Why I practice...

I just finished a book a friend wrote about his deep immersion into drugs and alcohol in his early life to help him deal with emotions, or rather really cover them up, because that's what they do. His journey through that and out the other side which led him to Ashtanga Yoga and that path.

This has me thinking a lot about how I got here.

So I remember when I was young wanting to know God. I remember we went to church so much, or so it seemed, and sat, bored, listening to the preacher yell at us about how we're bad people and going to hell but we were supposed to still work our asses off to not to go to hell, even though we basically were anyway. I know, I know, but this is how I remember it. I also remember being in Sunday School, where we were broken down into smaller groups by age and taught about the lessons Jesus' story had to teach us. That I resonated with more, mostly because he seemed like a nicer person and wasn't always upset with us. He was trying to teach us how to be a nicer person, not scare the shit out of us. I also remember around puberty age I loved going because my Sunday School teacher was hot, and yes I know, but because I was a super hormonal teenager this meant a lot to me and because he was so hot to me I listened to him and took the lessons to heart because I knew he did. So it was a good thing.

I remember them showing us terrible movies about the rapture and how God was going to take some people and leave others and the awful things that happened to those left behind, there were two but I only remember one of them being named "A Distant Thunder." It was good, but it scared me to death so I made a pact with myself that I would be a better person and follow Jesus' example so as not to be left behind and if I were anyway I would be stronger for it. This is where the real thread begins. This pact with myself was really about always working to connect to that God that I knew lived inside of me and live as authentically from this place as I could, although those words weren't there for it back then, but I'm typing from who I am today so now they're there!

This was my basic existence for many years, not including getting shit a lot at school for being gay, even though at the time I didn't know that I was only that for sure, I dated lots of girls. They were always drawn to me, probably because I was in touch with a deeper thing inside that now I call my feminine side but then didn't have the words for it. And in dating so many I realized that I like boys in that way. I still loved girls, they were great friends, they could be beautiful and we could be close to one another, but for intimacy purposes, it was boys for me. I realized that in about 10th grade, right after I'd had a tumultuous relationship with a girl who I'd gone to my first prom with.

I also remember the tv show "That's Incredible" having a yogi on it periodically who would wind himself up into a ball in a clear glass box, his breathing would slow and eyes close and he would stay in there the whole show and come out unscathed at the end of the hour. This impressed me and stuck in my mind. Ever since then I'd been drawn to sadhus, a sadhu is a man, or woman, in India who drops out of society and becomes initiated into the life of a person who wants to experience God in all things, in all circumstances, in every area of life. This is not something I knew at the time, but I remember that yogi and equated him with he sadhus I saw in later life.

The biggest thing I remember is that I had seen "Terms of Endearment" and loved it, being a young gay, emotional man, this was all I needed to exist. A movie that validated all those things I had going on inside. I also loved Shirley Maclaine's character in it because she wasn't so good at showing her emotions and through the sickness and eventual death of her daughter learned how to express herself. And so I thought I could too. So when I saw a movie miniseries advertised to be on local tv called "Out on a Limb" which she was starring in, I of course wanted to watch it. I didn't know it was based on one of her books, and was based on her experiences of life and truths she had come to believe. Rather this was the journey of her seeking to find her truth through different means than going to church and listening to the preacher yell at her. My preacher had recently commented to me that my hairdo made me look like Boy George, which I took as a compliment, but which he didn't mean as a good thing, so I was quite disillusioned with the church at this time. So this 4 night program sounded like it was just up my alley.

In watching it I found out she really believed these things, and also that there were many in world, in fact millions, who also believed them and lived their lives this way. So there were tons of other paths to find God than the only one I'd known my whole life? Yes, and they were more interesting. But they also went against everything I'd been taught and almost everyone I knew at this time would disagree with them as well, should that stop me? Nah, I was very shy but also a button pusher, so why shouldn't I give this search a try? I should, and so I did.

That led me to, after I'd moved out in 1988, to start partying. Mostly as a means to dull all these things I was thinking and feeling, but also to experience a different lifestyle than the one I'd grown up in. Being Baptist, where I would often pray to be Catholic because they at least got out of school for weird reasons, but also were allowed to drink, dance and have fun. But also I was still searching for something.

I met a fellow and his girlfriend who were bisexual and he and I began a sort of relationship. They identified as Wiccan, which most would call Witch, but Wiccan made more sense to me since it connected them to nature, and to worshipping a God and a Goddess, depending on which time of the year it was, and didn't connect them to Christianity. Being a Witch at a certain time in our history was a bad thing if you were a Christian, and I was done thinking about Christianity so wanted to distance myself. So therefore found books on Wiccan ceremonies and rituals and started doing them at home, invoking spirit through the God or Goddess. This also led me to find a coven and we only went a few times because I found that I believed the way I wanted to and it worked better doing it on my own. This also led me to meditating although I didn't label it that at the time. Then on a vacation I found a book on Kundalini and the Chakras at an alternative bookstore and it sounded like it went along with the Wicca, but little did I know it was also laying the foundation for my explorations in the teaching of the further east than the Pagans came from, but I believe is just an extension of them and as they spread further west they just changed and evolved into a different thing, but from the same root.

This slowly left my life as drinking and experimenting with drugs grew more and more to the forefront of my life and so the 90's became a blur slowly. Actually, not too much of a blur, but just a story for another time. I'd been through many, many incarnations of who I was already, so a few more happened. But not to be expounded upon in this message.

Late 90's, I'd found a friend who had found Shirley Maclaine's books and was asking me about them because she noticed I had them as well, and so I pulled them back out and reread them again. We in turn took a trip to New Mexico with the intention of going to this spiritual healer that Shirley herself had been to, and still went to. We even found the place but found out how fucking expensive all the spiritual services were and said no way, we'll just stay in town and party instead, and so we did. But that started rekindling the spark of my search for God.

So when Madonna came out in public about studying Kabbalah and doing yoga and me being the proper gay man who loved Madonna and had grown up with her as an advocate for us, I listened. I also remembered a friend who had begged me to come to a yoga class with him at his college in the early 90's. So when I finally took a yoga class in late 1999 it awakened something within me that I'd never really had touched upon before, but it was very similar to the feelings of searching for God and trying all these religions and studying different philosophies did, for some reason. I couldn't understand why it did, because it was basically a physical exercise, so why would it spark interest in God? I had no clue at the time about yoga, just that it was something from further east than I'd studied before. So I found out from an article that she was practicing Ashtanga Yoga and so I called all the yoga places listed in the yellow pages and found one that taught that. Went and the rest was history. Also, the lady who taught the class was the same one who'd been teaching my friend at his college that he was trying to get me to go to. Synchronicity?

I've written a lot about my yogic path, in fact this blog was started as part of it back in the mid 2000's only under a different name, Yogi in the Mud. Mud denoted St. Louis and their Mississippi mud, but also that the mentality of the people in this area was as if they were buried in the mud. When I realized that focusing on that was stifling my growth I changed it being in the Sun. Being in the light of transformation. Sounds cheesy? Maybe, but it's the truth. I want to stand in my own light and hopefully lead by example of my life.

After many trips to India I now realize I'm still in this for the business of searching for God. My last trip in particle took me closer than I've been, partially due to my exploration of temples and the deities housed in them and what they stand for. But partially because I realized that all of that is really an internal exploration. I'm exploring these ideas of things outside myself so that I can really experience them within myself. Yes within my body, yoga is a perfect vehicle for that. It moves you into corners of your physical body you've never been in, but also uses the breath to connect that corner back to your mind and deeper to your inner being through tapping into your emotions as well.

SO all this God stuff I've been looking for all these years is really inside? Yes, but it's also outside. We are manifestations of that, but so is everything in our existence. The trees at the park, the neighbor out mowing her lawn, the rocks in the stream, the stream itself. Even Starbucks, yes, the chai I drink every morning is a reflection of how I'm feeling inside. Depending on me that day those things looks differently, so they are me, and I'm them? I think so, but I'm no expert.

I think I'll just keep on looking for it. At one point I'll realize I don't need to look anymore, and maybe by saying that I've already realized that, but I enjoy the looking. I enjoy praying at at Hindu temple to the Goddess and feeling her energy light me up from the inside. I enjoy walking in the park and feeling the flowers bloom, and the leaves budding out and seeing the stream flow as birds light to have a drink in it and seeing this hot guy walking his dog nearby (I've oddly seen him every day for the past two weeks no matter what time I'm there, that I also believe is God in the works) and just feeling amazing as I walk in the fresh air and people walking the opposite way can see and feel that and smile and say good morning.

These to me are all instances of God in my life. As the Yoga has made me more aware on the mat, I've become more aware in daily life and so from that am having a fuller experience just living. So why do I practice? I named this entry Why I Practice... I practice so that I can see God in myself, so that I can God in everything, including you, and including every experience I'm having every day. That's why...