New Year’s tidings

Tags

#smallstone, beach, Broken ribs, comfort zone, Happy 2012, Happy New Year, Healing, Inspiration, inwards energy, joy, Karma, outwards energy, peace, self-love, Small Stone 2012, twenty-twelve

Fireworks photo from another year. Re-cycled here because it's pretty.

I’m only getting around to my new year’s post today, the third day of 2012 (just so you know – every time I type ‘2012’ I mentally say ‘twenty-twelve’ in my head, which I didn’t do with 2011. File that under Useless Information!).

Happy 2012, everyone!

I hope you all had a pleasant transition from 2011 to 2012. This time of year isn’t always pleasant though, is it? I know this from experience, as I’ve spent many New Years Eves alone. Although there have been notable exceptions.

Regardless of what I have or haven’t done, my energy since 2005 has been very much inwards. It’s been all about conserving and healing and doing what I needed to do to take care of myself. Understandable really. But it’s made for a lot of fairly lonely times.

This – or rather, last – year, my plans were in flux, changing three times. The last offer both sounded good and a little scary. Going to the party of a friend of a friend of a friend. Appealingly, it was wayyyy out of town, almost in the country. Away from the drunken masses and the sort of “good time” I no longer really enjoy that much. BUT. Also wayyyy out of my comfort zone. New people? Someone else’s friends?

Funny how solo travel, which involves meeting brand new people is exciting. But at home doing the same thing can feel scary. How. Strange.

In my early 20’s that kind of plan would’ve been a no-brainer. Sure thing! Woo! That would’ve been my response, instead of the careful consideration and allaying of fears.

But… it’s time to start letting my energy and actions flow outward a little more once again.

New Year’s Eve

So I did it. I drove to the outer edges of what can still be called suburban Melbourne to meet my friends and their friends (who are absolutely lovely btw). Then we all went to my friend’s friend’s friend’s backyard party.

With a band (awesome tunes) playing, loudly enough to be enjoyable but still allowing conversations to be heard. BBQ eating, being eaten by mozzies, conversations with new people I wouldn’t have met otherwise, and hugs and kisses from friends and strangers alike.

The backyard band on New Years Eve 2011. They were great!

Quiet. Comfortable. Relaxed. And a painless expansion of my (perceived) personal risk-taking repertoire.

New Year’s Day

Unfortunately I didn’t feel so great the next day. A late night, a wee bit of alcohol imbibing, an hour’s drive each way. It meant a dehydration headache on an extremely hot day. Blech.

So for the first of the year, there was lots of resting, water and sleep.

I did however get out at the end of the day, taking myself out for dumplings and tea plus a movie.

The well-named "Love tea"

I also started my Small Stones writing (first post on 8th January), and I’ve noticed this practice is already helping me pay more attention to the world.

As I mentioned earlier in this piece, so much of my energy has been inward for the longest time. Noticing the world requires more of an outward focus. So it’s in line with where I’m hoping this year will go…

Yesterday

We had a second public holiday, which I’d intended to make better use of. But instead, found myself playing nurse to my mother. She’d had a fall before Christmas, and her suspected bruised ribs were in fact broken.

Interestingly enough, she has almost exactly the same injury I had around ten years ago – three broken ribs on the left side at the front. If you’ve got any understanding of familial karma, then this isn’t too surprising.

So I offered to help my mum around the house since my dad is away at the moment. Getting the washing on/off the line, doing dishes, putting things away. All very difficult with broken ribs. Heck, breathing is difficult with broken ribs.

On my way to the timeshare car I’d booked, my neighbour gave me a lift and pointed out that I’m doing more for my mum than either parent did for me when I needed help. But I can’t help it. Broken ribs hurt and I understand it only too well!

I also offered her some tips on getting up and down, reducing the degree/speed of flexion/extension through the spine. I hope she listens, since it’ll help her in the coming weeks!

Just before 5pm I left my parents’ house, determined to do something fun for myself as well.

Since it was still H-O-T I took off to the beach for a couple of dips in the bay, interspersed with reading and drying off in the super-warm breeze, flowing like water. It was heavenly.

I’m back at work today, but will write more tomorrow of my plans and intentions for the coming year!

Blessings to one and all for 2012. May you find inspiration, joy, peace and (self) love.

~ Svasti

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Samskaras in samsara – part 2

Tags

Asana, Asatoma Sat Gamaya, Ayurveda, bandha, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, dance, Deepak Chopra, duality, Karma, Krishna, Limitations, martial arts, Meditation, metaphysical, mula, non-dual reality, pranayama, psychoanalysis, Reality, Samsara, samskara, self-loathing, Shanti Path, Slim Calm Sexy, Swami Niranjananda Sawaswati, Tara Stiles, Wake up, Yoga, yogic philosophy, Yogis

I didn’t take this photo, but I’ve driven past this statue of Arjuna in Bali. It’s magnificent!

[Read part 1 first]

Okay, so enough with the psychoanalysis of our western self-loathing mind-set for a moment.

How about we go beyond the physical, to the metaphysical for a bit? Yeah?

Okay, so let’s take a tiny peek at some of the subtleties of yogic philosophy.

Note #1: I’m going to do my best to explain these rather complex concepts to you as passed down from my wonderful teachers. Of course, my understanding is still limited and imperfect but hey… I’ll give it a go. Also, there’s only so much I can pack into a single blog post!

Note #2: This is another long post. Try to hang in there!!

Samsara is considered to be this world of duality – the place where the universe can experience its Self as Other than its Self. ‘Nuff said about that for now…

And samskaras are deeply embedded patterns of energy within collective energy forms that manifest as individual human beings. “Pattern” being the key word here – a pattern comes from actions being repeated over and over again. And of course, the more often a pattern is repeated, the harder it is to change it. Kinda like a train running on the only tracks it’s got.

Samskara is a very peculiar thing. It is the library within a DNA molecule, containing everything that we have imbibed. One DNA molecule contains the total information of all of the libraries in the world combined. Samskaras are like that too. Samskaras are the inputs of volumes and volumes of books which we carry within us and which have been accumulating over millions of years. When these samskaras come to the surface of the mind, they are very powerful.
~From Yoga Darshan, Swami Niranjananda Sawaswati

A samskara then, is a thought or activity that’s become part of how the world appears to us. It can define our preferences, personality, understanding of other people and things. And with those definitions come limitations – what is subjectively true and what is not. However, limitations aren’t actually “bad”, not in the least.

In fact, they are key to our ability to exist in as humans where we all appear as separate entities, cut off from source/the universe/god etc. So, samskaras can be considered to be both useful (i.e. they comprise and make possible our limited view of the world) and problematic (when we can’t discriminate between our limited view and a wider view).

Still with me?

Limitations are a naturally occurring construct of this world and universe. They are part of how we function, our identity, why we have certain opinions and emotions and ideas. Our samskaras interact with karma (another much-maligned and misunderstood yogic concept) and form a filter through which we view “reality”. As we know, reality at this level is different for everyone, and far from the non-dual view the rishis and wisdom masters speak of. Hence, our diversity of opinions!

However, one of the true goals of yoga and serious yogis is to free ourselves from the limitations of the dual world, while simultaneously existing in both the dual and the non-dual. In fact, we can’t exist in the non-dual without duality, because then it wouldn’t be a non-dual reality – for the non-dual to be truly non-dual, it also has to encompass duality (hope that makes sense!).

Asatoma Sat Gamaya
Lead me from the unreal to the Real

Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya
Lead me from the darkness to the Light

~Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

And so we yogis work to free ourselves from limited views through an intimate understanding of, and connection to our mind and body. The path to achieving this can include: asana, pranayama, mula, bandha, meditation, martial arts, dance, Ayurveda and so on. Usually, more than one of these methods is required to develop our mind-body awareness. Ultimately this MUST include long and deep hours of meditation (as opposed to say, fifteen minutes a day).

Freeing ourselves from limited views does not mean however, denying our anger or any other emotion. We need to go fully into the experience of being a human being in order to understand and liberate ourselves from the suffering of samsara. Because, how can you possibly be free of what you don’t understand?

As such, suppressing emotions or decrying other people’s anger as “un-yogic” is doing little more than keeping you stuck on those same train tracks, going around and around and around… and the more circuits of the train track you make, the harder it is to change. Get it?

It is tricky, because on the one hand we are here on this planet that exists in duality, and so we play by the rules of this world where interactions with people, our emotional states and experiences DO matter. But then, as we learn to drop into non-duality more and more (it comes in flashes or waves), we begin to see how much none of it really matters in the end. And things start to change as we begin to increasingly experience non-duality as our actual reality.

It can be both incredibly liberating and stupendously confusing at the same time…

And yet. We MUST learn to see the real from the unreal. This for me, is what makes the false and harmful messages about body image (burn that bra fat, minimise those wider-than-desired hips) so completely alarming.

Because it is being condoned not just by Tara Stiles (who, as a yogi with connections to Deepak Chopra should bloody well know better), but by so many other people involved in yoga.

The outcry in return seems to be all “don’t hate on Tara”, “don’t hate on anything we want to define as yoga” and “you people who are complaining are just simply un-yogic”.

BUT all of the folks in that camp – including Tara – are missing the glaringly obvious point here:

Yoga is about liberation from samskaras and the human condition of suffering. NOT about playing into and re-enforcing those patterns for ourselves and others. NOT about continuing to make people think there is something wrong about their physical appearance that needs to be fixed – this is a mass personal and cultural samskara and one that’s deeply embedded!!

This isn’t a personal attack on Tara or anyone else, but as my own Guru would say: WHERE IS YOUR MIND??

My criticism comes from asking: what kind of yogi supports messages that invoke deep-seated insecurities and self-esteem issues of others? From generating and confirming samskaras as real instead of limited thinking that one can learn to revoke?

This is not good work. And it is not yogic in the least. In fact, those in the yoga community who buy into this, saying that it’s all okay, are demonstrating minds that are still deeply embedded in their own samskaras, whatever they might be. Some things are NOT okay, especially coming from yogis.

Seriously, anyone who thinks Tara Stiles’ “Slim Calm Sexy” yoga is an okay way to market yoga to the uninitiated masses is not engaging in enough discernment or discriminate thinking. And those uninitiated masses? They probably spend most of their time feeling deeply unhappy and thinking self-loathing thoughts anyway, and don’t NEED anyone else to point it out to them!

Even as Tara et all are claiming “it doesn’t matter how people come to yoga” – and I’ll admit that’s generally true – in some ways it actually DOES. Because by pressing the self-esteem/physical appearance buttons you’re embedding those samskaras just a little more deeply than before and messing with someone’s appreciation of what yoga is all about. Who knows how much extra work – conscious and sub-consciously – will be involved in undoing all of that?

Basically, the Tara Stiles school of yoga marketing is unhealthy and unethical.

And as another teacher I’ve studied with would put it… WAKE UP!!

Or as I’d put it… WAKE (THE FUCK) UP!!

This is not a popularity contest where we have to be friends with everyone and accept everything that’s said about yoga, simply because we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

SO WAKE UP!!

Remember, Krishna was a warrior and he worked very hard to make Arjuna fight a battle. It’s not always about having the most friends, but about cutting through the crap and seeing clearly.

Lead me from the unreal to the freaking real, already!

~Svasti

A yogini & an atheist walk into a bar…

Tags

atheist, Compassion, Empathy, Karma, kirtan, Love, Motorbikes, rainbows, Richard Dawkins, Tantra, Yoga, Yogini

In all seriousness, the title of this post is not the start of a joke! Okay, well maybe it is… 😉

C is one of my very good friends and a recent house guest – visiting Melbourne for a conference and then a bit of 4WD and motorbike fun. When he first asked if he could stay I kinda assumed his conference was to do with his job, and only just before his visit did he come clean about the Atheist Convention he was attending!

Which made me giggle. See when we first met, C was doing yoga and meditation which is part of the reason we had so much in common. We dated briefly almost ten years ago, and we’ve been good friends ever since. But somehow C veered into atheism and threw the baby/yoga out with the bathwater. Like many people, C didn’t have the best of times growing up, he has chronic health problems (which I suspect are related to suppressed anxiety), and one of his brothers passed away not long after we met. Outwardly he’s a very happy-go-lucky, adventurous, fun-seeking, kindly and generous person but when it comes to matters of the heart, I suspect he shut up shop long ago.

Over the years, it’s like there was a proportional relationship between my immersion in yoga and his into atheism. Nowadays he considers Richard Dawkins a hero, while I’m a fan of kirtan… But it’s cool. We love each other enough for that not to matter.

C added another twist to his Melbourne stay though. Two of his friends (a couple) were also coming to Melbourne for a few days motorbike riding (C drove to Melbourne with his bike and their’s on the trailer behind his 4WD) and I agreed they could stay at my place, too.

The only reason I’m mentioning their visit is because it meant I had to give them my sofa bed and C had to sleep on a blow up mattress in my small second bedroom. Which doubles as my yoga room – all decked out with my altar, many images of gurus, Hindu gods and goddesses, a huge sparkly print of Ganesha, prayer flags, chakra posters, incense and candles… And so the atheist had to sleep in the room in which I meditate, do yoga, chant and various other spiritual activities!! Not that he minded and I did warn him about my decorating before he arrived, but I still found it amusing (heehee!). Must be my somewhat childish sense of humour. 😉

Anyway… I took last Friday off work so we could hang out. We were meant to be heading out on his motorbike that day (we’ve a long history of adventuring around the country on his bike). But rain was threatening and being on a bike all day in the rain aint much fun (it worked out okay coz we went riding on Saturday which was awesome!).

So we took the 4WD on some very rugged back country roads. It was fun and very beautiful, and yet I felt a little uneasy. It’d been quite a while since we spent a whole day together and our views on the world differ considerably these days compared to when we first met.

Also, it seemed to me we’d both been carefully avoiding the atheist vs yogini conversation – personally I don’t have a problem with anyone’s views as long as they aren’t evangelising. However, I really didn’t want to argue with someone who’s been a good friend in my life for such a long time!

But on our 4WD trip C asked me about my “world view”, what I believed in. And ahhh… where to start when someone who doesn’t believe in anything asks you about your “world view” when you’re a yogini from a classical non-dual Tantrik tradition? Ahem!

We talked about karma for a bit (because he asked) and I explained what I could, including that most people use the term incorrectly. Generally speaking, of course. But that’s an entirely different post…

So I started explaining that my world view is an ever-unfolding path. That it’s not about “belief” for me – never has been. That what I’m interested in are my direct experiences and relationship with reality. And I told him I didn’t believe (as he does) that consciousness is just a trick of the chemicals in our brains, or that after we die there’s nothing. But I also said I didn’t know for certain, because that’s true. How can I know?

I’ve been given a lot of teachings over the past ten years and some of them are still just concepts for me. There are things I “believe” are possible – as in, they could happen – but I can’t say for sure they are true. However, some of those things have turned out to be true in my own experience. Which equals direct knowledge, and not just buying into a concept as it’s taught without any personal experience to back it up.

And sure, I understand the atheistic view – that those experiences I think I’m having could just be delusions. But how do you prove that I’m delusional? I mean, I’m an otherwise (relatively) sane person but whenever I have an experience that doesn’t match with the general consensus of reality, it *must* be a delusion? It sounds like a very convenient argument…

C asked what kinds of experiences I was talking about. But hey, those things are difficult to explain even to other yogis sometimes. So instead I talked about how what we think of as reality is really quite limited. For example, we generally don’t see light as the spectrum of rainbows that science proves it to be. And we don’t hear every sound that’s out there – things that a dog or a whale can hear. Our experience with reality is limited by our senses and just because we can’t see, feel, sense or logically explain every darn thing that happens, doesn’t make it not true. And that sometimes as a result of my practice, I find my senses expand (permanently or temporarily) in some way and I experience the world differently. Which helps me unfold/unpack reality a little more for myself.

I explained how my guru encourages all of his students to see Tantra and yoga as hypotheses, and our body and mind as a laboratory in which we can run as many tests as we like. Experience. Sense. Feel. Think. Reflect. Consider. Witness. Do. Be.

Don’t just take anyone’s word for it!

C asked me how any of what I’d been explaining can be used practically. So I got to the point – Tantra, yoga, meditation etc affords me the ability to see the world as non-different. The concept of non-dualism posits that nothing is really separate or different they way we tend to see things in day-to-day life, which helps me understand that not everything is about me.

For example, I was eventually able to see how some angry guy using me as a punching bag was not in any way personal. It just so happened that I was there and he was reacting to his own experience of reality and chose to get violent. Actually, it had nothing to do with me at all!

To get to that realisation is HUGE, especially when you’re crippled with PTSD and depression – it is NOT an easy path to come back from.

I told him how many people who go through things like I had, end up on medication for the rest of their life. Or they end up dead or destroying their lives in some way because they can’t cope. And that everything I’ve studied and practiced, hand in hand with therapy, is what helped me extract myself from the pit of hell I’d landed in. Therapy alone could never have given me the world view that I learned through practice and study.

And then I told C that actually, there is something I believe in: a (crazy) little thing called Love.

I believe that Love is pretty much the only thing worthwhile in this world. That getting to know your heart intimately and being connected to your emotions is important. That compassion and empathy and accepting people just as they are, no matter how different they are from you without expecting them to change… that that’s what I believe in, if anything… and I just silently hoped that my message of love was heard, loud and clear because even an atheist can’t argue with that, right?

**Update** @Skipetty asked in the comments how my friend C reacted. To be honest, he said very little. Possibly it’s because I said a bunch of stuff he didn’t agree with and he didn’t particularly feel like arguing with me, either. But I also hope I gave him a few things to think about in that science-driven noggin of his. And hey, maybe he took it all in the way I intended, which is not meant to be a threat to what anyone else believes. It’s all just my point of view in the end, isn’t it? 😉

~Svasti

Cursed?

Tags

Curse, Cursed, Don't belong, Fail, Jobs, Karma, Lady Luck, Murphy's Law, Nick Cave, Shivers, Unemployed

Taking a leaf out of Dr Jay’s book here with the quoting…

I’ve been contemplating suicide, but it really doesn’t suit my style,
so I think I’ll just act bored instead who can take the blood I would’ve shed?
She makes me feel so ugly my heart is really on it’s knees
but I keep a poker face so well that even mother couldn’t tell
– Nick Cave, Shivers

I’ve had enough. Of everything.

You know, I’ve worked hard to make the best of what I’ve been given in this life. It hasn’t been much love and light and happiness. I’ve tried hard to follow the path in front of me. But every time I think I’m doing that, the rug gets ripped out from under me.

As I’ve mentioned before, it seems I’m a game of catch between Lady Luck and Murphy. Something half-way decent happens in my life and then it sucks all over again.

Right now I’m about to puke I’m so unsure of myself. Am I cursed? Should I be paranoid that someone/something is out to wreck my life? What the?!!

Jobs are around, they’re everywhere. But I can’t get one. Not even a waitressing job and believe me, I’m trying. I’m getting plenty of interviews. All the recruiting agencies I talk to are impressed with me, my skills and experience. I get to second interviews and then nothing – so close and yet so far… For six whole weeks its been like this. Jobs are all around me, just out of reach.

When I left my job, all the signs were there I was doing the right thing. If you’re wondering what I mean about that, its all about how easy it is. How smoothly everything goes. It feels right at a gut level.

But I can’t shake the idea that I just don’t belong here, on this plane of existence. Its something I’ve always lived with. And at times like this, that feeling becomes much more intense.

Today I was excited, going for an interview for some freelance work. Sure, all went well and they were talking about how they’d like to get me in – but they need to wait until they get their next big piece of work to justify paying me, even though they’re trying to cover off replacing a full time role. I do understand ofcourse, but what a tease! That could be… well, not for ages! And who knows if they were just blowing smoke anyway?

So I’ve pretty much had it. I’ve talked to umpteen recruitment people. They all want me to come in and talk to them about ‘possible upcoming roles’ but they never seem to materialise.

After the interview, which should have been good, but left me feeling despondent, I wandered the city. I should have been enjoying the random lovely Spring day we were having but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to go home to my parents’ place either. I felt and feel utterly defeated.

Bawling as I walked from the bus stop, I invoked the universe. I said – I’ve had enough of all this suffering. I know I’m partly in control, but I don’t know the way out. I need your help, because I’m sick of this fucked up life I’ve led. Things are just getting worse and worse. So either help me get a job – any job – so I can try and make some changes – or just take me out. Kill me. Tonight. I’ve had enough and I want out of this shitheap of a life.

That’s how I’m feeling right now… if I was hit by a bus or died suddenly at the moment I would welcome it.

Don’t worry – I’m not about to do anything rash, but I’m haunted by these thoughts anyway. Its not very comfortable to be me at the moment.

I’m stuck in the maze of karma and nothing makes sense.

~Svasti