Comments on yoga celebrity and true refuge

There was a Newsweek piece today cheekily entitled Bow Down to the Yoga Teacher that brought up some interesting thoughts for me on why people do just that.

Posted three comments about it, two to YogaDork.com where I first heard about it – 
http://www.yogadork.com/news/newsweek-on-fame-monsters-and-yoga-groupies/comment-page-1/#comment-18394

And then one directly on the Newsweek site – 
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/20/bow-down-to-the-yoga-teacher.html

Here were my key points. From YogaDork comment:

My greatest experience of learning with it has been through my principle yoga teacher — Amma. She’s a very public figure — over 50,000 people have come to see her at a time when she tours in India. She’s started hundreds of universities, hospitals, orphanages, housing programs, has toured the world for decades giving her particular message of realizing peace through a life of Love and Service. No matter how many people come to her, she always gives each person a heartfelt, personal audience and hug. And she’s humble enough to continue in her own spiritual practices daily and not make any claims of perfection — yet, and here’s the tricky part for me — she allows others who wish to worship her as the Goddess to do so.

So one point is that fame and celebrity for yogis, and the deeply egoistic, dualistic relationships that can arise from it are not just a Western phenomenon. They’re the product of two things that can arise anywhere:

1) a teacher really does have something special to offer

2) many who seek need answers so badly that they’re willing to believe that because a teacher has something special to offer, that they are above the ordinary human experience of ego, confusion, despair, and healing

The problems come when teachers themselves begin to believe the second item — that they are above the universality of suffering. That’s a recipe for megalomania.

For me, Amma demonstrates it’s possible to allow yourself to be an object of devotion or worship from a place of real humility, and that there can be real good in this for those doing the worshipping.

Isn’t it better they have their idealization of you to hold on to if they need it, rather than nothing at all? The state of woundedness and fearfulness that would make a person cling so tightly to an ideal of a teacher is a temporary condition, and it offers a safe place, a refuge in which to heal. Many people need that, and don’t have it within themselves or in their previous ideas about the divine.

This is the role of a sat-guru, and my belief is that there’s nothing wrong with it, so long as the guru encourages their followers to look beyond the duality of disciple-guru context when they are ready.

Amma’s teaching to her followers is — learn to see Amma in everyone — but she recognizes that many people’s karma doesn’t allow them to see and embrace that for some time on their journey, and allows for that too.

 
And from Newsweek comment:

It's easy and I believe good to poke some fun at overblown egos, and to admonish teachers against megalomania.

It's also a very interesting thing to me to ask, why do people set up others as Gods? What's going on with a person that they'd need to do that? And what's the good in it? Since this pattern is at the root of all religion -- setting someone up as a God -- and it's been going on since time immemorial, what need is it fulfilling?  

My take is that people need refuge, a safe place to heal from the otherwise overwhelming hurt and confusion which life brings. And that there's nothing wrong in needing that, and in taking refuge where you are called to take it -- whether in a God, religion, teacher or practice. For many, these may be better refuges than the alternatives our society often encourages -- consumerism, addictions, and other things that function more as temporary escape than true refuge.  
   

To me, however you do it, the trick is, to know you're taking refuge -- which a good teacher can help you see -- and to know that this can be a temporary stage in your evolution, that it is possible for you to heal and to grow strong enough, that you can help others through the hard things and confusions in their lives too.  

And one more comment on YogaDork:

I've found it goes in waves for me .  There's an ebb and flow of generosity and self-care, of offering to myself that I may be of service to others.  

In that vein of holding seeming opposites at once, I recognize there's a difference to me between being a celebrity and seeking celebrity, but not so big... Fame and humility can be at odds, both for those receiving adulation and those giving.    But they aren't necessarily.  

Similarly, seeking fame and being humble are not always at odds  -- if the seeking is part of an honest self-estimation that you may have a better message to offer the world than many of the messages that currently have a wide platform, then you need to honor that conviction ...

Human beings are the most social animal.  It's certainly part of my humanity to seek social status, the approval of others, and fame.  It's part of my humanity to be attracted to and give approval to others' status and fame, and to take refuge in a great personality....  To me, it's just part of the karma we're all working out, a part of the journey.

I'm a bit dubious of anyone claiming to be absolutely beyond these things or willing to criticize others they don't really know on a public stage for pursuing celebrity, and especially those who do so without acknowledging they're building their own celebrity in doing so.... 

I think we all 'know' yoga to varying degrees, if yoga is a state of Union and  transcendence of the ordinary dualistic, subject-object, Us-Them, Me-Not Me relationship with the world.  There are just those who don't know they know (young children), those who do (realized yogis who may or may not call themselves 'realized yogis'), and those who think they know more than they do (probably most all of us who read, write, and 'do' yoga :-)...

To me, humility is being true to as much as you really are, acknowledging both your flawed, limited, long-suffering humanity at the same time as your creative, eternal, joyous divinity.   They are all One thing....  

That's my yoga.  

Though it's not always my first instinct,  I like to believe it has room in it to love and respect others, wherever they are in their journey.

On Objectification and Yoga

I’ve been meditating recently on how better to describe the type of yoga I practice – and its relation to all the other ‘yoga’ out there.  An intuition has been evolving and recently distilled itself into this:

My yoga is decidedly not the objectification of yoga.  In fact, it can encompass all yoga that moves away from the objectification process – whether it is aimed at the body, the spirit, money, relationships, society, truth, the compulsion to objectify is itself perhaps our greatest ailment.  

Words are inherently objectifying, as is all representation -- including images, videos, and other recordings, whether mental or in other media.  There is a direct experience of one’s own Truth, of Life filled with Joy and Creativity, Sorrow and Stuckness,  the real Truth of our human grandeur and frailty that is at the heart of yoga.

A reverence for this full, direct experience of the deepest Truth is what my personal path of yoga means to me.   People on any path can share in this reverence for that deep Truth– not just self-avowed yogis.   I recognize it instantly when I see it in myself and others – it’s the very best thing.  Young children almost always have it.

The objectification of yoga is an inevitable consequence of 3000 years of scientific and philosophical discourse which began with Greek Atomists, crystallized by Aristotle, as well as the Indian Vaisheshika philosophers, who articulated an approach that objectifies the entire universe.  It turns out this view is immensely useful for the manipulation of the physical world, and thus underpins much of modern science, technology and economy.  It is, however, not the whole story. 

The assertion of the objectifying view is that there are things and voids in between them.  This makes Me different than You, and lets me use you, whether you are a person, corporation, animal, or other thing.   So we objectify one another – economically (through buying and selling ourselves without regard for each other’s true well-being), socially (through status-seeking, in-group formation, and ostracism whether forced or suggested), physically (through fantasy and violence, perpetrated often first and most on ourselves) -- in myriad ways.

The assertion of the yogic view is that there is but one Thing, a deep, interwoven Unity of which we are all apart.  All that ultimately separates us is our very own notion that we are apart, not reality itself, which is One.  In this view, I participate in a Universal field that is Loving, Respectful, Hopeful, Creative, Playful, Sexy, Beautiful, True.  

When I am awake to this reality, what comes clear is the absurdity of thinking everything is cut off from everything else, that I can succeed with the approach of objectifying anyone or anything for very long.    It just doesn’t. 

Objectification is a very useful intellectual tool for mathematical analysis of relationships in a chemical laboratory or an economic transaction, but it is not the whole story.  Yoga teaches me to embrace and include, but never stop, with the objectified version of reality.

There’s always something Truer and deeper as well.   The practices of yoga are intended to awaken a bit more into that Truth.  My teacher, Sri Mata Amritanandamayi, has said, “It’s easy to wake up someone who is sleeping, but very difficult to wake up someone pretending to be asleep.”

I think we have, especially among the scientific and economic materialists in the Western mindset, taken objectification far too far, and in a sense, a big part of world politics and economy, and consequently, many people’s notions of personal security, are built upon it.   And we have pretended for too long to be asleep to this deeper truth of ourselves, of Life and the Universe.

It’s time to for me to assert that objectification is useful as an analytic technique, but only to a point.  As I do, I’m finding a deep happiness and passionate desire to be alive and of loving service to all Creation comes and stays when I acknowledge and embrace this Truth.  And that to me is the real point of all yoga.

On "teaching yoga" and "spiritual activism"

One of my first spiritual and most important teachers in adult life was my great uncle Dr. NC Surya, an Integral Yogi in the Sri Aurobindo tradition.  He wrote that yogic speech is accurate, compassionate, appropriate, and useful.  If it can’t be all of these things, then silence is preferable.  As my readers I hope are a community of spiritual and scientific-minded progressives, I wanted to share some of my experience and perspective on “yoga teachers” and “spiritual activists”, in hope they are of some service to some of you, who are likely to interact with (or yourselves be among) those who so consider themselves.

In my own yoga journey, I’ve been very wary of “teaching yoga” and being “taught yoga” in the Western frame even though I’m descended from a long line of yogis, have completed a yoga teacher training program taught by someone who is a longtime yogi and who ran the course on a pure donation basis.  I know in my heart I’ve been a sincere aspirant and witness to my own journey of yoga over the last 18 years of adult life.  That conscious journey began when I said my first heartfelt prayer to Sri Krishna at age 16, just before leaving home for college, asking for the blessing of His Wisdom – one He has given many times over in various ways, almost always as a result of mis-steps and mistakes. 

However, the total journey I discovered began long before even that, as I grew up in a home in which spiritual values were integrated into the very fabric of being.   On a recent trip to the village in India from which I am descended, I discovered that (like many Hindu families) all my relations (up to my generation) for the past 700 some years at least, are named from the Hindu pantheon,  whether after Ganesh, Saraswati, Vishnu, Krishna, Shiva, the Goddess, or others,  and (unlike many) we are descended from a line of Hindu Brahmins whose chief role was village administration, which blended the deeply practical – concern for issues of agricultural science, justice, education, health care, and fiscal management -- with ancient spiritual values and practices – temple management, tantric rituals, and conducting rites of passage.   So the practicalities of teaching and leading people in yoga and spirituality are deeply ingrained.  Also, as I mentioned, among many other dimensions of spiritual life, I completed a yoga teacher training course, and discovered that this may allow one to safely lead a hatha class.  However, due to my upbringing, I was also powerfully cautioned by an inner voice that, in the ancient tradition, there are two primary qualifications to truly teach others Yoga, and neither involves a TT program. 

The first, most fundamental one is direct, personal experience of Truth (God, the Infinite, the All-pervading Soul, Supermind, Transcendent Love, the nameless, or however one conceives it), often first achieved spontaneously, but then sustained over the better part of a lifetime through some method of practice. The traditional methods discussed in the principal yogic text -- the Bhagavad Gita -- vary from meditation, to intellectual contemplation, to devotional practice and service.  Not even mentioned there, and mainly used as a support to the body to recover from the strain of extreme lengths of sitting or service activities, Hatha practices developed, both vinyasa (flowing) or asana (situated). 

In modern times, my experience is that yoga can meaningfully be said to include the “conscious contact” which 12-step practitioners speak of and also the profound awakening which is experienced by hatha-yogis who extend their body-based practices into comprehensive healing modalities.  Unfortunately, in the West the physical practices of hatha have become synonymous with ‘yoga’ for the uninitiated, without the understanding that these were initially intended as supplementary aids to people established in a traditional path, not as a complete path unto itself.  Even in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the most seminal work for many Hatha yogis, Hatha is but one of eight limbs of practice and in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, another key Hatha text, it is one of four areas.   

So many people now come to yoga first through Hatha and quickly experience the deep gifts of the yogic intention as expressed in postures, and then go on to ‘roll-their-own’ awakening including other modes to varying degrees.  Yet however one proceeds toward attaining this realization of Truth, a teacher is strongly suggested and advised, but not required – as there is a universal Truth and Teacher which is available to all, and many great yogis are self-realized.   Regardless of which path one proceeds along, this profession of self-realization is what it truly means to be a yogi, and it is a journey -- not a destination or an achievement, or a certifiable event.  

Thus, qualification #1: Become a yogi.

 The second qualification to teach yoga is to be personally asked to teach by a sincere aspirant.  The suggestion for most people is to find and cultivate a deeply personal guru-shishya (teacher-disciple) relationship sustained over years, and make that the center of the process of individual spiritual awakening.  The importance of this cannot be overstated.  It is the rare being who arrives into this life able to chart their own course to Truth without becoming stuck in any of the many, many pitfalls which can beset any aspirant to excellence in any discipline – money, security, sex, and fame foremost among them.   To teach others well, most of us must experience the love and attention of a true teacher ourselves.  If we can be our own Teacher, that is wonderful, but many are often beset by the pitfall of modern individualism -- drawn to that self-directed path out of hubris and arrogance, not because it is what most will be of service to themselves and others…   

Thus, qualification #2: Teach when asked.

The notion of “Yoga Teacher” and “Yoga Teacher Training” is a very recent, Western, assembly-line, industrial-age approach that has many pitfalls – not to say that some true yogis haven’t evolved from this approach -- but much confusion and conflict has as well.  The biggest pitfall is the status-seeking inherent in the notion of external criteria and certification, a major block to humility and to the direct experience of Union which is at the heart of what the word Yoga means.  A closely related pitfall is the arrogance to believe that because one is “certified to teach” yoga or even made a celebrity yoga teacher by our modern machinery of media, that it necessarily means anything about the internal experience of Truth that is at the heart of being a yogi.  Renunciation, letting go, of such ego binds are fundamental to the humility required to know God and teach others to know God; this notion is fundamental to all of the Eastern spiritual paths, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Yogic.  This topic of “surrendering the spiritual ego” is one I’ve never seen addressed in any TT curriculum, but is perhaps the most fundamental issue of the whole endeavor of being a “yoga teacher” or public-facing “spiritual activism”.

I’m going on about this at some length because I feel much of those involved in controversy around various aspects of modern yoga practice and its recent outgrowth of “spiritual activism” are to some degree suffering from their disconnect with the source of the yogic tradition, yet are trying to speak as authorities on yoga in their respective ways, but missing something essential from the source.  A key step in the awakening process is to dash the subtle, pervasive illusion that somehow because we all speak the same textual language, be it English or Sanskrit, we all speak the same language.  We do not at all.  In the traditional view, we are profoundly fortunate to find even one true teacher who truly understands the contours of our karma and can guide us confidently in its release, the real language of the spirit.

Various people come from different schools.  The modern intellectual – a jnana-yogi, though they may not name it as such will have a very different approach than those to have first come to yoga through hatha, and who are in a process of expanding their vision and path into that of karma-yoga as “spiritual activists”.  These are deeply different in their mechanisms of action, in their modalities, in their underlying philosophies, in the lifetimes of karma that led us to them – and people on different paths are just not always going to interface with each other very well.  The various systems of yoga articulated in the Bhagavad Gita (namely jnana yoga, raja yoga and karma yoga) did not arise simply for the sake of variety or to create a distinction without a difference – the systems were necessarily held separate in order for the respective paths to work.

Jnana-yoga is about going through the verbal, analytical, discursive faculties toward God.  In this frame, interpersonal conflict over great ideas and the inherent challenges of anger and fear this conflict brings, is necessary and useful, even central, to the journey.  However, Karma-yoga is about the physical, emotional and social planes primarily.  In this frame, heartfelt love of God and active, practical service to His Creation is the path – and raising interpersonal conflict over mere ideas can be viewed as a needlessly hurtful and wasteful. Hopefully, as a jnana-yogi progresses, there is a realization of the power of words and ideas, and of the impact of conflict, and he becomes far more judicious in their application; and as the karma-yogi progresses, there is a realization that the bumps on the path of service are themselves the path and need to be embraced as originating from the Source one seeks to serve.

As Sri Krishna expounds in the Bhagavad Gita, both paths are valid and lead to the same place hopefully – lives of deeply awakened service to the cause of relieving suffering -- but even then, the lives of a jnana-yogi and karma-yogi may well look very different.  However, from that place of awakened consciousness, we are able to recognize each other as liberated beings and understand each other as natural allies united in intention, if not the arc of our actions...

My Great Uncle Dr. NC Surya left his body in 1996. My guru today is Mata Amritanandamayi (also known as Amma, the Hugging Saint).  She was once asked, “What is it like when you meet another mahatma?” She replied, “It’s as though two mirrors are looking into one another.”  What a beautiful image – enlightened infinities reflecting into one other ... 

I pray this vision is realized for all of us -- that we can forgive, embrace one another as we are, and evolve together toward our Highest Purpose, and reflect each others’ light into each other and into the world infinitely.   In that process, may we trust that all the aims of our “yoga teaching” and “spiritual activism” will naturally unfold and manifest as they were meant to all along… 

I hope my post here was accurate, appropriate, compassionate, and useful, and invite responses and questions offered in the same spirit. 

Om Namah Shivaya -- I bow to the Light in you all!

Paths Many--Truth One

In response to this article from Dr. Aseem Shukla in the Washington Post online entitled The Theft of Yoga, and comments from Deepak Chopra and many others -- Love and Light to you all!

In the healthy debate over the origins and intentions of yoga,  please let us not lose sight that – in those first ancient words of the Dao De Jing – The Way that can be spoken is not the True Way. 

Hinduism, Yoga, Hatha, Dharma, Asana ....  These are all made-up words, first created by seers to aid seekers on their path.  Then, others carried those words beyond those first compassionate offerings -- some in the same spirit --but others to build walls of ignorance out of fear, walls through which seekers must even now struggle to move through.   Either way, the words were never, and even now, are not Truth.  At best, they are aids on our journey.  At worst, they are sources of division and difficulty.   

Let us pray we choose to allow these words to aid…. And may we reaffirm now in our hearts -- words are not Truth and cannot contain Truth.

 Only We can do that, in how We live, and love and serve one another.  This is true regardless of the place, time, and nature of the chosen path. 

Whether through athleticism (hatha), devotion (bhakti), song (bhajans and kirtan), service (seva), ritual (tantra), sacrifice (yajna), sensory indulgence (vama), renunciation (sanyaasa), individualism (ahamkara), communism (saamyavada),  knowledge (jnana), investigating the mind (raja-yoga), repetition (japa), life science (ayurveda), dance (natya), martial arts (dhanurveda),  despair (vishada), fellowship (sangha),  spiritual suffering (tapas), laughter (haasa) --  all these, and many other approaches, tools and methods -- when practiced with the spirit of sincere seeking, have led people in every place and time to awakening, and to people teaching one another how they did it.

Some paths explicitly set out with that aim, but all paths arrive at it eventually, through the inherent virtue of their sincere practitioners. This consistent fact -- that people awaken to Light and Peace whenever they honestly try -- this is the evidence that there is a Truth, and that It is beyond all words and methods, and is reachable by anyone.    

This is as true in America today as it was in ancient India, which is why above I used the English words for these diverse practices first -- they are techniques, just as scientists use in the lab.  They are not the province of any one culture, but, while they have their historical and cultural roots to some extent in particular places and times, they are our common human heritage. 

In America, it is the founding premise of the republic.  Jefferson wrote in the American Declaration of Independence –

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

America begins speaking of self-evident Truth.   

Yoga is  ancient India’s name for the process of awakening to this Truth – of coming into Union -- whatever the path. But Union with what exactly?  A traditional answer is Union with Truth, God, the Infinite, the Universe, or however you call your higher power.   

My experience on my path thus far is that when one experiences this Union, it can happen as a sudden intuition of mystic unity with all that Is.  I had such a moment when I was 19,  in my home near Washington, looking out at evergreen trees, and realizing that we are not separate, that everything is deeply bound together, that even in that moment, I was breathing in the air they had just breathed out, that always, we are in this intimate, interwoven web of life and being.  

That experience I cherish, and it led me to my first deep relationship with a spiritual teacher -- my great Uncle NC Surya.  But I've also seen in the years since that the more substantial change occurs gradually, in stages, as the intuition of unity takes a great deal of work to integrate fully, and the more it does, the more the 'with' part (of Union) slowly drops away -- there is less and less of an other with which to unite.  It is a state of completeness or fullness unto itself.  In this way, the Self evidences Truth, by direct experience.

In America, reading revolutionaries like Paine or Jefferson, or philosophical forefathers like Locke, one is hard pressed to imagine that these men didn't also have spiritual experiences and lives.  Somewhere, they found the courage to imagine and bring into being a society based on such self-evident Truth as the equal rights of all.   Yes, it was deeply flawed -- they were not perfect any more than many Indian swamis and yogis who still, at some level even if not publicly, cling to ancient caste, class and gender distinctions. 

The beautiful thing is  -- in America,  awareness of self-evident truth is not some rarefied state only some select few attain; it is our birthright.  In India, living in this Truth is well understood to be our most universally shared experience -- not only with countrymen, but all human beings, other animals, plants, the Earth, Sun and stars. 

In any place, we can just forget or ignore it sometimes (or a lot), and separate ourselves from each other, believing how we differ is greater than what we share. 

That is a great falsity.  We are One.

The ancient Eeshavasya (“Lord’s Abode) Upanishad is a revered mantra which beautifully expresses Union, as that fullness or completeness, which is the Lord’s Abode, the dwelling-place of Truth:

Purnamidah Purnamidam
     That is complete -- This is complete
Purnaat Purnamudacyate
    From That Completeness comes This Completeness
Purnasya Purnamadaya
    If we take away This Completeness from That Completeness
Purnameva Vashishyate
   Only Completeness remains

… So ...  Relax. You are held -- in Truth, in Completeness – and so are we all.  When that sense of ease arises, then Union with that Truth which cannot be spoken, is possible.

Now what is the aim of this Union and the peace that comes with awakening to It?

When an ox, famer and plow are yoked together, they create a new life-giving entity that prepares the field to issue its bounty. The point is not merely to learn intellectually how to unite the ox and plow, or even to do it just once; that is but the beginning of the useful work that happens.  Once united, the ox, farmer and plow have their ultimate purpose fulfilled in the harvest, and that bounty is also dependent on their careful cooperation with nature, and grace of Earth and Sun to provide life-giving conditions. 

Similarly, yoga is the work of plowing the field of life, of staying connected to Truth, and serving It.  So it is with all forms of sincere seeking – growing in a deep, heartfelt, intuitive way into one's right relation to the universe and oneself -- as a part of a whole, as a part that can see and know the whole, and thereby honor it and make the conscious choice to align with it. This work naturally, gradually gives rise to the life of service that results from such Union. 

Just as there are many processes by which one may experience such Union, there are even more ways in which this knowledge in turn issues out in action -- through love, service, generosity, devotion, art, inquiry, scholarship -- these are but a few ways of honoring one’s own Truth, of enjoying the experience of It while fulfilling one's duty  to abide It.

Being a yogi is in fact our natural condition.  It is our choice, whether to invite all the words, ideas, and practices either to lead us astray into confusion, conflict and harm, both internal and external – or to lead us back home into our Selves, our Truth. 

So, once again -- we must remember always, the Way that can be spoken is not the True Way.   The True Way is found only in our own experience on our own path, and it is our personal Truth.   One way I feel I have drawn closer to It is when I can recognize deeply, intuitively know, that my experience of It is the same Truth that others have found, that there is but One.

Along the way, I've long felt there's no great mystery to awakening people once I learned what  -- usually, they are deeply humble, non-judging, and forgiving, ever growing in dignity, in their capacity to love themselves and others, in laughter and joy,  in their ability to behold beauty, and in being true to their heartfelt calling in  life.  To me, this is the real-life four-dimensional moving picture of yoga.  It knows every country and language and every era. 

So finally, with the frame in which we are asking the question on firm ground -- we can meaningfully turn to the debate of Dr. Shukla and Dr. Chopra – is yoga as practiced in America aware enough of its roots in Hinduism? 

My view is that I say this is not a good question to ask, for three reasons. Two I've already addressed -- first, the falsity of discursive, verbal truths, and Truth of direct experience -- and second, the understanding that the essence of yoga is universal -- that yogis have been in every era, in every place.  

So the answer for each of us on a personal level depends entirely on whether we have yet come to know what is our personal yogic path, and whether we are called to the ancient Vedic, Buddhist or Christian roots, or to the modern, diverse global branches of every kind.  None are wrong; they are simply preferences for an entry point to a Universal journey.  They all lead to the same place, even if they are not trying to lead anywhere, if we are sincere seekers, the needed path will reveal itself.  The Truth is that powerful. 

If you are called to the Vedas or asceticism or rigorous hatha practice, wonderful!  These are tried and true ancient paths.  They are often slow, but sure.  If you are called to modern teachers and teachings, that's wonderful too. 

Even drug abuse or gluttony or sexual addiction can serve the intention to find freedom from suffering, if one has turned to those things sincerely seeking a way out of suffering and into the light, even those clearly harmful paths will reveal Truth in due course, by demonstrating the wisdom of abstinence or moderation as appropriate for you, and leading you to people who can help you along such a path. Needless to say, those are far riskier and more painful roads, and the suffering you endure may overwhelm this body you inhabit, before the needed moment of clarity and awakening arrives in this lifetime.  

But the awakening to Truth can also come much more decisively and quickly, if one chooses to use the pain of their path as fuel for spiritual growth.  I have seen many, many people come into direct and deep communion with their Higher Power in just such a way, of healing the pain of various self-imposed harms, then leading the way to healing the pain of all our life experiences, our past karma. 

Vishada Yoga

http://www.google.com/buzz/gita.madhu/1NDBJpprn66/The-search-for-a-Guru-is-rather-sad-One-drowning

Healing Visualization Meditation

If there’s any part of my body in need of healing, whether from a fall or other injury, from being ill, or tension caused by stress, sadness or resentment -- there’s a simple healing visualization meditation using the breath that I’ve found always helps me feel better.

·         In a quiet, private place, sit in a comfortable seated posture that you can hold for a long period with your core supporting you (not against a backrest), or, if you'll be more comfortable, lie down in savasana. Close your eyes throughout the meditation, and bring the focus of your mind's eye to your body.

·         Breathe deeply and steadily in through your nostrils into your tummy, then into your chest and heart space then up to your shoulders and neck -- and slowly and intentionally release down in reverse order from the neck through the bottom of the tummy.  Inhale only through the nose, but you can exhale through both the nose and mouth, allowing whatever is most easeful for each breath.

·         Make the length of your breath on a 1 to 2 ratio.  So if you do a 4-count inhale, do an 8-count exhale.  Find a comfortable, sustainable pace, and don’t focus too much on the exact timing – it’s just a rough guide – but don’t forget to remind yourself either when needed.  Your body will inform you with each breath what it most needs. 

·         Once you've found a steady pace at about this 1:2 ratio, continue breathing long, deep breaths in this manner, and, as you inhale, visualize sending the breath all the way to the place in your body that needs healing and allowing that part of your body to fill up with healing energy, as your torso fills with breath.  As you exhale, visualize the body gently releasing some of the pain, resistance, anxiety,  sadness, or toxins from that part of your body, and the out-breath carrying it away, out of you.

·         At  any point, it may happen that the part of the body you are focusing upon suddenly feels much more easeful or less painful, and seems to have had ‘enough’ healing for now, and  some other part of the body will register the need for healing energy. When it happens, honor it, give thanks to that part of your body for healing itself – and with your next breath, you can shift your visualization of healing energy to the next point in your body asking for it. 

·         This works on any part of the body, not just over the parts over which you have conscious control --  even your brain, your heart, the insides of your bones, your eyes, anywhere -- you don't need to be able to consciously control the function of a part of your body in order to send healing energy there.

·         Continue for at least a few minutes, as long as you wish, up to a few hours even. 

If at first you can’t feel your healing energy focusing itself where you’re visualizing , don’t worry – it’s in you. This will becomes more apparent the more you relax into it.  Often, I know it’s beginning to work because I feel a mild tingling in that region of my body I’m focused on – quite literally, my cardiovascular system is relaxing in that area, allowing more blood to flow in, and with it more healing happens – more nutrients, oxygen, and white-blood cells go to that part of me -- and more red blood cells to carry away by-products and toxins.  With some practice, you will be able to focus your healing energy wherever it is most needed with ease, and the sensations will be unmistakable. 

If you’re comfortable with this simple practice, you can experiment -- as you breathe out, while keeping focused in the flow of healing energy through the body with the breath, you can experiment with different out-breaths and sounds -- nose-only, mouth-only, sighing, cooing -- whatever is most easeful, whatever provides the most release.  One that really helps me is to sigh like I've just finished a big job.

For those with old emotional wounds – often currently expressing themselves through depression, anxiety,  compulsivity, or trouble focusing or sleeping -- coupling this exercise with yogic postures can help accelerate the healing process tremendously.   Deep emotional releases may occur, as there are often many tensions held in the body from un-processed events over the years.  For example, bodywork healers have long known there is often tension stored in the deep musculature of the hips to do with old injuries to one’s emotional security.

One such experience I have had is of emotional memories coming up of the loss of my grandfather, who was I’m told was my ‘best buddy’ as a small child, until I was two years old, when my family emigrated to America.  He died shortly thereafter. I have no visual, cognitive, olfactory or other memory of my grandfather, but I did have emotional memories of my loss of him held deep within my body, that came up through the combination of this deep releasing breath and pigeon pose on my left side.  I found myself quietly crying tears I had needed to for nearly thirty years, re-connecting with the spirit of a man I had long thought I’d lost, and feeling my load in life is a good bit lighter ever since.

As soon as you’re just a bit comfortable with this practice and can quickly focus your healing energy  --  you can try to do it any time of day while doing anything – simply taking a deep breath and directing the healing energy to whatever part of your body may be tight or troubled.  For me, it works especially well to direct the healing energy to the front of the brain when I’m a bit mentally astir about something, and the tummy when I’m anxious.   I’ve done it often at my desk at work, in the line at the store, walking down the street, even in the middle of a challenging conversation.  As I said, it always helps me -- let me know if it helps you too!

Lessons of 2009

1. No single relationship can completely fulfill me. My fulfillment plays out through my relationships with myself, with the entire community of people in my life, and with my God -- all of whom will be with me until my last breath.  I, my God, and the people in my community may change but my relationships with each will persist to my last breath.  I can only act with the experience and hope I have gained on my path toward my fulfillment. However, its realization is out of my hands.  When it comes, it comes, and when it goes, it goes.  Pressing forward on the journey is all I can ever do.

2. However, pressing toward trying to fulfill myself through any one thing -- whether a person, an idea or ideology, a substance or behavior -- is powerful, subtle and insistent force in me and in many people. I have long known this about myself, and been vigilant of it daily, and yet that cycle arose again.  A strong, clear, convicted sense of self and of the importance of balancing all the relationships in my life toward my fulfillment is the antidote.  I have to take this antidote in every situation in which I feel that pull toward a 'fixed idea' that will 'fix' me or everything.

3. Friends are deeply important to my survival and happiness.  They are the people to whom I owe nothing, and who owe me nothing, but we, of our own free choice, give gratefully of ourselves to each other.  The time, empathy, honesty, affirmation, and strength I get and that I am able to give is the very stuff of life. May I also ever be a friend to myself.

4. 'We work that we may know the seasons.' So writes Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet.  Work, being of service to others, is my anchor, to the Earth and to the Sun, and to humanity.  Whatever storm may come, I am always held by the very fact of work, of service to others.  This remembrance of the needs of others restores my perspective, puts whatever wounds or challenges I face, into their right context, as but one small bit of a much grander flow.

5. In every crisis lies the opportunity for transformation into the being for whom it is not a crisis, but a matter of course.  If I can allow healing of whatever karma it is that causes me to view the situation as a crisis, it ceases to be one.

6. I may want a life partner, but do not need one. I can be open to the possibility, but I must be aware that in seeking it out, it is possible, in a deep but subtle way, to close myself off to the beautiful fullness of the present moment.   Let me ever remember to be here now, and allow that to make possible futures increasingly obvious.

7. I love teaching. I am a teacher. I love learning. I am a learner.  For myself.    But I am only ever, at best, a guide to others, a guide to remembrance of their own inner teacher and student. Above all else, guides exemplify. Formal instruction or direction, only if invited and only if necessary, can be but one tool of such remembrance.  However, it must be used sparingly, as there is a great danger in it of putting the student's own inner teacher and learner to sleep -- putting the application or improvement of a faculty or skill at odds with the greater development or realization of the Self.

9. Highly skilled and gifted people can be quite foolish or confused, as much as anyone can. Oftentimes moreso, because they may mistake their skill or gift for wisdom and clarity, and others who do the same may often encourage them in this mistake.  So be discerning in choosing one's guides, teachers, and examples.  Above all else, look for people with the humility to be aware of, and in contact with, their own fallibility.

10. Elegant as it may seem, lists do not have to be ten items long. But while we're at it, I suppose I also learned that I can keep writing even after a longish absence, that consistency and persistence are not the same, that both are good, and even one is far better than none.

I end with a note of reverence and gratitude to my late father.  These are his feet.