In love...

Can one just be simply in love as a state of being? Not in a specific type of love with a person, just in love in general?

I was just driving down the street and here the cherry blossoms are in full bloom everywhere, the sun is out today, its cool and I just had a great, locally made chai. I realised I love it here, but then I loved it the last few places I've been, and I fell in love with people a lot lately, and not just romantically speaking, with people. These students here are great, the other people I've met are great.

I think my time in Goa had a more profound effect on me than I'd realized. It cleared out some things within me that I'd not worked through yet. I feel really good, even when I'm depressed or down, I know it's just what it is at that moment and will change. I know this is true about almost anything, but here I am noticing it finally.

I don't have a lot to say about it, just wanted to write it down and acknowledge it. That it is a possibility in my life. Not one I ever thought would happen, but one I've worked towards. I've always thought of equanimity as the biggest goal in my life, not that I'm big on goals but that was one that I thought yoga seemed to be about, so I set out many years back with that idea in my mind.

Maybe being in love is reaching just the tiniest part of equanimity. If you can be okay no matter where you are, when you are and how you are then that is it, right? So have I reached "IT"??? Maybe, but I'm quite sure, like everything else, it's not a permanent state, but a place to reach for at all times. There will be things that throw me out of it and hopefully being in this place now will make it easier to tap back into that when it seem elusive again.

For now, I'm feeling the love, and that is also a relative term, but for me I mean it in the unconditional sense. I've been noticing lately when I add conditions to how I feel to qualify the feelings, and I stop it and see if I can step back and feel it for what it is, it's a nice super power, hope it lasts.

Anyhow, go enjoy your day. New Jersey is sunny/partly cloudy, warm and cool intermittently, in full bloom and calm on this Sunday afternoon. Whether where you are is like this or not, can you still feel the love for it?

Open in the U.S...

It seems like everything is conspiring to keep me open these days. What does that mean?

To me it means open hearted, open minded, just open. Not closed off in my ideas of things and the way I think they should be. Don't should on yourself...

I tend to fall into patterns of "shoulding" and it's not good. In fact I think all of us do this. I'm experiencing that here in New Jersey, I experience it almost everywhere I go. Except in Goa.

In Goa just recently I was practicing with a very open hearted and loving teacher, who gives her everything to you and in her room you feel inspired to give your everything to your practice, but not in a pushing sort of way, in a allowing sort of way. Yes, I'm open to more of this happening, and so then it does once you've relaxed your mind around the idea that it can happen. But I wrote many times about my experiences with her.

My roommate there also was very open and ready to have any experience she believed god was throwing at her, and that's very inspiring to me also because I often close myself off. I may seem open to many people, but that really just shows you how closed off you are lol, I'm closed off for me, but I see it and open back up.

In Goa I met a guy that I never would have been open to meeting before, not because he was dark skinned, which he was, he is, not for any superficial reasons like that. But because I felt something stir when we chatted, which is a big sign that ohhh, this is different. We then met in person and took a long drive together, went to the sea and swam, ate lunch, spent many hours snogging, shagging, talking, more talking, snuggling, more talking, and boom. 10 hours go by and you just don't realise it. My friend there said "what were you doing yesterday I didn't see you anywhere all day long!" I said "oh, I had a date, it lasted about 10 hours." He then said "ummm, 10 hours isn't a date honey, that's love..."

Was it love? Well, maybe, but not the attached, can't live without you or I'll slit my wrists, can't let you out of my sight type of love. So maybe I'm in a new place about love. There it is again, the universe took that day to show me where I"d been closed off again and boom, took it away from me. Now you're going to be open about this too bitch, it said, hahahaha! And I am.

I am still in touch with this person, and one other who I was already dating a bit in Mysore, and the idea of being with someone now is not a bad thing to me. In fact it goes well with how my life is right now. Flying here and teaching, flying there and teaching, settling in one spot for some months, then moving again and again, then settling. This type of understanding of what love is or can be is really conducive with the traveling lifestyle. But it's not just that, it's the being open to love that's the really powerful thing, being open altogether is really where it is anyway.

After that time in Goa with Sharmila, a certified Ashtanga teacher, I came to New Jersey and lived with another certified Ashtanga teacher, Kino, both are well known and for very different reasons. But both are very valid in their devotion and dedication to this method of yoga practice and have many things to offer their students, and both are very open. So in being around them, having conversations with them and practicing in their rooms you are affected by their openness.

I originally wanted to write one entry about being back in the U.S. and how strange everything feels, and then another one comparing the two different teachers I'd just spent time with and how their teachings are amazing in very different ways, but right now in this state of being very open I'm finding I want to focus on the sameness we all share, on the oneness that is possible to see if one just looks for it. We are all trying to do our best, and we all are doing our best at that moment but the fact that it's very different from one another makes it seem less than, or more than, but it's really not. I am where I am at this moment, and I have this much to give to the moment. Whereas you are where you are and have that much to give, maybe if you qualify it it seems less than, or more than mine, but it's not. It's just yours and yours is yours and mine is mine, and even though it sound like I'm separating them in that they are the same. I can give this to you, you can give that to me and we can meet in the space where it overlaps.

But so many of us want more, I want more. She wants more. He wants more. But I really don't want more. It's not your job to fulfil me, it's my job to open up as much as possible and allow fulfilment to happen from my connection, and connection happens when we're open, not when we're not. I saw it at the Kino event, many of the attendees don't even practice Ashtanga regularly so don't have an inkling how the system really works, and it does work well, so they are wanting to talk to her and suck up her energy, and she's willing to give it. Maybe because she created this phenomenon single handedly and she knows it, but she has done her practice for as many years as I have mine and so has this openness and is connected. So she has a lot to give. Sharmila give her whole self in the Mysore room, and is a bit enigmatic outside of it. Not that she's not open and loving, but she is not a big public persona so doesn't have to be out there in the same way Kino is, but she is still out there in her garden working, accessible most of the day at her shala, or rather on the surrounding property. Both are amazing and both have much to give, but very different, but the same, but different.

So this to me is what a yogi is, someone who is in definite connection with their energy at all times, in charge of it, knowing when to be alone to recharge, keeping their practices going so as to maintain the level of energy needed to live the life they've created for themselves. And I'm working on this being my life. I'm here, I'm teaching, I'm connecting with the students quite deeply, which is the only way I know how to do it, and giving of myself, then taking other parts of my day to practice, to check out, to go see a movie, to eat and replenish this body, to be quite, to chant, to bathe, to whatever it takes to keep in balance. And whatever it takes to stay as open as possible so that I can be away which thing is needed when and how to go about it in the most efficient manner.

This entry may seem all over the place but to me it's not. I just saw a movie that made me think about relationship and the ones I've had recently, I was already thinking to write about being back in the U.S., although I didn't talk too much about that so maybe it will be another entry, and I wanted to write a post about Sharmila and Kino and my experiences with them. So I just threw it all in and opened up to allow it to come out however it did, and it feels right to me for me right now.

How open are you? Open enough to just write a stream of consciousness blog post with all your shit in it? Open enough to be a helping hand when it's needed for others, or for yourself? Open enough to know when your connection is waxing or waning? Open enough to say love to someone be it a family member, friend or someone you are having sex with, or just began dating? Love is a good word. It's been corrupted a lot lately but I still think it's synonymous with being open, if you can feel it that's a good start, if you can feel it and say it, that's even better, but if you can show it in all your deeds, that's the best. Strive to be that open!

Tapasya...

Lately my practice has been feeling like tapas. Now you may be wondering why I'm referring to Spanish appetisers, but that is not what I'm talking about. Tapas is short for the title of this entry, tapasya. An intensity of spirit when a personal sadhana gets deeper and your commitment to it gets set. Then it becomes tapas. So when you feel the urge to commit to a practice, not just asana mind you, and then to make it a transformational thing involving your spirit or the deepest part of your inner being.

When I went to Goa to practice with Sharmila Desai it was to kick myself in the butt with my practice of asana. I already mostly have a strong connection to a daily spiritual practice involving chanting, pooja, devotion and such but when I get asana involved at that same level, the whole thing becomes even more and as much as I may complain when it gets deep that is really where I love it to be.

I have a lot of judgment about things. I swore I'd never fall in love again(with someone in human form, only with God), I swore many, many things actually now that I start to list them, so I just won't. I like to judge things and put them in a little box in my mind and so there they can be nice and neat and not bugging me unless I take them from their slot and open that particular box. But India being the hottest of chaos that it is often reminds me that no, this type of thing is not acceptable. Those boxes will be thrown off the truck and dismantled completely! lol, and so that began again once I got here on January 28th from Germany, again. How do I forget every time, but I do. I like to think it's because I'm so present that I keep only in focus that which is in front of me, but that's a lie I'm sure. I'm not that good.

And so I set about to redefine my connection to my asana practice after 18 years. It changes quite often but I'd lost touch with how to make it feel spiritual again, and Sharmila showed me how to do that. But this is not about my adoration of her again, it's about what that means when the connection transforms into more and better. I also was shown that there are people out there worthy of being in a relationship with, that it can still be a spiritual thing, so that judgment was also redefined. And others about specific people, things, ideas, all have recently been shown to me as something else now. I guess the point being nothing is one way and we shouldn't believe it will only be that one way always and forever more...lol.

I love it when it's sticky, those areas are where the real work begins. What do I mean by sticky? I mean, when you want to get attached to a certain aspect of it, "judge it" as I say above. IT IS THIS WAY, AND ONLY THIS WAY SHALL IT BE FOREVER MORE! That's a lie and I know it, but it makes me feel more comfortable and safe. But how many times have a I written about my comfort zone and the damage I do to myself and my connection to spirit when I get stuck in this space? Many just in case you don't actually know the answer...

Sticky is when you find a good juicy spot and want to just stay in there, be with it only for a long, long time. Rather than just sucking it up, moving on to the next time when it could be just the opposite and you'll feel fabulous, flowing and with ease. Or then the next time again when it sucks, feels like you're in mud and trying to swim. The best place is when you can sit with whichever of those things comes up and be okay with it. The best tools of doing this within the asana practice is breath, bandhas and dristhi. Systematically keep bringing those things back into focus and they will shift your perception of life all around you, then you are stepping into the area of tapasya, or tapas.

You also have to be willing to take this into even a great, soft, easy space. Looking at it like, oh am I comfortable? Yes, why? And is it going to be me sitting in this for a long time? Yes, okay this time that's okay and then it can kick my butt later, or no, this time I need to be on top of it and move it to a new place so I don't get complacent in my own growth. Hmmm, yes, even in the good times keep a discerning eye on it, dristhi, and focus it back to where it will best serve you. Or not, it's up to you, but those things you're ignoring are not going to go away, they will just get bigger. And if I learned one thing in Goa with Sharmila it was about keeping that in focus... Am I going in the direction I need to be going, bringing will to the flow, and yet still going with the flow. YES! I'm doing my best to do so right now. Am I completely successful all the time? No, but fuck it, I'm doing my best.

Are you? If you're not don't get caught up in judging yourself, just notice and move back in the direction you want your life to go. That's what I'm trying to do with my judgment, of self and others. It feels like its working so far, so keep me in check if you see me, and I'll do the same for you. Or not, but we're still in it together, whether in physical form or not we're all connected so making it the best you can be for that moment only adds to the critical mass that we're all working on, know it or not. Which direction do you want our critical mass to go?!? Up to you...

Slaying the demons!

If you know me on Instagram or Facebook, I post a lot of images depicting the Goddess in her many varied forms slaying demons. In the scriptures it was often she who did the slaying because she symbolized raw, organic power, known as shakti and sometimes it took that to defeat these demons.

The symbolism is that it's an inner battle, not an outer one. Although you can use the images, stories or chanted verses to build up the energy from the outside in to help yourself move past your self-defeating inner voice. I often do this, but you gotta do it until you can feel that she has won, or that the tension has released in your body, that's an indication often than you've moved through the energetic block. Not always meaning its gone, but that you've won the battle for that day at least.

My friend just said to me in a chat "To arrive at true faith, one has to go past collective doubt, pretension and fear." Then continued with a talk about his beloved grandfather moving beyond the trappings of usual tradition and ritual to soothe the pain caused by said tradition, which is amazing and exactly what I want to be able to do with my teaching, with my friendship, with my love for you in any capacity.

This morning I felt a draw to go up Chamundi Hill. Chamundeshwari, more popularly known as Durga (unless you read the Devi Mahatmyam, then Chamunda is Kali specifically, another reason why I like going up there) who in the story defeated the buffalo demon named Mahisasura who was in a tyrannic rule over Mysuru (which is even an Anglicized version of his name, Mahisuru, or Mahisapura. The town being named after him). And she did it on the top of that hill, so there is a big temple up there. There are 1034 steps (although most will tell you 1008, but I've counted them lol) that one can walk up to the top and visit the temple there obtaining the blessings of the Goddess, and then down again. Which symbolizes trekking from the root chakra to the crown chakra cleaning the way of karma and samskaras as you go. Or if you're lazy, you can just drive up and get a similar feeling if you're so inclined to visualise and feel these things releasing.

Anyhow, I went up there, driving slowly, chanting on the way. Thinking of old patterns that were no longer serving me, or my "demons" if you will, and allowing them to fall away as I went. Some were stubborn so as I said in her temple behind her I imagined she coming out and slaying them with all the weapons in all her ten arms and then they becoming a whole part of the energy of myself and the universe. So rather than destroy them, embracing them and what they symbolised for me at that moment, so they become integrated.

I felt very full after this, but then went into the Mahabaleshwara temple behind it, an ancient Shiva temple that was actually there before the Chamundeshwari one was there. I did the same, sat, felt blessed and blissful then left, walking slowly, intentionally, looking people in the eye with a smile and a prayer even sometimes. Got on my scooter and went down the hill, slowly and softly, feeling the peace come over me. Then on the way through town I stopped at my favourite temple in Agrahara and sat and ate the prasadam they offered me, feeling even more cleansed and blessed. I googled this temple in Lakshmipuram that was funded by Pattabhi Jois and went by, finally, I'd been wondering about it for years. It was closed but now I know where it lies so I can visit before I leave next week.

Then finally as I pulled into Gokulam I purchased flowers and went to my little Kali temple, she being the symbol of the most raw, organic, and ancient (Adya in Sanskrit) form of Shakti to finish off the job of clearing myself energetically. And that rawness is why I love Kali, she will do whatever it takes to move past or through the thing you're holding on to. She is a strong, touch, let loving part of your inner self that we all can draw on. Even in this way of visualising, feeling her be there and slicing to shreds these things you're working on. It can happen, not quickly, but a bit at a time. As I did over the last many years, slowly found ways to let go and let god in.

Anyhow, that was my Tuesday so far and it's only 1:30pm, before that I practiced with a friends and helped him with his drop backs and then ate breakfast. So it's been a full one and yet is still not finished. See you soon!

Yoga, not just asana...

I was intending to write a peaceful, loving letter of sorts about this amazing inner space I discovered while in Goa practicing with Sharmila Desai. But instead since I've been back here in Mysore I'm hearing so much about asana, asana, asana and it just made me decide to write about that.

I of course am happy to again be enjoying my asana practice after my time with her, it was getting to be an area of contention for me. Not because I hate them, but because I thought I was getting too old and was just going to have to let go of some of them. My body was having issues doing the full practice daily lately and it gets old having to seemingly fight with your own limbs to get them to make these shapes.

What happened? I changed my relationship with them. Sharmila has a very spiritual and healing approach to the practice, somehow when you arrive in her space you feel very, very calm and allowing. In that state of mind your body opens up and allows more to happen. But also there is an air of magic there, where you feel as if more is possible, as if no, you're not too old. And in my case I just had to let go of caring about the asanas.

Yes, my relationship to them changed in that I now could give a shit less. If I never go further, who cares? If I get stuck and can't do ALL the postures I'm "supposed" to be doing, who cares? And so on... But apparently I did care, I am teaching these asanas so I figure I need to be doing them. But the magic of this specific situation is that when I decided I just don't care anymore, I'm going to breathe, lift my bandhas and focus on my dristhi only (admittedly after a very good conference with Sharmila) and not worry about anything except coming to my mat and doing what I can do with my focus on these things. Then all shifted. And likely it was because of the healing space she has created in her shala there in Goa but that space has been created because she is a healer and wants you to feel whole.

What is feeling whole? It to me is feeling this deep, inner connection within oneself. Having enough faith to listen to the inner voice that we all have and actually do the things that feel like the right things for you that moment. Then being okay with whatever decision you've made, not judging it or having self doubt. These are the things that need to be in full blossom within our lives, not doing Viranchasana A or B from third series, although they can be fun as well, but they are just tools to getting us to feel this way.

People seem to be scared of me as a teacher, I'm not sure why but once people experience the approach I take and realise that I'm just a big teddy bear (no, I mean big, loving and squishy, not a bear like you think I mean lol) then they get over it and are happy. I'm not saying I'm good for everyone, we all have those things we want and connect to in a teacher and I'm certainly not all things to all people. But if you give me a try you usually get all that I've been writing about here.

Sharath was strong with me, but also very soft. If I could hold a posture after he helped me get there, then he let me pass so I'm inclined to do the same, unless I see that the work there would be good for someone. But to me it's so not about these postures, it's about our relationship to ourselves. Once we heal that connection then we can be there more fully for all the other connections we have in our day, in our life. Once you're there fully for yourself, then you can be there more fully for others.

Most people only worry about others, thinking it's selfish to worry about oneself. It was definitely the way I was raised and I'd had arguments with family about how selfish this Hindu stuff seems. No, it's not. If you're a crazy, fucking mess of a sub-human and are trying to help all these others then you usually just bring that crazy, fucked up energy to their life as well. And so, healer, heal thyself. No I can't remember where that quote is from, but you get my point right?

So in what ways can you change your relationship with your asana practice? With yourself? With the way you interact with the outer world? Did you ever think that maybe your outer world is a manifestation of your inner world? Clean that inner world up and see how the outer world changes...

Much love.

Age...postures...yoga?... too many things to list.

I look in the mirror lately and I don't recognise myself. What is changing? I do not know. Do I care if I look old or older? Not really no. I care how I feel, and most days I feel very good and very young. Much younger than I did in my 20s, even most of my 30s.

So why is age on my mind lately? Well, I'm not sure. Often lately I've found myself saying how I'm old or older so my perspective is different, maybe in the saying of it too often I'm creating an old feeling within myself. Who knows.

I was told recently I look like I'm in my 20s, I was also told this week I look in my 40s and one even said I could be 70. That one hurt I think, hurt my ego. My ego doesn't even like that I look in my 40s. Why not? I am in my 40s lol. But that's how the ego works, right? Maybe not, I don't really know anymore. I used to always think I knew everything, now as I'm getting older I realise I don't know a fucking thing!

And that's just fine by me. Knowing things puts you in a position to be "over" other people and I have no desire to be that. I have only a desire to surrender these days. And in that desire I decided to go to see Kali in Dakshineswar and to the Kamakhya temple in Assam. Both are places of high Shakti, divine feminine energy, or rather just energy. Shakti is the fullest expression of it. I also cancelled this trip, convincing myself that I should go to the mountains instead, have a different type of intense time. But I realise now why I was fearful to go. I just think I would have stayed there, in that powerful energy. I have a deep longing to be a Shakta monk, just to worship the goddess and serve in temples of her fiercer aspects.

That may seem crazy to you but until you feel that longing you wouldn't understand so I'm not going to explain any further. Last summer when I was reading Ramakrishna's biography is when I realized that this was the feeling I was having for some time now, just to serve Ma. I also feel like I'm doing this in my Ashtanga Yoga teaching, it's empowering and helps you work through your mental and emotional issues and teaches you to tap into that inner shakti. So it is definitely part of that path.

But this will all work itself out. I even booked my trip to Uttarkashi and then changed it, now going to Goa to practice and with a female teacher whom I respect, so that will be tapping me deeper into both the yoga and the goddess principle. When I come back I'll plan a trip to Dakshineswar and Kamakhya, in the fall probably. That's the cooler time to go there anyway...

This also leads me to postures. I had many posts I wanted to write and didn't want to lump them all in together but I also don't have enough focus today to write many different ones lol, but posture has come up a lot lately. In what way? Well, being stopped seems to be a big focus.

People don't like being stopped at the posture they cannot do. Or rather should I say, their ego doesn't like being stopped. That is how I'll link the age part to this one. Ego is a big thing in society, especially in Western society. It also has been the downfall of empires, so one needs to watch out for it. We are meant to have them, meant to use them, not allow them to use us... Allowing them free reign is where the problems start. But there are tools to get them under control, and in yoga they are many, so we can work with them, rather than allow them to work us any old way.

And as I've mentioned before I had an easier time learning up through middle of third series when I was in my 30s but after a 4 year break and being a decade older than when I was learning that I again began with Pasasana and was stopped here for 3 seasons with Sharath. Of course my first trip I was stopped at Marichasana D and then at Supta Kurmasana for a month and then at drop backs. But Pasasana proved to be my breaking point.

My ego knew that my body had been able to do this before and so was upset that it wasn't happening again this time, so decided to push and push and I had a lot of trouble from this. The trouble was all mental and emotional though, my body faired pretty well. Sharath had wanted me to mostly stay in Primary series so that my back could get open and strong and then add on, and it worked, still is working as I'm doing intermediate I'm doing full primary, not splitting it and its working for me just fine for now. But Pasasana was really the breaking point for my ego and my emotional body.

This process was one of growth though, it was very intense, still can be but I'm definitely gaining a lot from it. Becoming more balanced, becoming more grounded. Any time I leave India I lose Pasasana, not completely, but often I can only still touch fingering rather than bind. And then again it cause my ego big issues lol, not lol when I'm in the midst of it happening but still now at this moment I can laugh about it. But it can cause me much inner turmoil once it goes away again each time. In fact this time back in India it has come back very slowly.

But this isn't about my issues with Pasasana, it's about getting stopped and the ego. Why is it so horrible to be stopped? We're mostly doing the same practice daily anyway for years upon years, the growth happens at these stopping points. It doesn't happen when it's all coming easily to us and is there anything wrong with that? No, not at all, good for you if you're one of those people. But often when every posture comes easily and then you meet one that is hard it really bruises the ego, right? And what is wrong with that? The Western approach is to fulfil the ego fully, which is another type path because then you get to a point where you realise there is no depth and you seek for it. But within Ashtanga Yoga you get handed your ego on a platter often and it hurts, but it only hurts your mind, not you really. and is a point of expansion of the inner self.

Don't skip postures you can't do unless you could always do them and now have gotten older or have an injury or something. Embrace where you are and be there, not looking for something new, just being with what is, okay? This can be yoga.

Yoga is the union of the inner self with the outer self, the union of me and you, the uniting of whatever two things or more you are attempting to bring together. It really means a yoke, to yoke the oxen to the cart, so it can even be just the physical aspect, such as the asana. And in the asana it is mostly about your mind, your emotions and your body all coming into sync and the products that come of that. Which is often just the softening of the mental expectations and acceptance of the present moment, but can be more as well.

Anyhow, all of this can be yoga. My union with the goddess I'm craving, which is really just a deepening of my connection with all the aspects of my inner Self. The postures which are a deepening of the connection between my mind, spirit and body. The yoga, which can be any of it if your intention is pure and constant, with focus.

Where are you in all this?

Left Hand Path...

I'm rereading the book Aghora, written by Robert Svoboda a well respected Ayurveda teacher about his guru Vimalananda who was an Aghori.

Culturally in India they use the right hand for all auspicious activities and the left hand for only killing animals and wiping their excrement. But in the idea of the left hand path it honors those things which may not be popularly part of the Hindu rituals in the mainstream, but none the less they are not invalid to many. Aghora is such a path, that invites many things that most humans would think of as disgusting and despicable and shows that they also are valid steps to God realisation because everything really can be.

This is also an idea in the Tantrik path which is also mostly considered a left hand path even though there are Tantrik rituals in Buddhism, Hinduism, in many other isms. Even the Hatha Yoga path is truly considered a Tantrik path so anyone who does asanas most days could be thought of as Tantrikas.

Now in mainstream society these things, Aghora and Tantrik, are thought of as the darker side of things. Even black magic in India. Mostly it seems that Shiva worshippers, but even more so, Shaktas, or goddess worshippers fall into these two categories more than any other. But to me they are just words and the real rasam, or juice, is in the ritual and how it feels. If it feels like you're so full to bursting after a meditation or visualisation or even just sitting, then maybe you're on the right track. Now I don't mean full to bursting from food, although food could be part of the path.

Many Aghora practitioners eat the flesh off dead bodies just to be reminded of impermanence and that nothing isn't sacred. In fact many Goddess cults eat meat, almost all Goddess temples sacrifice animals, especially the Kamakhya temple in Assam that I'm about to embark on a pilgrimage to. Do these things bother me? No, not really. I can chose to make the discipline of it me not eating meat and get a lot of juice from that. Even though I still sometimes eat fish, although its very few and far between and I really have to be craving it, my friend said to me that in his mind that is my version of eating flesh for my Aghori rituals lol. So I guess it can be part of it, but I also feel the tapas from abstaining is just as powerful.

This is one of the things I love is that on this path you can find the rituals, do your version of them and get the connection from it. When I realised that I'm a Kali worshipper a couple years back and wanted to deepen my experience of that a friend in California informed me of this pooja you can do nightly involving chanting of her names and offering her meat and whisky each night as part of that, I found out you can do it also by offering fruit, flowers and yourself, or symbolically your heart as the meat and it is just as powerful, maybe even more so to me. I still to this day am doing this evening mantra and offering of my heart to her and the purposes she puts in front of me daily.

I think I was born to be on this left hand path, even though technically I'm right handed (my sister is left handed though) I have always leaned to the thoughts that most would consider outside the box. Outside the box in fact is the only thing I know and consider "normal" in my life. Always have. Even though I didn't know that until someone told me that I think this way. All I know is that what feels right in my gut is what I do, and when I can feel my heart open up and burst from the inside out it really, really tells me that what I'm doing is worth it.

In fact I would say that the path of yoga was often considered a left hand path, when you read about how people used to be scared of yogis stealing their children and so many other things that we would deem "wrong" then you might realise this also. But yoga, a term I do use very loosely, has become so saccharine these days. So involved only with the lovey dovey, light glowing from within type stuff that people have left the dark by the wayside. Often to their own detriment because we all have some dark and to embrace it and move through it is just as important as any other psychological work we can do.

Even Mysore these days feels this way to me, too much focused on the asana and the clean aspects of things. Not that those are bad things by any means, but its not complete. There is so much more. Let us embrace it all as something that can transform us. Transformation is really what yoga, including the asana practice, is to me. Transforming ourselves into what? Who knows. I can barely answer that question for myself, but you have to be the one to answer it for you.

Even now as I plan this short trip in a week or so I get nervous about leaving because Mysore is so comfortable, but while comfortable is okay for me it is not where the growth happens and I'm feeling growth and I don't want that feeling to stagnate. So I go to Dakshineswar, an area outside Kolkata (a city I have no real desire to go to partially because it holds 26 million people amongst other things in its reputation) that houses a Kali temple. Not an ancient one that is a Shakti peeth, google that if you don't know, but one that is very powerful. Powerful enough that I read a whole book about it. It's where Ramakrishna spent much of his life worshipping the goddess. I look forward to being there soon. Also going to the Kamakhya temple in Assam, an even further away place but a powerful one. The story of Sati, the first wife of Shiva, is a long one but the gist of it is that after she had immolated herself on a fire to diss her father Shiva was so upset that he carried her dead body around for years and years, even centuries. Vishnu and the other gods needed him for his destructive duties so Vishnu himself slowly started chopping off pieces of the body and as they fell to ground there lies a Shakti peeth, a place of power where the goddess is worshipped strongly so therefore creates its own energetic field. There are 52 and interesting to read about, so do Google it. Each one even lists which part of her body fell there. Yes I know, its kind of gross to the western mind that one god chopped up the dead lover of another but in the slow process Shiva came back to his senses and took on his duties again, and besides Sati was reborn as Parvati and they were reunited after she convinced him through 10,000 years of tapas that it was her, but that's another story.

So the Kamakhya temple is where Sati's yoni fell. If you're one of those saccharine yogis you may even still know the word yoni. If not, google it hahahahah. Yes, I'm being a dick, but to explain these things is not the point of my entry this day. So the feminine energy is strong there. And they also have temples to all ten of the Mahavidyas which I'm excited to see as well.

Then I think I'll come back to Mysore for a bit to integrate, then leave again to go to Uttarkashi and visit the Kali temple there where I had such profound experiences last summer, for a week or two anyway, before I leave to go teach in the US, Germany and then back to Mysore to practice with my teacher again in July hopefully.

So here I go, to get uncomfortable again. I'm even having trouble going to the guy to book my tickets to fly to these places, so the discomfort has already started! lol

Do you look always for your comfort zone, and just sit in it? Or do you welcome being uncomfortable and embrace the openings and expansion it can bring to your heart and soul? Just something to contemplate and maybe test yourself with...