner tube and fix the puncture competently.
ii. I learn to swim, I practice, quite a lot. I expose myself to a wide range of water/sea conditions. I learn about collaborating with the water, about navigating currents, eddies, whirlpools and tides and waves. When I come to potentially perilous situations, I can consult what I have learnt and respond appropriately
Unconscious competence:
i. I’m out riding, I get a puncture, five minutes later, I’m racing along again, having fixed the puncture ‘effortlessly’, without having to think much about it, because the knowledge of how to perform that operation is now embedded deep in my cells, installed in the core of my being, where I can draw on it at will, and even prior to will. It emerges when it is helpful, it has become part of what I bring into the world.
ii. I’m swimming out at sea, I am confronted with various hazards, my competence is now so deep it has become instinctual. I have developed and refined a skillset that my deep intuition can manifest and perform through.

End of illustrative ‘more than a side note’.

The point: yoga is a practice. What are we practising for? Yoga. We are practising being able to stay in that sweet spot where the pairs of opposites meet and draw forth each other’s complementary and expansive potentials. Sometimes this is described as walking on a tightrope, walking on a razor’s edge.
However, I prefer the image of dancing on the edge.
Dancing: heartfully, soulfully, joyfully, in the predictably unpredictable reality of life, ie, in the risk, uncertainty, danger of life.
We are equipped for this.
There is nothing more dangerous than too much safety.
And I feel more than concerned about how overly protective mainstream education, and so many of the policies enacted by our so-called governments have become. That’s another aside.
More to the point, life is uncertain. Life is dynamic, it is always changing. Creation, maintenance, destruction. This is life: Nature, that which is born. Everything that is born will die. We are nature. We were born, we will die. What will happen in between those two great changes? What can we guarantee? Change, the only certainty.
But we are equipped for this.
We have awareness. We have an array of powerful capacities and intelligences, many of which defy the limits of what our minds, languages, diagrams or formulae can render or express. Yoga is the drawing into togetherness and congruence of all these powers, so we can live more fully here and now. Only when we bring all of ourselves into this moment do we have a chance to experience all of who we are.
One of the great iconic exponents of this yoga, this art of living and dying, is Śiva Nāṭarāja, Śiva the Lord of the Dance: of creation, maintenance and destruction, of ignorance/veiling and remembering/revealing. When we bring ourselves into balance, when we are able to draw on our integrated powers of awareness, we can dance in dynamic equilibrium right here in the midst of the tumult, challenge, risk, beauty and whirling wonder of life.
So let us dance.
Let us dance.
In the classical Indian darśana, or ‘way of seeing’, dance is considered the most ‘primary’ art form. In painting for example, there is the painter, the paints, the brushes/tools/instruments and the painting. In scuplture, the sculptor, the tools, the materials and the scuplture. Dance and dancer however: where does one end and the other begin?
Dance is such a great lens for inquiry, and such a great method for exploration of the art of living and dying. This is especially the case for Contact Improvisation Dance: the form/method/art/way, where, it might be said, the point of contact leads the dance, where the junction of our awareness and that with which we are dancing/interacting is the dynamic centrepoint.
And so I was so inspired to be reminded of this today when I read an email shared by one of the wonderful group of seekers I am currently exploring the Āditya Hṛdayam with in the current online course.
Here is an excerpt from Laura’s mail to our group, with my italics for emphasis:

I used to run a dance company. We danced a style called contact improvisation. I love it because it invites pure presence. It is improvised, so no steps are provided, so the dance can become dangerous if one is not fully present. Contact alludes to being lifted and dropped, feeling the earth’s gravity as a force. You can see what I mean in this lovely video: https://youtu.be/7PqqOWb0WgM
It is very common to perform outdoors and with kneepads (I have as many pairs as a skateboarder would, I think!).

I recommend watching the video. It shows two people contact-improvisation-dancing in a train station. I find it beautiful.

And this reminds me, of something I feel quite strongly:

I want to live in a world where people dance on train station platforms

I want to live in a world where people dance in public, on station platforms, on the street, in the car park, down the aisles of shops, to their chairs at hostelries, between and in their lessons at school…

I want to live in a world where people dance on train station platforms.

Now, true story:

A few years ago I was at York railway station, it was late afternoon on a late summer’s day. I had to change trains at York. The connection I needed was leaving from platform five, but not for twenty or more minutes. Platform five was all in the shade. But I notice that across the way, down the end of platform nine, there is open space in the sun. So I make my way there and feel the sun’s warmth on my skin. I have been on the previous train a couple of hours, rather confined, somewhat cooped up. I want to move, I’d like to sing, really I feel like dancing. So I do. Nothing particularly demonstrative. I play a movement game with myself. Setting myself the challenge of moving my arms in various combinations with certain steps, inviting energy, lymph and vitality to move and re-invigorate me after the extended day of travel, and at the same time inviting new neural connections as I have to consciously focus and concentrate on the novel movement co-ordination… the sun’s in the sky, the day is warm and calm, I am feeling good. I can see the shaded platform five across the way. I can see that part of the platform where the train I’ll be catching is going from through a gap in the wall. People can see me too. Twenty minutes later I am on that train. It’s standing room only and I am near one of the entrances, near a man with his son, who is sat in a pushchair:
‘Hey dad, it’s the crazy man!’ The infant says, pointing up at me, and making me smile.
‘Don’t say that, that’s rude.’ The father gently chides his son.
‘But he was waving his arms around across the station.’
‘That doesn’t mean he’s crazy.’
I am almost laughing now, and I join the conversation.
‘No that’s okay, I was waving my arms around, and it might look crazy, but that’s okay. I feel a lot better for it. I’d been sat down for two hours on another train so it was good to move a bit you know? Anyway, sometimes the world is a bit crazy and it’s good to remember that we can be too.’
‘What do you think to that?’ Asked the dad. ‘You like to get up and run when we get home after a trip don’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ says the little boy. He keeps looking at me with a rather quizzical look.
‘Are you a dancer?’ He now asks me.
‘Well, I think life’s a kind of dance, so I’m trying to be.’
‘Leave the man in peace now Jacob,’ says the father.
‘It’s alright,’ I say, hoping that this boy will stay crazy enough to keep inquiring all his life.
…

1 Comment

What difference does it make?

6/3/2021

1 Comment

Photo by Tim Lloyd

This last year teaching online, on many of the courses I have sent out notes to accompany our sessions. Currently, I am enjoying working with the Āditya Hṛdayam hymn to the Sun from the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, one of my favourite recitations. Here is an extract from last week’s notes:

Āditya is a name of the Sun as the offspring of its mother. Lots we can say about this name, but I am reminded of the beautiful idea M mentioned last session, sharing the quote from Bert Hellinger that each of us is the realised dream of our ancestors, that we are the manifestation of our ancestors’ desires.
As it is rendered in Spanish:
Que nadie te haga dudar, cuida tu ‘rareza’ como la flor más preciada de tu arbol. Eres el sueño realizado de todos tus ancestros.
And as I might translate it:
May no one ever make you doubt, take care of your ‘unusualness’ as the most prized flower of your tree. You are the realised dream of your ancestors.
In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad it is stated that a human is the sum of her desires. So, thinking on this:
‘I am the culmination of my ancestors’ desires’ - so let me do what they were not able to, let me build on my inheritance. Let me not wallow in it, or see it as a limitation. Rather, let me be grateful for the opportunities I have to further the dream, to further the desire. And considering that we are all related, that we all go back to common progenitors, let me play my part in, to borrow a phrase from Clarissa Pinkola Estés, the making and mending of life. My part may be small, but in the challenges right here, small though they may seem, let me play my part, let me not shirk the chance to render this day more beautiful. Sometimes, we may be confronted by doubt, by the ‘what’s the point?’ thinking, by the ‘what difference will it/does it make?’ idea. We may feel weighed down by the sorrow - śoka - of the past, of the missed chances, of the apparent missteps. We may feel ravaged or overwhelmed by the uncertainty of the future - cintā - and the magnitude of the challenges before us.
In such situations, one of the things that I find useful to remember was a blessing delivered to me by my dear friend Ravi Shankar Mishra. Ravi is a flute player, flute maker, teacher and beautiful human being, and lives a few streets away from my place in Mysore. Ravi got me my harmoniums and introduced me to some basics of Indian music. When we were unpacking my first harmonium, and Ravi showed me some basic scales and voice exercises, he shared something he tells all his flute students (I may stray into paraphrase from time to time here):
‘I tell all my students. If you want to be good at the flute, the first thing you have to do is love the flute… which means to be with it every day, to practice it every day… so with your voice. You like to sing, so love your voice, nurture it, be with it, share with it, like a deep soul friend. Every day. And when you are playing, when you are singing, do it for God! It doesn’t matter if you are playing for a packed house at the Royal Albert Hall, whether you are recording for All India Radio, or whether you are alone in your room. Play, sing, for God! This makes the difference. This is the way…’
And so it is, is it not? Act as if god was watching and how do I act? Give like I am giving to the most dearly beloved and how do I give?
Does it make a difference?
Remember Loren Eisley’s story of the starfish.
It goes a bit like this:

One morning a man was walking along a long deserted beach, with the sands stretching off into the horizon and the tide rolling out to the ocean. Looking into the wind, he sees a figure in the distance, is it another human? It seems to be contracting and expanding… as he gets closer he sees the figure looks almost like a dancer, bending and whirling. Closer still, he sees that indeed, it is another human being, a young man, though he wouldn’t describe his movements quite as dancing. The young man is reaching down to the sand, picking up small objects and throwing them into the ocean.
Intrigued, he draws closer and calls out to the youth: “Good morning! Hello there! May I ask, what are doing?”
The young man paused, he’s thinking, ‘well is it not obvious?’ But he looks up and replies, straightforward, to the somewhat startled older man: “I’m throwing the starfish into the ocean.”
It is not obvious to the older man. “Er, oh… but why?” He asks, “I mean, er, why are you doing that?”
The younger man replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”
To which the older man commented, looking up and down the beach, “But, wait a minute, young man, there are hundreds, thousands, hundreds and thousands of miles of beach, and hundreds of thousands of starfish… do you really think what you are doing is making any difference?”
The young man looks briefly at the older one, bends down, picks up another and throws it out beyond the surf.
“It made a difference to that one.”
He bends down again, throws another out. The sun glints in his eye,
“It makes a difference to that one too.”
The older man looks on as the youth continues, unabashed. With a starfish in his hand, the youth now looks at the older man before throwing it out towards the deep.
“It makes a difference to this one.”
And then the older man bends down, and joins in the younger man’s humble, simple, joyful effort.
…
It makes a difference to this one. Play as if god is watching. Walk like I’m walking on sacred ground. Sing, cook, clean like I am tending the temple precincts. Make it an offering to the beloved. Act like it does make a difference, and see what happens. Act as if God is watching and see what grace and beauty is invited to join your party, even if it’s a party of one, crying in the wilderness.
This is part of the practicality of the path of bhakti. Ravi’s advice is not sentimental or fanciful. When I do it for God, I do it better, I give myself a greater chance to make the action its own reward. When I live my day as a Sūrya Namaskāra, as an offering to, and an invitation to the healing rays of vivifying, rousing, nourishing awareness to flood the precincts of my being, well, then my being is irrigated and invigorated with energy of a different vibration. What difference does it make? Maybe it makes more difference than we might sometimes prefer to admit.

1 Comment

Śavāsana - sleeping in peace and the Art of Living and Dying

3/5/2021

0 Comments

How can I bring the same peace I feel when I relax in śavāsana at the end of my āsana practice into the rest of my day?

In the early years of my yoga explorations, living in Thailand, I had the good fortune to attend āsana classes with Adrian Cox at the original Yoga Elements Studio, Bangkok. I remember in one of my first classes, I think it was 2001, an especially bliss-soaked śavāsana. Adrian had guided us very skilfully through an ashtanga-vinyasa practice, keeping us attuned to rich, fulsome breath at the same time as expertly instructing healthful alignment and appropriate variations. For more than an hour and a half I had been nowhere but there, focused and absorbed in following the cues, orienting and balancing in space through unfamiliar postures and sequences, and savouring the breath. This had recruited my mental focus, the active participation of all my sense powers, and a clear emotional orientation which I might describe as an effort to cultivate harmony and rich presence. After ‘flowing’ like this as a relatively ‘joined up’, ‘integrated’ ‘whole’ being for 90+ minutes, the śavāsana was blissfully peaceful and serene. After such concerted, whole system engagement, it was easy to relax; all the senses had been gratified and nourished, and I was able to rest in peace.
Yoga is sometimes described as the Art of Living. What this really means is the Art of Living and Dying, because we cannot have the one without the other. Yoga is about living skilfully, wholly, soulfully. One view of the crowning achievement of a human life is to be able to die in peace: to meet death feeling calm, ready, fulfilled, complete, free from fear. How might we do this? By practising and preparing sleeping in peace at the end of every day. How to do this? The aṣṭāṅga of Mahāṛṣi Patañjali offers us a practical means to calibrate to conscience. Yoga offers us many ways to connect more substantially to conscience, to train ourselves, as it were, in the ways of śavāsana, of being able to inhabit the space of our awareness with greater ease and serenity, of being able to sleep in peace more easily at the end of each day. I especially appreciate the advice Dr Robert Svoboda passes on from his mentor Vimalananda:
I paraphrase:
Every morning, three things to remind myself:
1. ‘I am going to die. It may be today. It may not be today. But I am going to die. I had better be ready, because it is coming. Let me be prepared.’ This echoes something my first teacher said paraphrasing Śaṅkarācarya, ‘have your bags packed’, be prepared for it happening today.
2. ‘I am thankful, I am grateful, that I am alive. I am thankful to providence. I am thankful to life. I am thankful to God, Nature, Cosciousness, Source, Existence - whatever you want to call it. Thank you to consciousness, thank you to the Supreme Reality. Thank you to all the beings that have given of their life that I might be. I am thankful. I am thankful to my family, to my friends, to all those who have helped and help support me. I am grateful for my home this planet, for the Earth and Sun which support and enable all my experience here. I am thankful to be alive. Let me honour this great gift of life.
3. ‘I pray that I will not cheat my conscience’.
Let conscience be my guide.
Remember, the voice of conscience may sometimes be a small voice, while the voice of the things I am pulled, drawn, attracted, influenced, cowed by can be very loud. Let me listen carefully, for sometimes the voice of conscience may be quiet relative to the booming howls of the conscience-veiling/shrouding/interfering impact of my conditionings.
And at night, three questions:
1. Have I lived?
Have I taken advantage of the gift of life. Have I honoured my life this day? Have I avoided ‘killing time’, remembering that time is relentlessly killing me. Let me honour the 1440 minutes of each day. As best as I can let me be present through them all , let me cherish and fulfil each moment of life.
2. Have I loved?
Have I honoured/recognised/felt the love of the Supreme Reality flowing/coursing through me? And have I done what I can to allow others to feel that?
3. Have I laughed?
Have I laughed at my own stupidity and foibles? Have I met the day with good humour?
If I can answer yes to all three, that’s a good day. If not, I can commit to doing a better job the next day.
Yoga practice is about doing whatever we are doing with all of ourself, so we leave no room for regret.
May we find the depth of loving presence to live each moment as if it could be our last.
May we savour each experience with the presence of a first time.
May we weave more of the experience of wholeness into the tapestry of our days.

0 Comments

The Bhagavad Gītā: Reconciling paradox and making the whole field sing

2/22/2021

0 Comments

Weaving harmony into the fabric of life and making the whole field sing
A few brief introductory notes to the Bhagavad Gītā

A few notes following last Friday’s two hour talk on the Gītā

1. What’s in a name?

Yoga - unity, integration, balance, harmony, at-one-ment
Sūtra - stitch, thread; clear, distilled, condensed linguistic formula which shines its meaningful light out in all directions.

As my teacher Larry said so beautifully and memorably: ’The Yoga Sūtra-s are the stitches that weave together the fabric of unity.’
A sūtra is defined in Sanskṛt as being clear, concise, yet ‘viśvatomukham’ - facing in every direction: shining its light all around.
The Yoga Sūtra-s are like lighthouses, they can illumine our path, help guide our way and inform our progress wherever we are on our journey in the ocean of existence.
Just as with the Yoga Sūtra, the very name of the Bhagavad Gītā is instructive.

Bhagavat (which becomes Bhagavad when preceding Gītā) - glorious, venerable, totality, the Supreme Reality
Gītā - song

The Bhagavad Gītā is the song of totality. It teaches us, in a relatable, memorable, nourishing form, how to come to wholeness. It has been set down in beautiful, magisterial poetry, full of vivid images and memorable verses. Its teachings describe how we can harmonise the whole field of our experience, ‘make the whole field sing’, bring ourselves into attunement, rhythm, at-one-ment, here in the grounded reality of life.

2. The setting is right here
The grounded reality of life: aka, the battlefield.
Mmm, yes, this battlefield business, what’s going on here?
Why is this most treasured text of the yoga tradition set between these two huge armies on a battlefield? Isn’t yoga all about peace?
Sure, it is, and that’s why I’m practising, because I’m not yet established in that deep, robust, unshakeable peace. The battlefield setting of the Gītā is richly symbolic in many ways. One way is how it locates the discourse in the reality of the field of our own psyches. The leaders of the warring parties are cousins. For a significant part of their lives, they grew up together, just like different parts of ourselves. And, just like different parts of ourselves, these sets of cousins occupy and vie for authority in the same field. Which field? The Gītā tells us explicitly. This ‘battlefield’ right here that is the arena of our own life, consciousness and experience.
On the one side of this field we have the Pāṇḍava-s, symbolising our purer, higher instincts and the qualities that would urge us towards harmony and wholeness. On the other, we have the Kaurava-s, representing our limiting conditionings: our tendencies driven by fear, and based on previous actions and experiences, our protect-the-known-comfort-zone blinkered habits, our short-termist, ultimately self-sabotaging empatternings. When we look at the field of our own experience, perhaps we may recognise such forces, and such a split, within ourselves.
Have you ever done anything that was not in your highest interest? I can only answer ‘yes’. Has their ever been a day gone by when I have not done something that was not in my highest interest? Here, I struggle to answer other than ‘no’! Though I also recognise that sometimes I do act in accord with my conscience, and this brings its own reward. In other words, the battlefield is right here, my own body-borne field of awareness and experience.

3. Practice: it’s a no-brainer

So, this field of splintering factions is not unknown to me. Which of the warring programs do I want to run? Do I want to make the whole field sing? Or am I content to subsist in a clanging cacophany of unnecessary self-sabotage?
Aiie! It’s a no brainer isn’t it? Yes, and yoga is a no-brainer. It cannot be experienced by the mind alone, but by the whole system working as a collective. By all the parts being acknowledged and included so they can participate and play together such that we become a true individual. An individual in the sense of one who is no longer susceptible to being divided or split, but who is attuned to the ways of working as a cohesive, integrated whole. Yes, Yoga is about fostering peace, but in order to come to integrated wholeness and lasting peace, we will most likely have to face our self-sabotaging habits, our shadow sides and schismatic tendencies. So the setting of the Gītā on the battlefield, which may seem at first glance paradoxical, is actually very realistic.

4. Yoga and the reconciliation of paradox

When we start studying and practising yoga, we don’t usually have to go far before we encounter paradox. And yoga is about reconciling paradox.
The Gītā guides us from the ongoing conflict of self-sabotage towards the ‘peace that passeth understanding’. It invites us out of the lose-lose situation of denying our conscience for the illusion of short-term gain or comfort. As one of my Indian teachers says, when we ignore or betray our conscience, we are damned. Not in the sense of being sentenced to eternal hellfire, but in the sense that when we go against our conscience, we will burn for it, sooner or later. Instead, the Gītā invites us into the win-win situation. When we heed our conscience, when we make a sincere effort, nothing is lost. If we get what we were aiming for, we enjoy it with a clear conscience. If we ‘fail’, we still rest easy, knowing we did our best.
To win in yoga, on the battlefield of life, does not mean to conquer, vanquish, destroy or subdue our enemies in the sense that these words may immediately connote. If we go around trying to kill our enemies, what happens? We just create more emnity. Yoga is about cultivating a lasting peace. The campaign of yoga is to transform the battlefield into a dancefloor, in which the seemingly opposed forces can meet and draw out each others’ complementary potential.
As we have mentioned, the different factions, Pāṇḍava-s and Kaurava-s, grew up in the same field, the same body. Our very body is the battlefield of the Gītā, the setting for this play of yoga. If we go around trying to vanquish or destroy parts of ourself, it is highly likely that we will perpetuate self-sabotage. Instead, yoga asks: can we steadily, patiently, courageously face our own demons, confront our own dark side, acknowledge our own woundings and partialities and invite a robust and well-rooted integration?

5. A warrior’s courage to venture beyond the known

The teacher in the Gītā is Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Literally, Kṛṣṇa means ‘dark’ or black. He symbolises the wisdom that is always with us, though it may be concealed deep inside the cave of our hearts. In order to access this innate wisdom, we may need to muster courage and slow down, so we can climb out of the grooves of our automated patterns. We may need to probe and fathom the darklands of our psyches, the neglected hinterlands of our kingdom. This is required if we are to become a responsible sovereign for this field of our own life.
Kṛṣṇa gives the teaching to his student and friend in need Arjuna, in a chariot. In yoga, just like the battlefield, the chariot is another image that is used to represent the individual conscious human being. As he teaches, Kṛṣṇa seems at times to give paradoxical guidance. He tells us, for example, that we have to claim responsibility for our actions and experience, that we are the sovereigns of our lives. Right from the beginnning Kṛṣṇa is very clear, we had better get up, stand up and claim this sovereignty. And when something is inevitable, don’t waste time or energy dwelling on lamenting it, rather channel your resources to meet it skilfully. However, Kṛṣṇa also makes very clear that the best solution is to surrender, to offer everything to Him, in the sense of the ultimate reality… So sovereignty and responsibility on the one hand, and surrender and consecration on the other. Taking full responsibility for our actions, but giving up expectation over their fruits or outcomes. It can seem like a paradox, but practice resolves it. If we are going to offer our thoughts, words and actions, then we have first to ‘own’ them, in the sense of taking responsibility for them. In order to make the chariot of our bodily vehicle our means of offering, we cannot be asleep at the wheel, (or the reins if we are thinking of an older-school chariot), rather we have to take responsibility for how we direct its capacities. In order to surrender, to offer everything to that which we consider the highest, in order to consecrate our actions, we have to be present, vigilant, constant.

Practice is all the time

Another thing the battlefield setting reminds us is that there is no situation that is a barrier to yoga. Indeed, the Gītā highlights how challenging situations can actually bring great opportunities to unveil our deeper capacities. Further, the setting also makes clear, we do not have to wait until the conditions are just right. They are right here right now. Working to keep in tune and stay in rhythm requires a constant presence. Yoga is a lifelong practice. It is everything we do. In this field of sound and vibration, the song is always playing. The time-tested, practical and robust teachings of the Gītā invite us to steadily tune in more and more subtly to our innate yogic capacities: for steadiness, harmony and contributing to making the whole field sing.

0 Comments

A few words on: 'Why start a yoga practice session with a mantra?

2/18/2021

0 Comments

A few words on: ‘Why recite a mantra at the start of practice?’

There are many great reasons to work with a mantra at the start of a period of yoga practice or study. For a start, working with a mantra can help set the space of our body-borne field of awareness. Yoga practice seeks to harmonise this field. The yogic masters recognised millennia ago that this field we inhabit is one of pulsation, cycles and vibration. Sound then, is pervasive, and mantra is able to reach the parts that other techniques are not always able to reach so easily. Quickly, readily, mantra can help tune our system. Mantra is thus a great way to initiate a practice session, because in yoga we always do our best to start as we mean to go on. Yoga is practical, and recognises that there is no means to an end. Rather, the means is the end. We get good at what we practice. So let us practice how we want to feel. We are only practising yoga in the first place because we are not yet established in yoga: in that state of balance and equipoise, of steady, integrated awareness that is the foundation for skilfulness and efficiency in all we do. So when we practice, we want to encourage evenness, wholeness, harmony and integration.
Mantra can be instrumental in inviting this integration. For example, if we sing a mantra to invoke Gaṇeśa, we are invoking the state of yoga and the skilful means to keep cultivating that state. Gaṇa means group, íśa - the Lord. Gaṇeśa is the energy that unifies and brings together the group, the energy of yoga. When we sing Oṃ gaṃ gaṇapataye namaḥ, the action is namaḥ - a bow, a prostration, gaṇapataye - to gaṇapati, to gaṇeśa, Oṃ - with all of myself. As I work with the mantra: with the sound, with my powers of expression, with my mental focus and my emotional intent; I orient towards my true aim.
Mantra, an instrumental power tool of sound and awareness, is a great way to help us orient like this. Working with a mantra invites us to unify our thought, our vocal expression - whether internal or voiced - and our emotional orientation. We can then use this instrument of mantra to invite deepening harmony in the field of our awareness.
Further, when considering why we might mark the start of practice with mantra, it can alert us to the bigger question of ‘why am I doing whatever I am doing?’ ‘Where am I acting from?’ Sometimes, the line between disciplined practice and autopilot routine can become blurred. Mantra is a great tool: distilled, concentrated, powerful; that can help us tune in and remember. Remember what we are practising for and how we can do that skilfully. Mantra can help bring all the members of the gang of our being into the here and now, so all parts of ourselves can participate in the practice, be nourished by it and experience the richness and fulfilment that we invite when we bring all parts of ourselves into congruent presence.

0 Comments

Holding out for a hero Why the Purāṇa-s matter - an introduction

1/8/2021

1 Comment

Holding out for a hero
Why the Purāṇa-s matter - an introduction
Is the perennial more relevant than the single-issue, monoculture tendencies of a contemporary lens might suggest?

A few years ago I was speaking with a man that some might call an elder, at the Ojai Foundation, a place where the practice of council has been taught, shared and explored now for a few decades. This man had some interesting things to say. As he was sharing, I was mainly listening, keen to hear the perspectives of someone who has lived, in many ways, a life very different from mine. There was one thing he said though that I wish we had had more time to discuss further.
He said that we need new myths, new stories, that the time for the hero’s journey, and the struggle of the individual, is over. ‘We don’t need any more hero’s journeys’ he said…
Well, I can relate to the idea that during this time of such tremendous change, it might feel like we need ‘new’ myths and stories; however, I have a lot of faith in Purāṇa, the perennial truths encoded and carried in mythological stories that have been passed down and already survived and remained relevant through many changes and revolutions. One of the reasons they have survived is because their teachings translate across scales, dimensions, and levels of awareness. Purāṇa is ancient and always new, set in the ever new now, beyond particularities of time and space. The Indian tradition has for millennia recognised the idea of microcosm and macrocosm, of the interconnectedness of all. In the Indian Purāṇa-s, many of the stories are set in different aeons, sometimes in different galaxies or planes of existence. They are imbued with truths that are relevant to the journey of consciousness that are not just intrinsic within the human experience, but more broadly than that. They were recognised by ṛṣi-s, research scientists who observed Life, and the teachings map onto all life paramāṇuparamamahattvāntosya from the smallest of the smallest to the greatest of the greatest.
Of course, I may be veiled by my own prejudices, fears and limitations here, but feel not so much that we need new myths, rather that we need to imbue our understanding and relation to the time-proven ones with fresh perspectives. That we need to restore our connection to living tradition. That we can invite an expansion and renovation of our perspectives and ways of inquiring. That we can, and should, reclaim and remember the ‘babies’ that got thrown out with the bathwater. The ‘babies’ - overflowing with ever new life - of the underlying timeless Truths and practical myths that were discarded with the dirty bathwater of the failed institutionalised religions that became associated with some of them.
A tradition that lasts is one that is adaptable, vital, that pulsates with and serves life, that can withstand the assaults of those who would exploit and dumb it down for temporal purposes and political aims. I would say that the Spirit never dies and the real teaching will always stay aflame, even if sometimes it looks like mere embers. Yoga is that type of living tradition, and its myths also include a hero’s journey motif. My sense is not that the motif of the hero’s journey is obsolete, rather that we need to live it more fully, more honestly and more holistically. The elder said that we need to work as a collective. Certainly we do. But it is not one or the other, not individualism versus collectivism. No! Let us make all isms wasms. Let us go beyond our over-reactive tendencies. Let us tread the yogic path of balance and integration, that marries the seeming pairs of opposites and draws out their complementary potential.
The Indian tradition is very clear. We start where we have agency. We fortify ourselves, we do our own work. A traditional Tantric marriage (which also maps the internal yoga at the individual level) then weds two souls, so their differencies and polarities can be harnessed to accelerate each person’s spiritual growth and integration. Strong individuals and strong couples united in soul-deep trust and common purpose then make the watertight, well-earthed foundation for solid, harmonious families and robust, harmonious communities that can then contribute to a vibrant, healthy collective.
I remain convinced that a strong, ethical, and sustainable collective can only be brought about by strong, virtuous, heroic individuals. Heroic in the sense that they own responsibility for the nuance and challenge of life, that they have not outsourced their sense of self or reality, and that they are well-estalished in the honest practice of wrestling with all it means to be a sovereign human being. I am interested in a collective that is being driven by conscience rather than human vanity or short term interests that I feel can usually be traced back to fear.
Further, I would suggest that learning to serve the greater whole is actually one of the main points of the hero’s journey. The Sanskṛt word vīra denotes hero and human being. I would say that the hero’s journey is about learning to become our whole, authentic self. In becoming a true individual - in the sense of an integrated person who is no longer subject to division - the hero becomes established, properly, rigourously, in the virtuous qualities that are required to truly serve the greater collective.
I do not know how one can become a true individual, without going through the heroic adventure of wrestling with all it means to be human, going into the darklands of the unknown depths of ourselves, facing our demons, reclaiming our inner treasure and recalibrating the field of our understanding. No one else can do that for us. Yet when each of us does it, we help lift each other up. Through the heroic work of making ourselves whole, we learn compassion, we learn service and so are then empowered to do the sometimes, often, trying work of serving the whole.
Undoubtedly, we need to work as a collective, work for our mutual benefit, work respectfully for life and each other. But surely this takes sacrifice, courage, breadth of vision: this requires virtue. As such, a real collective effort is the work of heroes and heroines.
I do not see how a collective effort can advance unless the individuals constituting that collective are fierce, formidable, fearless yogic warriors, strong in the self-trust and faith of śraddhā, indomitable in the courage and valour of vīrya, knowing, and having remembered (smṛti) through the depth of their integrity (samādhi), the deathless spirit that is their essence.
So I would say that it’s not that we need to abandon our myths or our old stories, nor that we should fashion new ones out of the latest trends, but that rather we would do well to recover the old myths, to connect to the perennial living truths they still carry. If we can admit them, be with them openly, humbly, honestly, courageously, perhaps they will vivify our understandings of the trying times we face and help us imbue this moment now with the grace of the living spirit that never dies.

1 Comment

Jesus Christmas 2020

12/25/2020

0 Comments

Jesus Christmas 2020
In preparing for a recent satsang class on Jesus, I came out of meditation the morning of 12th December 2020 and wrote Jesus at the top of the page, this is what followed, you can listen to a recording on Soundcloud here:
https://soundcloud.com/james-boag-517265519/jesus-christmas-day-2020-edit

Jesus
Prince of Peace
Jesus Lord of Lords
King of Kings
And He shall reign for ever and ever and ever and ever
Jesus, the Lamb of God
Jesus, the Lion of Judah
The Vine, the Cup, the Chalice, the Vessel

Jesus
Christ
Christ the Saviour
Christ the Redeemer
The carpenter’s son
The original
The immaculately conceived
The original imprinting on the virgin leaf of our soul
The original,
before the original sin, which doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with us,
which doesn’t mean that there is anything intrinsic to be guilty about,
but which points to the original congealing of our essential self into this fleshly vehicle,
of our consciousness into the embodied form in which we can walk this path of rememering who we really are, and what we are really made of;
which points rather to what is known in Sanskṛt as avidyā, the partiality that comes as we begin the ways of veiling limitation, as we start to identify with the nature of our ever-changing bodily vehicle and the ever-changing manifest world we experience through it.

Jñānam bandhaḥ as the Śiva Sūtra reminds us.
Knowledge is bondage.
Knowledge limits us. Knowledge sets us free.

The battle
The battle of yoga
between truth and falsehood
between the light and the dark
between focus and dispersion
between attunement and distortion
between conscience and habit,
between conscience and habit;
Or we might say, between knowledge and knowledge,
Yes, between knowledge and knowledge
Between the knowledge that is clearsight, insight, revelation, and the knowledge that is only clinging partiality.

Jesus, the original, the origin, the original imprint of dharma in us.
The original imprint of dharma is in us.
Dharma, the action that supports the wellbeing of the whole,
that connects us to the essence of things,
that aligns and attunes us to conscience, and to cosmic rhythm and harmony.

Dharma is in us
Under the conditionings
Before the conditionings
Beneath the veilings

Where are we from?
Satya - ṛta - bṛhat - from the pulsating vastness of eternity we come
From unity, from pure, immaculate consciousness
From the pure, total merging of Śiva and Śakti,
of consciousness and its power
of God the Father and Goddess the Mother,
of God the Father and Mother the Goddess,
known by the Son, through the Son, with the Son
Known in the sun, the sun of centred consciousness, of centred awareness,
Knowable, here, in this embodied opportunity.

I am the Way, the Truth and the Light, So Jah Seh

The Path, the Way:
Overthrow the merchants’ tables
Cast out the evil spirits
Anneal yourself in the desert - if you want to be quick about it - anneal yourself in the desert
Then Christ yourself

Walk the way, the way of dharma
Take up your cross, the way of action that brings your unique gifts forth into this world, that truely, authentically embodies and manifests the particular gifts of spirit that you, you are the channel for,
the way that illumines reality more and more, yours and that of the whole of this planet.

Overthrow the merchants’ tables:
De-colonise your thinking, refine your culture,
Make it one of beauty, of honour, of nobility, of kindness.
Judge not, lest ye be judged.
Walk your way, your truth, your light, led by the pilot of your conscience.

Your conscience sovereign human being.
Remember, you, sovereign human being, you are the sovereign of your life.
Your light is your responsibility,
your light is your responsibility,
your life is your responsibility.
Your eye of the needle resides in the centre of your cross,
where shines the star of the light of your birth, your life, your spirit.
Be inspired now, take up, keep on this great adventure.

Cast out the evil spirits:
Make the lame walk, make the blind see, bring the seemingly dead back to life.
That is, id est, in other words:
Revive the original dharmic blueprint
Cast out those ‘evil’ spirits, in other words, cast out the blocking, asuric veiling, rākṣasic clinging to familiar habitual, limiting ways influences!
Cast out all of that, and make walk, set in stronger motion,
give greater traction to and build the inertia of the dharmic ways.
Heed the whispers of conscience.
Tune in to them, so they remain no more a whisper, but become a clear song.
Heed the whispers of conscience!

Make the blind see:
Make the blind see. Open your eyes and look within,
Invite the vision, the recognition,
Of the world in a grain of sand,
Of infinity in the palm of your hand
Of eternity in this hour, and of heaven in the wild, blooming flower of this your life
Of the spark pulsating in the very sap of this your incarnate life.

Open your eyes, and open all the miracuolous powers of your collective intelligence
and recognise more of who you are.
Again and again, keep looking in ways that reach beyond your habitual ways of looking.
Again and again, keep looking in ways that reach beyond your habitual ways of looking. Again and again.

And bring the dead back to life:
Bring the dead back to life,
the spark, the divinity is in you.
It always was. It always is.
Your origin and continuance.
Remember it. That power: that got laughed at, smacked at, beaten down, smothered, attempted to be diluted, ridiculed, bashed about, carelessly tossed aside, ground into the dirt, buried, left for dead.
And yet the ember never dies.
You cannot kill the spirit. The ember never dies. You cannot kill the spirit.
So cast away your fear, leave aside your doubt.
The miracle of spirit is an eternal Lazarus!
So rise. Rise! Like the beloved child of God you are, like the spirit that never dies.

Anneal yourself in the desert:
As I open my eyes and look inside, what do I find?
Beauty, majesty, power, magnificence, a light,
An undeniable light.
What else? What else does this light reveal?
Darkness, distortion.
Monsters, vicious monsters lurk in the neglected shadows and the concealed caves of my being,
in those secret recesses where are interred my woundings and their consequent empatternings.
Wounds that weep, that gape wide,
chinks in the armour of my chalice of spirit,
weak spots, susceptibilities, compromises in the integrity of the power of my field,

Leaks that perpetuate distortion, partiality and the clinging to the fearful ways that only exacerbate my ignorance, my suffering and my bondage.

This is the wilderness that cries out for invigoration with the spirit wind, fire, water of Life.
These are the darklands that need to be illumined and redeemed.
These are the unknown territories waiting to be transmuted.
For the monsters in these caves have sequestered, and harbour great treasure:
Gold, frankincense, myrhh;
As we commit to, as we patiently undertake the rehailitation project, we reclaim access to the glorious treasure that lies within.
And we regain fuller access to the eternal balm of spirit, to that which brings us into the lived knowing of the Peace that passeth understanding.

The peace that passeth understanding, in which we can stand, stable,
Aligned with the great star of conscience
Fearless in the face of the inevitable decay and demise of our bodily vehicle
and the inevitable sufferings that are part and parcel of this worldly way home.

The sufferings, the dark times that can prompt us back to the recognition of our deathless essence, of the Christ consciousness within.

From a stable, a stable foundation, around which the whole flock gathers with joyful wonder at the glory that is in our very midst, that always animates our heart of hearts, that pulsates in the core of our being, that knows how to channel and transmute the gifts of worldly, animate life so we can truly drink the cup,
savour the recognition of the spirit that never dies.

So, may we find the courage to Christ ourselves,
building our foundation on the stable ground of dharma,
of our deepest, most honest, most heartful way,
the way that truly honours the spark,
the embers, and tends the fire with loving, present care.

May we find the courage, the clarity, the commitment, to sing our own song, and bring ourselves home to the wholeness of the spirit we really are.

0 Comments