Do we ever stop fucking up...?

I'm at the end of my time here in Germany again and was looking forward to getting to Mysore, getting settled back in my house, even looking forward to dealing with the registration line with Sharath, often it's not so bad and the anticipation can be a lot but I enjoy being in his company so am always ready for it.

So was at the dinner with the owners of the shala I come here to teach for and they presented me with the amount of money and a chart of how much I made from each thing and what it added up to and then that I'd drawn against it quite a bit and so the actual pay I received was not very much.

Now, I knew I was drawing against the pay. I tend to always do this since I just live on what I make as I make it and don't have a storehouse of money anywhere. But this time I'd fucked up and not paid attention to a point that now I cannot afford to pay for my practice time with Sharath and my rent and living expenses all together. So, what the hell to do? Of course as is usual for me I freaked out inside, tore myself a new asshole from the inside out (figuratively) because I always give myself money troubles but I haven't done that since I've been traveling and teaching the past few years. And now I've dug myself into a hole and not sure how to get out of it. Of course I'm being a bit dramatic and realised this this morning as I'm walking down the Ring Road here and seeing all the homeless sleeping on the street. I'm okay, and I know it, but how and why do I always do this to myself? But thankfully I talked to quite a few friends who are in Mysore right now who made me feel better about the possibilities that I'm still going to practice with him and it will all work out. Then I started seeing a brighter day ahead. Then I can't check into my first flight on the route back, but it checked me into the second flight. WTF?!? Why is this happening? Am I not supposed to go back to Mysore? Maybe I'm supposed to stay in Germany, learn German and just live here and teach. Sharath listed me in Germany on his KPJAYI list anyway, maybe that was prophetic? Hahahaha. Of course I don't think it's all this but my mind goes to the drama first. Now I'm calmed down about that.

Everything else all day seemed to go very wrong, even the man making my pizza down near the Dom couldn't get the pizza into the oven, it took 5 tries lol. Again, wtf?!?

When you seeing "wrong" then you keep seeing more wrong, not anything possibly right. So you have to take the time to shift your perceptions to a new angle and then look again at it. And probably this is just the universal mother testing me again to make sure I keep letting go and allowing the flow to happen. She knows what I want and the better way to get it to me than I could have imagined so she's able to do this, get me lined back up and able to receive the blessings she has waiting for me. At least that is the way I'll choose to look at this so I can keep myself in a good place, not go down the rabbit hole of doom and gloom.

So, next time you hear from me I'll be back in Mysore typing from my bed and we'll see how this all turned out. I can't sit and worry about it anymore or I'll go crazy, and no, I'm still not sure how it's all going to work out but to go back to what I've said in previous entries, I have a lot of faith and this time it took me hearing those exact words from a friend to get me to remember that I know I have a lot of faith and it always carries me through, when I allow it to!

See you soon, live and love your life!

Hungry...

Do you ever go through phases where you're just hungry for more?

For me right now that means more reading scriptures, more reading about Kali, then putting that into play in pooja, more pooja, more chanting, can't wait to practice my asanas each morning, more intensity, more heat, more.. just more everything!

Right now I'm sweating a lot, I'm reading a lot, I am chanting louder, I am using fire and water more than ever in my rituals, I am studying more, reading sutras from many different scriptures, seeing how they feel to me, putting them into play in my life, teaching and the teaching is more intense right now, enjoying that intensity more than ever. I just want all of it and to push it into me somehow.

I know this may sound ridiculous to some of you but this is the phase I'm in right now. I often go through this phase when I'm not in India because when I'm there things are automatically more intense so I don't have to work at it so much. I suppose I don't have to work at it so much now either, I'm just an intense person so it will likely always be this way with me.

I just read an article by someone I know from Mysore and her love of the intensity of practicing there and assisting there and all of it. I have applied to assist Sharath when I'm practicing with him in August and thought I'd have heard by now if I can or not, but if I don't before I register I will ask him then and hopefully be able to. I to love the idea of this type of intensity, learning and teaching and the circle of all of that.

I teach for a living, but I also learn from each student and from each situation. I think if I was not also open to learning, that I thought I knew it all already, then I would be a shitty teacher. And I don't think I'm a shitty teacher, but maybe I'll ask some of them, maybe I am a shitty teacher hahahaha!

As I go back to India very soon, I'll be there about 2 weeks early before I get to start practicing, and will be there again for the Guru Purnima celebration at the shala. I attended last year even though I was not practicing there and so hope I am able to again this year, and this year I have a kurta to wear to it. I imagine that those same days will be registration for classes since it's near to the end of the month this year. So that will begin the process for me.

But maybe since I"m already missing India so much again that I'm bringing the intensity now? I hope so and that I can maintain it without bursting into flames, or that it calms down before I go so I can get a bit of respite before it starts again!

This next few months looks to be intense already from a glance anyway, India now, practicing and hopefully assisting Sharath for a month, then traveling around to Kolkata, Assam, Varanasi, Uttarkashi, then back to Germany for another month intensive of teaching, then back to Goa for a month or so of practicing with Sharmila Desai again, then to assist Harmony at Purple Valley Yoga in Goa. And to top it off I'm working on booking things for next year already, which is new for me, and I've already got temple tours and things booked for when I arrive in Mysore in 2 weeks, and a couple people to do private lessons with and possible taking German lessons while there. Whoo......!

I think I'll survive though, when I'm in the intensity I grow and expand and become so much more than I ever thought I could be and I glow. I thrive in this state, so I'm glad to be here.

Life is an adventure and I'm very happy to be actively moving forward in it, rather than passively allowing it to whip me around as I was when I was younger.

Thank you!

Rebirthing oneself...

Do you ever feel stuck? Like stuck in a way that feels like something is squeezing you and all your shit is coming out, hopefully not literally but only figuratively? And you know things are coming to a head, but you just don't know what to do about it?

I've been feeling this way to a small degree since I was in St. Louis, but here in Germany since I kicked my practices all back into high gear it was feeling like the pressure was on. Pressure as in coal being squeezed into a diamond, not peer pressure or something like that. Although that can end up being the same thing often.

So yesterday I was reading my new book and then wrote in my journal, all in the morning before teaching (Saturdays is at 9am so I can get finished early with all my rituals and go have a chai and chill before instead of after class). I usually just write in stream of consciousness so I never know what will come out or where I will end up, and so I was doing this and came to conclusion from past impressions that at this time I am having another growth spurt. A period where all the work I've done and all the time I've spent on integrating it comes to a head and boom, it starts making sense, or its a big transition so it feels like a very large baby trying to fit through a very tight hole and oftentimes those holes rip or need an episiotomy so that the mothers vagina doesn't rip open. Either way a very painful process and we on the inside coming out feel as we'll we might be dying.

Dramatic I know, but I am dramatic so I'm not going to calm it down for this entry haha!

So, I've been drawn a lot over the past year to just let go of everything and live as a sadhu, throw my passport in the Ganga (and yes if you've known me for the past year it's likely I told you the story about the German guy in Rishikesh who did just this, and it inspired me so I use it often) and just going to be a wild man in the Himalayas. And now that I'm reading about all this folk tantra and how they do things in the villages as Goddess worshippers who believe in magic and those types of things I'm even more inspired and this wild man that lives inside me is wanting to come out.

Often lately I've also referred to this inner being as a big, fat lady. She likes to eat a lot and she is wild and living mostly naked and by her instincts and she is a magical creature that is magnificent. So whichever you want to think of it as, it's wanting out. And to deny this part of myself is to be blocking the flow of energy in me and in my life which is not something I want to do or enjoy doing when I end up allowing myself to do so.

Teaching here has been more magical and I feel like a sorcerer moving energy around the room and am enjoying it more than usual, but my physical body has been having limitations mostly due to my mental ideas of where I am in my practice. And then I remember last summer living in India and just giving up and not caring anymore, and then boom pasasana became easy all of a sudden and I was doing it easily for 4 months, even the 5th month when I came back to Germany and it was colder and raining I still had it mostly, until I got locked up in my mind with different ideas about how my body should be, then I lost it again and have not completely gotten it back again since. Now in two weeks I head back to India again and will be there a couple month before coming back to Germany so am working on letting these ideas go again. They are not serving me and in not serving me are restricting me from serving others more fully.

Since it's my mind that's doing it, the body is the same it gets more frustrating. And when frustrated there is more and more that builds up and becomes some"thing" rather than just staying a mental impression that should be easy to get rid of...

Anyhow, this is where I am. Once I realised this is what's happening the process seems to have exacerbated, which is cool because it means the new me will be here soon. And it won't be different than the old me, it'll just be a new thing integrated into my mental emotional impressions of existence and hopefully make me better for it. We'll see...lol