Freak Flag Flying...

I can not say I've ever been something I'd consider "normal". Yes I put it in quotation marks because it's really a relative term, my normal and your normal can be two different things and that's all right. But for the sake of this entry I'll use that term from time to time, unless I forget to.

I was driving today and saw a couple different people walking down the street in different locations and thought about how odd they were, then I realized that was not a bad thing. I'm glad to see odd people. One thing I love about India is that all of the people are so different than we are and don't really make any bones about being different from one another, even though they also seem to try to fit in. Yes, India is like that, always a dichotomy of itself. That's a big reason I love it so much.

It seems since I was very young that most people try to fit in, whatever that means. That's another relative term. Fitting into whatever group you're trying to be close with I would imagine. But I always had friends in each little group, some stoners, some popular kids, some band geeks, some of everything. Not that I had a lot of friends, but I had a lot of acquaintances. So I never really knew where I fit in. So I didn't try very hard.

I've always been very nervous about sticking out in a crowd, I think that's my mom in my. She likes you to blend in, but maybe that was my perspective at the time. She always encouraged me to be outgoing and do what I wanted.

I was a very, painfully shy kid, and so going to the extreme opposite of that was the only thing I could do to not be only sitting at home. I had to do the thing that scared the shit out of me otherwise I'd be stuck in a place I didn't want to be. And even with that from time to time I'd find myself sucking all of it back inside anyway and not expressing myself, for years at a time sometimes, only to find that I'd have it manifest in my body in the form of back problems or something having pain, or being sick. Once I moved through that then I would find that it went away.

The biggest regression I ever had was in my 20's. I began drinking and doing drugs at 18, lots of both, but having a lot of fun. But in my 20's after having a wild and crazy time in my late teens I completely went the opposite way. I got all caught up in my head and stayed there for some years. I would get out and go party, and getting wasted was about the only way I could let those walls down, but other than that I'd stay at home and not do too much. In my teens doing the drugs I realized that I was using it to escape and so finally quit after a good hard couple years of it. But I never realized the drinking was the same thing to me, mostly because everyone I knew did it. About the only thing anyone I knew did was to go out and get drunk on the weekends, so I did too. Not realizing until many, many years later that I was using it in the same way I'd used the drugs.

But all in all I mostly found myself expressing myself in many different ways, some of it being used as an escape so I felt more free, but most of it being very beneficial to me becoming who I am now, and I like myself.

In 1988-89 I did drag, only for about 9 months to a year but and when I was in drag I was very often on acid as well, but let me tell you I had a good time. I've recently seen some pics of myself and I always seem to have a sourpuss look on my face, but at the time I was ecstatic, I guess it just didn't show outwardly. I was expressing myself as much as I could doing the drag, having emotions show up as well, well that was just asking too much! ahahaha!!!

After that I started studying wicca, it was popular at the time in certain circles and made a lot of sense to me since I loved being out in nature so much. To worship nature just made sense. To see the god or the goddess in each thing and at different times of the year came easy to me, and was most likely the precursor to my current explorations with Sanatana Dharma (more popularly known as Hinduism). That last until I came crashing down at around 22. It seemed as I was living on my own I blossomed more, and when I would make my way to living back home or in the area that was known as home at the time I became more reserved and tame.

Just a couple examples of how I stepped into different aspects of myself in my youth. There were many incarnations of me and still many more to come I would assume, but now I'm probably the most happy and have the least amount of stuff I've ever had. I'm going to India regularly, which inspires me to allow more and more of the real me out, I teach yoga for a living and love it, I actually live a very disciplined life now with the yoga and the times I go to bed and get up, the rituals I use in my daily life, the way I eat, the type of things I'll use on my skin even. But I feel more free than ever, and less "normal" than ever.

Nowadays it would seem that normal is less in style than it ever was anyway, which makes me excited. Even though I still see a lot of stifling of our true selves out there, its more vogue to let it out now than ever before and I embrace that. In fact I'll go so far as to say I think its the discipline of the yoga and the awareness I try to bring to everything in my life that allows me to be more free, and I hope that those I teach the method to also can feel that coming forth from themselves more as well.

So, as I named the article, is your freak flag flying? If not, why not? What more can you do to let loose of the bounds of your inner being so more of the real you comes forth? How can I help you, if at all? How can anyone help you? Can you in fact, help yourself? Are you worried about what others will think? I was, but I don't let that stop me anyway. I have lots of fear, but still go ahead and do the thing. Can you care less about what others think? It's okay to do so. You can love and care about people and still not allow their opinions to control you. Will you start today allowing your inner freak to fly?

As RuPaul says "if they ain't paying your bills, pay them bitches no mind!" Great advice from a very tall drag queen in his mid 50's who happens to be the most gorgeous woman many of us have ever seen. Take that advice and run with it!

Integrating

Well, I've been back for, oh my, only two and a half weeks. But damn it feels like months and months, how can that be?

I'm using all the skills in my arsenal to keep my mind in a good place and I think I'm doing it but there are some major things I'm missing. The food, I miss the food, I don't even want the options that I have here. I just love the local food in Mysore, I may not have at first, but its become what my body craves. I've written about it many times so I won't elaborate any further.

Biggest thing I miss is the temples. I've never been a religious person so I'm not sure why this became so important to me but I'm going to write a bit and see if I can't work through it.

When I was young and had moved away from home, to St. Louis. It was probably 1989 or 1990, I was invited to go to some gatherings that I realized were coven meetings and so began to explore the life of a Wiccan. I loved that it was practical and put you in touch with the cycles of the moon, with the ruling of the god during the winter and the goddess during spring and summer, which was my first foray into the divine feminine and masculine, I'd never thought of them as options before.

When you start breaking down the aspects of the divine it seems to be easier to relate to it as something "real" or something more tangible than you'd thought before. Not some old man with a white beard living on a golden chair up in the clouds, but as something that is part of the trees surrounding you, the ground and grass you're walking on, the stream you just hopped over... It was a revelation to me to start seeing it this way.

Some years before that in like 5th grade maybe I'd studied Greek mythology and when I became Wiccan, or was around them for a few years, I realized that this was maybe another version of these gods I'd studied as a very young person. So things started to click.

Now that I'm older, I'd been to India, been reading about the gods over there since 1999 or 2000, but it some 14 years after that, I watch the show Vikings. Known for their violence I wasn't that interested but once I realized how spiritual they were, they were doing almost everything to please their gods, I started studying up on Norse mythology. I didn't realize I'd known a lot of it because as a child I'd read so many comics and Thor and Odin and Valkyrie were always in the Marvel universe and their stories in there corresponded to the stories I read in the Poetic Edda. Sids note, that is how I began an interest in Greek mythology too, the Marvel and DC comics also included a lot of Greek Gods.

So on further reading about the Norse gods, reading their stories I felt they were very similar to the Indian Gods, and they were. Other than the fact that each Indian god has so many aspects and each aspect has a different name and depending on what region of the continent you're in they have different names, so it ends up being in the hundreds of thousands of gods and names for them. So when I went back to India last fall I really had a different story going on my head about their religion. It had connected itself back to my pagan roots and so therefore I was much more interested in exploring it. Plus this trip I would be living with a very spiritual Indian who had a degree in religious studies, so even more opportunity for me to explore some of that stuff.

And that I did. I was very interested in the Ganesh temple I'd gone to often the last trip, so started by that. Then I discovered there is a little temple behind that one that people also visited and it was to the Nava Graha, the embodiments of the nine planets. Which led me to discovering there's always a peepul tree around almost every temple and there is always a naga garden around the peepul trees. Then I started thinking about Shiva, who I'd always been drawn to and where I could find s Shiva temple, then I found one and had a most profound experience in it when they began playing the drums and blowing the conch shell as part of the opening ceremony. In the Shiva temple there was also a murthi(statue of the god imbued with the aspects of that divine being) for Parvati, Shiva's consort, so I studied her, found out she was also known by many other names depending on the deeds she had done, one of them being Chamunda for which a humongous temple was there on top of Chamundi Hill where she was supposed to have slain a few demons.

This all led me back to a book someone had given me the last trip, Yogic Secrets of the Dark Goddess, which was all about Kali and her aspects but also applied to the divine feminine or Devi as they call her there, and so I reread that book while there. I also discovered that when I would enter temples solely dedicated to the Devi, no matter which aspect or version of her it was for, that the energy would be very different, much more palpable. Almost dense and it would change you while in there if you stayed long enough and were open to it. This is originally why I kept going back into that little Ganesh temple in Gokulam, because the energy was just that different in there. Well, his mothers energy was that much stronger and intense and through this exploration I found out that the shakti is where all the strength and power are, the Shiva, or the male aspect of divine energy, is the calm centered focus and its really in the balance of the two that you thrive. I also read the Devi Mahatmyam, all the stories of the Devi slaying asuras or demons and her deeds that made her great which made me realize she really is the powerful aspect of the gods, the male is the less active, calmer quieter part of it all. Does that make me Goddess worshipper?!? Maybe so! haha...

Then I discovered through my chanting teacher that there are different gods favored to be worshipped on each day of the week and so figured out which one was for each day, then also realized that many of the days of the week were named after Norse gods and that linked them back to my earlier studies. Through this process I discovered some gods or devas as they are called in India, that I'd never heard of and so studied their stories.

Each one I found a temple for and slowly started integrating going to that temple that certain day of the week where it was auspicious to worship said god. This process was a very slow unfolding over the course of the 4 months that I was there, and was just at its peak when it was time for me to leave so its been something that I keep exploring now that I'm home, not in a physical way because there is only one Hindu temple here and it houses many many different gods, but its also pretty far out in the county, so is not super accessible to drive to each day.

So keeping this worship going even though its in my bedroom at home, rather than out in a temple where many hundreds of people visit the deity each day and bring that energy with them, has actually helped me integrate back here. Not in the same way I did before at all, but in the way that I'm bringing who I've slowly become over this last trip to bear here, I'm not trying to go back to who I was before I left, and I think I was doing that before. This time I'm allowing the new me to become more full here. What an interesting concept, evolving. And yet I am doing that, but also its brought me back to my old pagan roots, coming full circle and I feel more whole. Not complete because to me that would be when I'm ready to leave this body, never complete, but whole none the less.

Yes, I'm missing the food, I'm missing being able to walk everywhere and have grown a big distaste for driving even though I'm fine doing it all day long because I have to, I'm missing that being closer to the earth that walking gives you, so I go to the park and walk (but can't wait until it warm enough to do it barefoot to feel the earth under my feet), and I'm missing my temples but am remembering the old pagan ways of just worshipping those gods within the trees, or the ground, or the streams themselves instead. So its bringing a new depth to my worship. Starting to finally experience and see everything as sacred is good, and is making me happier, and yes helping me integrate...

I'm back

Most of you know I'm back in the Midwest. I've been here since last Wednesday, so just over a week. When I flew in my mom picked me up and I went to her house and stayed there until the weekend, to visit with family and just have adjustment time as well. I really enjoyed it oddly enough, I've not enjoyed going to that area formerly known as "home" for many years, but this time I enjoyed being there and spending three days with my mom, grandma and my sister and her family.

Then Saturday I came back into the city, my mom lives on the Illinois side of the river, and started the process of settling in. Settling in used to be something different to me. I used to need to get all the things in all the right places in the room or apartment or wherever I was staying. That just didn't seem to be so this time. I had moved stuff into a friends basement and when I got here I was thinking I'd move quickly into unpacking and getting things all set up around the room I'm staying in, but I wasn't so concerned with that this time. Maybe India had a more profound effect on me than I'd even realized?

Settling in didn't seem to need to happen. Is it because I've decided to get rid of all of my stuff and move to India on my next trip? Or maybe if that's not a possibility as I move through the summer here and check on things, move somewhere else? Hmmm, maybe so. But I don't think that's it at all.

In my past trips I've felt very much depressed when I got home, almost overwhelmingly emotional and distraught at being back here. Not because I hate it here, but because I just love Mysore so much more and the people of India are hard to get out of your heart as well. This trip I didn't feel that way. I felt content, is that the right word?!? I guess so. Content. And most would probably associate contentment with having all the things you want or need in your life, but this type of contentment is the type they talk about in the Yoga Sutras, Santosha. Was I, or rather, am I, actually feeling an inner sense of peace and contentment? I think so yes.

I'm not super happy by any means, but I'm also not super sad at all. I'm somewhere in the middle. As I saw this last week friends posting pics from Mysore and from Varanasi where many went for Sivaratri, a big holiday celebrating the god Shiva, I felt great seeing them, but not sad that I wasn't still there. Now maybe this sense of contentment in seeing these things and not being jealous came from the knowledge that I'm planning to live in India and will get to be back in these experiences soon enough. Okay, that sounds plausible...

I'm still off this week and hanging out with friends and catching up. But also am lining up teaching gigs. My Mysore program starts next week, the Tower Grove Farmers Market yoga class starts April 16th, I'm leading a night as part of a local teacher training introducing people to Ashtanga, my five week intro series is coming up, my Wash U med students class starts in two weeks, I'm teaching at Whitfield School next Tuesday. Then another more interesting thing came up. I was telling one friend many different stories from my temple exposures, Vedic Astrology experiences and the studying I'd done on the gods in Hinduism over there and she asked me to teach a workshop on this stuff. I was like, hmmmm, what sort of thing would this be? So I saw her again another day and we talked about what it could be and then came up with something that I think I'm more excited about than I have been in a long time about anything. That's to come in early May, keep your eyes open for it. But know that I'm excited about it and when I put it out there on Facebook I got a great response to it, so it should be pretty much fun.

So, I'm home, got a lot of exciting stuff lined up and its not so bad as I thought it'd be. Not that I don't like it here, its my home and always will be, but you know, I love India! But I'll be back in her womb soon enough, so time to enjoy and be fully present here in the Lou, see you all soon!!!