The new world..

Well, it's been a while. Sorry. I was feeling overwhelmed much of the time. I even found a draft I'd started in December that I never posted. And then this pandemic, virus thing took over the world and all went to hell.

Not sure if anything in my life changed though, really I guess it hasn't. Other than teaching Ashtanga Yoga on zoom. Which is a very weird thing, it's not something I'd have said is possible before and I'm still not sure if I agree it is possible, but here we are. I'm also going to different folks houses though and broadcasting from there, teaching the others as best I can through the screen.

I hated it at first, thought there was no way I could continue doing it, it made me feel crazy. But they loved it so much that I kept it up and eventually it grew on me. Now, I will always prefer in person, but again, here we are. Right now I don't have much choice even though Arizona did open everything back up so if we had a space I could teach, if any of them would come that is. Not sure if they would, some would, but others probably not. Many will likely chastise me for teaching those in person who I am, even though it was a grown up choice between me and them, not any of anyone else's business. So if you are in the mood to do that, think twice about it. I've had enough of people telling me how to live my life.

Now I"m hosting once a week a class here where I've moved to, in with a student and friend who offered. It's a lot of space and is nice to have people come practice here since the other space is no longer available. The lady who hosted me pretty much quick speaking to me and offered the job to another of the students I was teaching when she does reopen, likely next month. She also asked me to move out, so I'm thankful to be where I am. Everything feels much nicer, not have to deal with her moods and such, but I do wonder if I'm still stuck here for a while longer and we can finally have group classes where I will teach, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Also, I"m not bitching, so don't feel sorry for me or think I need a hug, although a hug would be nice. I'm just stating the way things are right now. I'm under much better circumstances, and have been blessed to have students who will still pay for me even though it's mostly virtual. They are great students and I'll miss them.

I was missing India so much that I thought I'd die having to stay here longer but India's borders are still closed so I couldn't go back anyway. I was supposed to be in Budapest as of last week, teaching for a month starting this last Sunday, but their borders are also closed, so here I am, making peace with being where Maa has decided I'm to be, which seems to be working out so far.

If you stay attached to your ideas of the way things are supposed to be, you can never allow the way things are delivered to you to be an okay thing, right? We are allowed to choose what we want and what we like, but not necessarily how or when we receive them. I am meant to be living with my Guruji by the end of August, and that won't likely be happening, but I have faith it will happen in the not too distant future, so I hunker down and wait for it doing what I love while I wait.

I started dating again, well, not sure if to call it that. I opened an account on an app after a very long hiatus and had some good chats with a few people, met one who I really hit it off with and will see again soon. The best thing that came up though is that it woke something up in me, something that really was dormant to a degree, maybe fully dormant.

I'd forgotten how nice it feels to be with someone who enjoys your company, whose company you enjoy and who is attracted to you as much as you are attracted to him. So great! It's made me remember what I'd learned about this stuff before, and appreciate it for what it is. But also appreciate my alone time more than usual too. Take for instance this morning, I normally meet my friend at a park for a walk and a chat with a chai or coffee for him. This morning he wasn't able to make it and I went anyway, the temperature was cooler, the sun was warm, not too hot like its been, and I just read a bit, walked a long time, and listened to nature in a way you can't unless alone. So enjoyed it I did. And felt appreciation in a way I hadn't before.

I try to be open and receive what comes, not change it. This winter I got caught up in the fact that the world wasn't going to allow me to keep the plans I had, and I got miserable, almost ran out of money and became very sad, also angry, frustrated too, and lost feeling. Now I'm feeling like I'm get lined back up with my inner being, able to breathe again, and go with that flow which is always there and waiting to be relaxed into. Once I let go of my expectations and my attachment to their outcome. It feels so much better, I'm very happy and ready to move forward

Now, I have two day off teaching, and will practice on zoom with Sharath Saturday morning, both things I'm looking forward to and open to receiving many others!

Enjoy your weekend!

The Call...

When I was young and being raised in a Baptist church there was often talk of so and so being called to the pulpit, that the Lord had called these mens hearts to become a preacher.

I was just rereading some chapters in Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls where it talks about all sorts of Kali worship in Bengal, India. In it she talks about it being a calling and how that calling doesn't happen terribly often with Westerners and so those who have been called are fairly well known in certain circles.

Because I have shunned my upbringing for so long I never associate any terms from that time period to things nowadays. So I had never thought that my heart had a calling to worship Maa. A calling was something that only Christians adhered to, while at the same time I'll often tell folks that you don't have a choice to choose Kali Ma as your Ishta Devata, she pulls you in. Which is exactly what a calling is!

So now for the first time ever I'm finding common ground within my current Shakta Tantrik worship of Kali and my past being raised in a Christian environment (and no, I was never baptised so have never technically been a Christian even though all my Indian friends assume that I am because I'm a Westerner and we all are...) and that is something the is very supported in the Maa worshipping circles, complete non-dualism. There is not to be any difference between one deity and another, and yourself or anything on the planet, or not on the planet. All is Maa and so all is to be treated as well as you would treat her.

This is nice to finally have had one of these aha moments, even if it is over some simple wording. Once something clicks, it clicks and its nice that it did so. I'm tired of hating things from my past, they are part of me and how I am who I am now.

It also has made me more excited for when I return to India and I'll finally be taking a trip around Bengal to see Kali Ma in Kolkata at the Kalighat temple, to see her at Dakshineswar where Ramakrishna lived and took care of her, back to see her at Kamakhya which is one of my favourite places in the world, I'd also like to tack on Varanasi and The Himalayas to the end of this trip if time allows because I"ll be heading back to live with my guru at a certain point, which I am also excited for.

I don't have many insights to write about or more to say here, I just had a small aha moment and wanted it recorded for posterity, so there it is! lol, I've been called to be a Minister of Maa!

Arizona...

It's been quite a while since I wrote on here, I'm not sure why but I started writing on Facebook, had great responses and discussions so kept going with that. Now that they closed my old account and those threads are no longer available to me I remembered I have a blog that I can also write on, I know, I know, I'm ditsy.

Arizona has proven to be a great thing and exactly what I needed, other than my body hating the level of dryness that exists here. I'm used to so much humidity in the midwest and in India. But I've got some great students who are Ayurvedic practitioners who are taking care of me with oils and advice that are helping so far.

I keep sitting down to write, either here or on Facebook, and nothing comes out, or it starts and I get away from the flow which then fucks it all up and I start typing about the weather or bitching about something. I am not here to bitch. I know I bitch a lot, but its about time I started focusing on where I want to be rather than where I think I am.

I am never in as bad a place as I make it seem, or seem to tell myself it is. I have done this almost my whole life and keep thinking I've gotten over it and no longer do this, but I do and I'm seeing it finally, so no more if I can help it. And I can! Nobody else can.

Teaching has been great, I've even been able to get up and do my practice almost every day so far before teaching, that is something I had been having trouble with. But here I'm mostly alone so have no distractions to keep me from doing what I feel like doing to support my life and my teaching, and teaching Ashtanga is why I'm here so it needs to be my main focus. I have most of each day free to focus on other things as well, so it's all good.

I've spent a lot of time reading tantras and other cultural studies about places in India that interest me, this is something I have a hard time doing when I'm in Mysore. I know too many people there and socialise a lot more so when I sit down to read I feel distracted and can't focus on the material, here I seem to have no problem with that.

Being alone a lot has been odd because I used to relish in my time to myself, but I guess since I spent so much time in India the last year I've gotten used to being around people almost all the time, so I've felt a bit lonely. I'm not lonely, I'm just fine as usual, it's just a story I told myself I guess and now I have to write a new one! So I'm working on that. Now that I finally have a new laptop and some good Microsoft programs and a lot of extra storage space maybe I can really start to work on my writing in the way those psychics, astrologers and friends have told me I need to, in book form. Hmmm, a novel idea!

The more I read about Kamakhya the more anxious I am to get back there, and from what I hear now it used to be even more esoteric than it still seems to me now. But since the government took over regulating it the hours changed and most of the rituals are less dramatic than that used to be, including that they used to be in the middle of the night sometimes. So amazing, but even so the energy there is something I can never explain fully to others as well as being a force to be wreckoned with.

I'm also chanting a new mantra in the mornings that I learned from the Kamakhya Tantra, its long and its powerful, I'm loving it and seeing how its making me feel has been interesting. I'm focusing more and more on Kali Ma being Kamakhya as it states in that Tantra, it also names that Durga is the same as well, and if you really just get down to it all is Maa, especially the Devi versions of the Gods, they are all her and that is why Kamakhya is depicted with so many different heads and different skin tones on each head to show that she is manifested as all version of the Goddess you can think of. So powerful!

Finding this more full version of non-duality has been the most fulfilling thing to me, something I got a taste of at the Kamakhya temple, but also from my guru near Mysore who built a Pratyangira temple there. Another esoteric version of Mac that many have never heard of, but she is also from the Sri Vidya kula side of things, and is worshipped in his home state as a version of Bhadrakali, so still supporting the oneness of it all.

I love this stuff, I love all of it, I love all of you for being so supportive in all my ups and downs and crazy tangents I get off on in my writing, but most of all because you are me, and I am you, and if you can't love yourself how in the hell you gonna love somebody else? To quote my favourite drag queen...

India...

Mother India, or Bharat as she's more commonly called over time by her own people. Or Hindustan by the Muslim population. First entered my life in the mid 80's via the tv show That's Incredible, when a yogi curled himself up in a box on national tv and stayed in there the whole show, coming out easily and without any issues at the end, then I wanted to know who he was and where he was from.

Then it creeped back in in the late 90's when I read Shirley Maclaine's book that I'd purchased in the mid 80's, not sure why I didn't read them back then... But she practiced yoga and yoga came from India, so my mind wandered. I had only a few years before had a guy I was dating try to get me to come to his yoga class and for some reason that did NOT make me think about India, lol, again, not sure why.

Now I've been coming here for almost 6 years and studying her philosophies for the last 19 years, the gods, Sanskrit, the scriptures. But only been coming for almost 6 years, 14 years after I finally started practicing yoga in fact, odd...

I've had many experiences, written about them here on my blog and on my Facebook page many, many times. so they are not the point of this treatise. The point is, well, maybe I don't know. Or maybe it's that I'm about to leave India for a good long while, longer than I have in the last so many years and my experiences here are in the forefront of my mind.

Lately the experiences I've had here have been more intense, more full, more evolutionary.

This round I've been here since last November, and by the time I leave next month it will be ten months in a row. Two in Goa and the rest here in Mysore with the occasional trip around.

In February in particular I went to Kamakhya, in the state of Assam, and that trip changed everything for me. It made me more interested in real tantra, the path, not the perceived notions that the Americans have of it. But the real path of it. Finding a real lineage and studying under it, so I have been. That also I'm not here to discuss.

Some years back my friend gave me a card he'd discovered at a famous south Indian temple, Meenakshi, of the Goddess Prathyangira. I'd never heard of her. Most people haven't heard of her, she's a tantric Devi who covers two sides of the spectrum. Most are either on the Vishnu or the Shiva side, but she transcends them both and is a large part of the Shakta path. So covers all the bases.

A great Goddess with a male lion head, a female human body who rides a male lion and has several of the navagraha as her accoutrements, including Rahu and Ketu who are often thought of in a malefic way. But her, not to her, they are her earrings hahaha...

Some interest was drawn up on this one, not often I'd never heard of a deity and knew nothing about them, nor could find an awful lot of information out there. In searching I found one temple in Tamil Nadu, with a 30 foot statue of her at its entrance, but never did anything about it. So this time in Mysore met a girl who's mother worships her, then we chatted, found out said temple was only just under 4 hours away and decided to take a day trip to see it, and feel her energy.

We did, and it was intense and we all had odd things happen to us after the temple experience, even the driver. So left it alone, then I'm at a local Bhairavi temple I just started reoccasioning and at the door noticed a flyer ad for a local Pratyangira temple having full moon ceremonies. Took a pic of it, forgot about it again and then remembered it one day, seemingly randomly, although not so, and googled it. Found out it was only 25 minutes away out in the country.

One day my friend Ross and I went to see it and found it to have a very strong energy and being in the jungle was also surrounded by that lovely natural energy as well. We were invited to their full moon ceremony that was to be in just two days, so I went back with two other friends, Ross wasn't able to make it back unfortunately.

I just came from there again and it was very powerful, a good friend even notes each time that I go that I'm calmer and more fun. I feel a strong attraction to the guruji there as well, he's an interesting guy who has lived quite a life and we agree on many things. So I also believe his energy and holding of the space to be a very powerful experience for me at this time too. I'm enjoying this.

The point of me writing this is that India, over time, although she affected me instantaneously, has now been affecting me more deeply in a cumulative way. The power here is very palpable and in its weight has been drawing my awareness to a deeper and deeper place. Waking me up also in more varied ways than ever. I suspect it will even more before I leave in the next month.

I look forward to leaving and seeing if I'm able to maintain this level of awareness, openness, love, peace and energy while I'm gone. I know it is possible, and in this time left here will attempt to learn how to make it a possibility that it stays with me. This I want to bring to all my interactions with myself and with others. I want this to lead me through to the next stage of life and to be where I come from in all occasions, in all relationships.

I love you Maa, thank you and may you always be with me so that you may always be with everyone I come into contact with and embellish our interactions to a divine level.

Namaste...

Shifts...

Lots of good going on lately, not only good, but making peace with whatever comes up has been very possible for me lately, so mostly it all seems like good. Much is coming from each thing, growth comes in all ways even ways we can't expect or are able to put words to. These shifts have been more subtle for me lately, but none the less profound.

Yesterday we went to Nanjangud to the Srikanteshwara temple there, a Shiva temple. It also houses Vishnu, Lakshmi, Saraswathi, Parvati, and many others including a third son of Shiva that I've never heard of before. It's a 40 minute drive there after eating breakfast, but we'd done the drive a couple weeks back on the full moon and it was so crowded we couldn't even go inside the temple, so toured around the grounds, worshipping at a Hanuman area, a naga area, some trees, the Ganesh temple. It was nice, but we all felt a need to go back to be inside, so it was nice and it was empty probably because today was the new moon and today would be busy there. Had a profound and deep calming experience, even on the drive back and the rest of the day.

Then this morning went up Chamundi Hill which seemed deserted, but once we got there the free line was exponentially long. So we went and purchased tickets to walk in the front door and did, then we saw that it was all backed up. It was earlier than I usually arrive there, being a new moon (amavasya called in Sanskrit) there took a bit longer to allow devotees into the inner sanctum, so we waited. Then once they began letting us in, damn, I've never encounter such a push in my life. There were hands in my armpits, cocks pressing against my ass, boobs pushing into my sides and back, someone was even holding my hand part of the time so they didn't fall over which also helped me not to fall over. Insane, BUT an experience one can only have here in India and one that I will cherish and tell stories about for a long time. Once inside we were shoved through quickly and didn't have much darshan, but it was still profound in its own way.

There is the Mahabaleshwar temple up there as well, going inside there was deep and calming, then we went down the backside of the hill to the Jwalamukhi Tripura Sundari temple in Uttarahalli, only one of its kind in India from what Google says. It was busier than last week, but so nice and fulfilling. She's meant to be Chamundis sister, some call her Kali, as she sucked up all the blood as Chamunda was killing the demons, which is Kali in the stories. She's a powerful energy in her temple, and I'm glad I finally went after avoiding it for 2 years.

Upon finding out that I'll be leaving India for an indefinite period of time, going to Tucson in October to begin Mysore program there, I realised how much I'll miss all these things that are peculiar to India only, and so am embracing going to temples even more than I already have. In fact I've found myself going to record numbers of them each morning and night, absorbing all the energy and experience that I can, so I can stock it up and take it with me when I leave. It's been great and I am loving it.

I seem to be just writing what my day consisted of, so I'll stop now and let you move on about your day, enjoy my friends!

Avengers Assemble...

I had to be at the movie theatre much earlier than most people think of even going outside their home. The movie was at 7:50am and was sold out on the day the tickets went on sale here in Mysore, Monday, and then I found this one seat at that time this morning. Not that I'm complaining...

This movie was the culmination of 21 other movies that came before it; 3 Thor movies, 3 Avengers, 3 Iron Man, 2 Ant Man, 3 Captain America, 2 Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel, Spider Man, Hulk and Black Panther, 1 each. And in my opinion if you didn't see all of them you will miss something in this latest film, Endgame. There are references to almost every one of the previous films in this one humongous blockbuster of a movie.

I started reading comics in 1975 when my grandpa bought me a Spider Woman for $.35 because as he was walking around Farm Fresh getting stuff I was looking at it, so he got it for me. That hooked me.

I had always been interested in the stories and mythologies of other cultures since I had seen my first Jason and the Argonauts movie on Saturday afternoon, and then found out that there used to be full belief in all these gods and witches and creatures, then I found my moms encyclopedia set and googled and wrote and read about all these things, Greek Mythology, Norse tales, Egyptian gods, all of it, except anything to do with Hindu worship of gods. That was never included anywhere, and now that I think about that it was odd and I have no understanding why it wouldn't have been, hmmmm...

The one thing I hated about our culture was the emphasis on the mundaneness of it all, there was God, his son who died for our sins, and his mother who was a virgin at the time of conception. But otherwise there was nothing interesting in it at all, following all these strict, ridiculous rules set out thousands of years beforehand that had nothing to do with life as we were living it at that time. So, hence the comic books became my mythos, and my reality for a very long time.

I wasn't prejudiced between DC and Marvel, if the storyline included people with powers, mostly I loved the occult characters who had taught themselves magic, or the people who were born with their abilities, but I never judged the others either if they were interesting and part of an interesting storyline.

I remember my first Avengers comic was one with hundreds of people in the lineup of the super group and the government had declared it was unmanageable and was to be taken down to only 7 people. I didn't like the 7 they chose, well some I did, but most were the boring characters, but that didn't stop me from reading it. Especially when I found out Thor was one of them and I had learned all about him in my earlier studies of Norse mythology, not that the Marvel Thor is anything like the mythological Thor, although in this new movie he is more like the original than ever before.

Anyhow, I think young people need stories to inspire them, to keep them going, and the comics were just that for me. The bible stories I was forced to read never did much for me, and really for as much as folks in the US worry about the crap their kids watch or read, they are some of the most corrupt stories I've ever encountered. But I'm not here to bash on Christianity, you can always hear me do that in person if you truly want...

As I was sitting and watching the film this morning I realised it was covering every emotion, I cried of happiness, of sadness, of shock, I laughed, I burst out with clapping and everyone around me was hollering. But the biggest thing I felt and I haven't felt in some time was hope. Hope was a surprise to me, at one certain point in the film I actually noticed I was feeling this. I'm not going to spoil the film for you so I won't tell the scene, but I noticed after the movie that I was drawn back to this feeling again the most. Because I had not felt it in such a long time.

Now even though it was sparked by a fictional story does that mean my body/mind didn't recognize that strong emotion as my own? I don't think so, I believe it totally felt it was mine and mine alone, after all the mind can't tell whether you're thinking of a thing or actually doing it because it creates the same hormone release, the same psychological effects, everything, even if you're just thinking about something.

It felt good and so I'm going to go about finding hope on a daily basis, I need it. Feeling hopeless and at the mercy of the universe the past few months is not serving me, never did, and I never allowed this complacency before so why am I starting now?

What gives you hope? What turns your crank? What stories inspire you and keep you going? What is your thing?!?

I'm almost there...

So, I know I've been whining a lot about being broke, about wanting to teach and needing a place to do so. About how everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. Until last night where a new low was hit. Or was it?

I am sleeping on two small pads that for some reason they call mattresses here, they are not mattresses compared to what the western mind things of them as, they are just pads, maybe an inch thick, hence why I sleep on two, and filled with stuffing and have a flannel look to them. I cover them with a sheet and cover me with another sheet. I'm not complaining about this just iterating for the western readers, this is not a bed as you all will think of it. It is however how many, many Indians sleep. I'm fine with it and sleep fairly well.

So, I'm sleeping on the floor. Lying in bed watching a video I downloaded and then all of a sudden feel water on the marble floor under my fingers, then listened and realised I heard water pouring from somewhere. So I looked up, nothing, building here are pretty water tight. It was pouring in from under my door and at the foot of my bed there stood about 3 inches of water in the whole corner. I guess that's a lower corner because it wasn't at the head of my bed or to the left of me at all.

I open the door to find that one guy who lives upstairs was squeegeeing the water as it was running down the stairs further down the stairs to the lower level and then into the drain. So I borrowed it and did the same from my room, only to find that about 5 of my books had soaked up a lot of water and some pages of mantra I'm using for a sadhana, my floor mats, my bed, sheets, etc, had all soaked up a lot of water.

Anyhow, we worked, got the water out, dried up the rest with a towel, changed out my sleeping pads, or one of them anyway, for a drier one, although the stored ones had gotten a bit wet as well, and pulled out a couple lungis to cover up with and slept. Yes, this all happened at 10pm when I'm usually asleep already, was heading there which is why I was in bed watching the video.

This morning I hung the stuff out in the sun and air to dry and moved on with my day. But I awoke to a message from a friend saying something about the astrology of what is going on, and it was in response to my desperate why can't anything go right in my life type message. He mentioned that what is going on with the planets right now is a time to dig in deep and look for the spiritual side of each thing, not to jump into your old pattern, which is exactly what I did.

Now, after 19 years of serious spiritual practice and 20 years of half assed practice of some sort before that, you'd think I wouldn't automatically fall back into my old patterns by now, but here I am, woe is me, I'm a victim, blah, blah, blah...

But today I feel better and am looking at the spiritual side of it, is there any other side? All is spirit in my viewpoint anyway, so how can it be?

And if, as they believe in Shakta circles as in Kamakhya culture, all is she, all is a manifestation of the goddess, then there is no separation. This morning after seeing my friends message and realizing my need to stay out of my old patterns I felt better, did some yoga, ate breakfast, then drove up Chamundi Hill to visit the goddess.

There was no traffic, there was no line even to wait to get inside. It was earlier than I'm usually there. It was nice. It was meant to happen and now I feel a nice energy that is more balanced than I was last night. So I need to stop being so hard on myself and falling into the old victim mode, no I know better and can be more aware and catch myself more quickly before I go there. And if I go there I can be more available for forgiveness and allowing myself to have been where I was and be okay with it, and move forward.

Forward is the motion we want, it can be slow, and even delayed, but slowly allowing the stream to take us along. An older analogy Abraham used to use was the stream. Nothing we want is upstream, so we have to take our oars out of the water trying to go upstream so hard, it never works. Take them out and allow, slowly, the movement of the water to turn your boat around an take you with it downstream.

All the work you've done on yourself, all the stuff you've put out to the universe that you want, all the energy expended to create the reality you want, are downstream, not upstream. And don't get aggressive and turn the boat around with the oars and paddle your way down, it's got to happen when your energy is lined up for it, not before. So just allow the water to flow you in the direction it's going. Nice thought huh? The work has been done already, just let yourself move towards it...