Oh bearded one . . .

As all beings in my life know or have been noticing lately I am not cutting my hair or beard anymore. I have been studying the Sikh Dharma as taught by Yogi Bhajan and his teachings on hair are that if you cut it and blunt the edges it stifles the influx of energy into your physical body, let alone your subtle and pranic bodies, so you grow it out to its natural length and use it as antenae to draw energy into your chakras. And if you notice the places we have the most hair are usually the chakras that we get stuck in, pubic area/second chakra and we're most of us in the midwest anyway very uptight around sex, chest area/heart chakra and we're most of us closed off in our hearts, not letting people into our lives or our deepest selves, on our heads/crown chakras and we most of us get stuck in our heads thinking of scenarios over and over again, driving ourselves insane and living in our heads rather than in our lives and interacting with those in our lives on a human level.

Those are just examples, not completely exclusively counting for all of us, but for a majority maybe. So maybe not cutting our hair is a way to balance out energies in these areas of our life? Who knows!

Another teaching is that in the male the moon center, or feminine energy center is in the chin and to balance that out you grow out the hair and it pulls in the masculine sun energy and creates an energetic balance within. This I do think is true, I have noticed that I feel more balanced lately and am loving that.

Anyhow, all of this aside. I cannot walk anywhere in life, especially through Whole Foods, without getting 10 comments about my beard and how massive it is, or how awesome it is, or how masculine it is. I'm not complaining by any means, I find it fascinating that so many are so drawn to it. Mind you it is very dark, other than the vast amounts of gray sprouting throughout it, and so very noticeable. You cannot not see it. But for it to be such a topic of conversation is amazing to me.

I won't even discuss how my mother and sister feel about it, it irritates me that it so defines me to them that they are completely offended by it, so I won't go there. Its all about what makes me feel good right? They are contrast so I know I want to go in another direction with my thoughts. Abrahamic stuff I know.

So have people forgotten in our not so distant past all the hippies and their beards? How almost every man in the 60's and 70's had one? Or in the not so recent past in ancient Rome it was a sign of wisdom, or in Israel a sign of manhood or even India where its a sign of vanity to cut it off, still to this day even. I think the hippie one is still fresh enough that people think you are one when you have the facial hair, and thats okay with me. Hippies were free thinkers and creating a different reality with their outside the box approach to life, not following the corporate model or that cookie cutter image so many were trying to influence others into. It also seems to me that many of the younger people I'm meeting nowadays fall under the hippie category again, both in their thinking and in the growing of their facial hair.

Yes, the beard, as far as I've noticed, is making a comeback and more and more young people are sporting them and ratty, messy bedhair and bringing their open minds back to the fore. It seems that at this time when change was so needed, as it was back in the 60's, that attitude has started to expand again.

Maybe it is in the energy of the hair? Again, who knows. But if you notice as the paradigms begin to shift, each time, the beard comes back onto our chins and then the free minds start to spread around. Funny huh, but I'll take it. As mine gets bigger and longer I will let my mind free itself from its bindings and expand out into consciousness to create and bring about the paradigm shift I feel is happening. And I will observe how as it gets longer, do I open up even more, keep expanding and growing as a person? keep flowing with the change and not getting stuck in one position? keep helping others flow with the change and not letting themselves get stuck? Hopefully so, we shall see.

Take care. Sat Nam!