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Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

~ Recovery from PTSD & depression + yoga, silliness & poetry…

Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

Tag Archives: Mantra

A lil extra in my stocking

21 Tuesday Dec 2010

Posted by Svasti in Fun

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

caffeine mala, competition, give away, Headstand, mala, malas, Mantra, Om Namah Shivaya, Tiny Devotions, w00t w00t, Y is for Yogini

Holy Shiva! Can I hear a w00t w00t??

Somehow this very lucky yogini is the winner of Y is for Yogini’s mala give-away.

Check. It. Out!

Stunning, isn’t it? For those who aren’t aware, the beads are rudraksha seeds (they grow on a tree like that!) and this is a very traditional seed to use for a mala. They are specifically associated with Shiva, the head honcho dude of the Hindu pantheon. And the two stones at the end are coffee jasper poppy jasper – which I don’t know much about, but it all sounds good!

It’s made by Tiny Devotions – they create marvellous works of beauty over there!! I’m so excited about this I could jump into a headstand right here at work!

Thank you YIFY and TD, I’m super-thrilled. You can be sure it’ll be highly treasured, and get lots of wear and mantra repetition (can I hear an Om Namah Shivaya anyone?). And I’ll let you know when it arrives. 😀

~Svasti

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Blowing up the Death Star

03 Sunday Oct 2010

Posted by Svasti in Post-traumatic stress, Time to come out

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Achilles heel, bogey men, Brutalised, Death Star, defiled, Depression, flower offerings, gravitational field, gut instincts, Incense, jasmine, light therapy treatment, Mantra, Meditation, nurturing, PTSD, Sanskrit, self-love, Skywalker, space junk, Star Wars, supta virasana, Trauma, use the force, yellow daisies

It was something about my face…of course, that’s where most of the physical damage was caused. And so, after leaving work on Thursday I did something that wasn’t particularly logical, all things considered.

I found myself at a beauty salon, wanting some kind of facial treatment. It was money I didn’t really have or intend to spend, but I didn’t even think about it like that.

Ended up getting a peel and they also suggested this light therapy thing. Didn’t know what it was, but it sounded good.

You look like you’re in need of a pick-me-up, the therapist slowly scanned my face and eyes.

Yep… [and I’m REALLY trying not to cry].

I did though, but not while she was in the room.

Somehow my instincts knew this was a good idea. Someone soothing my face with beautiful products and massaging my skin while delicate music was piped into the room. Low lighting and glorious aromas. An oasis in the middle of the city, a level up from one of the busiest intersections in town (not that you’d have known it).

She finished with the peel and prepped me for the light therapy treatment. Little goggles on my eyes. Something positioned over my head.

It’s really, bright. It takes a moment to get used to it. I’ll turn on one light first, then the other.

Soooo bright, yep, she wasn’t lying. Although my eyes were tightly closed nothing was black – instead everything glowed golden-red. And after a few moments I thought that this is probably what consciousness is like when we’re no longer limited to a human form. Everything as one, so very luminous. It wasn’t scary, just really relaxing.

Later I cried some more while I dressed – me with my smooth new skin that felt and looked wonderful. Sure I was a little shiny, but I was going straight home so what did I care.

I cleaned my practice room – vacuumed and dusted. I read these posts by Nadine and Kerry – which were incredibly timely (thanks gals!). I cried a whole bunch more as I snipped yellow daisies (I think?) and jasmine from the bushes outside my apartment.

My yoga practice was very simple – some breathing and then a supported supta virasana (although with the bolster further away from my lower back so I could tilt my pelvis forward more than the woman in this picture).

This pose always feels like hell when I first lie back, but once I relax it generates the most open and joyous feeling – the supported version is awesome if you’re feeling fragile!

Then I felt more open in both the hips and the heart. It was time for my practice which involves a series of chants and prayers in Sanskrit, and generating love, gratitude, compassion and wonder. Some incense and flower offerings, mantra repetitions and then… sitting. Just sitting in meditation for as long as I needed to.

My altar, adorned with flowers

There’s a bunch of structured or form-based meditations I’ve learned, but that’s not what I needed just then. So I just sat, following my breath and listening to my body, relaxing deeply. I think I sat there for around an hour.

From this place comes information. I got the face thing, then. Five years ago, it’d been defiled. Brutalised. And then I’d allowed it to hold my shame and fear. I’d also grown an invisible mask that covered my eyes as well as my entire face. I didn’t want people to see me. I didn’t want to see them. I wouldn’t let anyone get too close, just in case they were dangerous.

But now I’d begun reversing all of that with a symbolic gesture of self-love and nurturing (gotta love those gut instincts).

Then I noticed a whole bunch of energy rising up in waves from my stomach to my heart. Many layers. Hello, Fear. Hi, Despair. What’s up, Grief? How-dee-do, Shock? Each one reaching upwards, evaporating and integrating and no longer weighing a tonne in my belly.

I’ve never really told anyone this: my meditation practice suffered a great deal when all of this went down. I stopped for the longest time and felt terrible about it. But how could I meditate when those things could happen to me?

It took a long, long time to regain that ground.

The problem most of the time was relaxing (impossible to meditate if you’re tense!) and closing my eyes (which made sleeping quite tricky), because behind closed eyes was where all the scary stuff lurked.

Which is why the whole light therapy treatment thing was SUCH an extra amazing piece of synchronicity because that light – so warm and golden – blasted away any last possible dark hiding place.

See? No bogey men here!!

So I continued sitting and breathing until I felt like all the shackles I’d built up were undone. At least right at that moment anyway. I did some closing chants, extinguished the candles and slept deeply. Dreamlessly.

I felt… much better. Calm, and perhaps still fragile but MUCH better.

I’d never before felt the pull of this date or tied any meaning to it. September 29th has not once been circled in my calendar and I’ve never held on to it as a marker of what happened. Perhaps because I was trying to forget, I’m not really sure.

BUT this time around I wasn’t allowed to let it pass by (thanks tiny but accurate voice of intuition!) and I think that MAYBE… this is truly the beginning of my freedom.

Maybe it’s time – maybe I’m ready to no longer think of myself in relation to what happened, y‘know?

I suspect that to be able to say I am truly healed; this thing that happened has to become unimportant to who I now am. It can’t be a reference point for everything that happens moving forward and I can’t continue to orbit around it like it’s the center of my being.

Sure, for a long time that’s exactly how it felt. Like I was just space junk held in the gravitational field of the Death Star (i.e. the trauma, the PTSD, the depression, the memories of What Happened).

And somehow, the realisation of this milestone date, and exactly how far I’ve come in that time, not to mention some timely and amazing facial treatments (including all of that LIGHT!) were the killer shot, right in the Death Star’s Achilles heel.

Just like young Skywalker, somehow I found a way to use the force and blast that sucker… totally disabling its ability to destroy anything anymore.

But… I could be wrong. Time will tell I guess. At the very least, this is the beginning of the end of it all… Just like the end of my PTSD flashbacks, I’ll wait and watch.

In the meantime, I can’t believe how much better I feel. Possibly this is akin to how my old Self felt once upon a time, not that I can remember Her too well…

But it’s been a REALLY long time since I felt this good.

~Svasti

(With apologies to those who don’t get my geeky Star Wars references!)  😉

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The Workshop of Love – part 3

20 Sunday Jun 2010

Posted by Svasti in Spirituality, Yoga

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Asana, Mantra, Mark Whitwell, Meditation, Missy Higgins, Puja, Steer, Worship, Yoga

Photo liberated from Mark's Facebook profile 🙂

[Read part 1 & part 2 first]

**Note: La Gitane raised a valid point in the comments for part 2 of this series. When Mark is talking about “your yoga”, this doesn’t mean only doing the asana that you like, or not doing a full complement of forward bend/back bend/side bend/twisting/inverted poses – if you’re capable of doing so. Instead he’s talking about a practice that contains the appropriate elements of a yoga practice, but in a way that suits your body and its limitations. Just wanted to be clear about that!**

Around two hours into our Sunday session, we’d just finished our first asana practice for the day when a young girl and her mum walked in. Mark had clearly been expecting them: This is Melissa and her mum Margaret. Come in and sit down, but just watch the rest of the group for now…

(Fact: I almost never notice famous people even when they’re right under my nose. And being in a small windowless room full of yogis proved no exception. “Melissa” was in fact, Missy Higgins – a talented and successful singer/song-writer in Australia. Of course, I didn’t realise until after we’d finished for the day when I heard others asking if it was ‘really her’).

Even when Mark quoted lyrics from one of Missy’s songs, I still didn’t twig:

…But the search ends here

Where the night is totally clear

And your heart is fierce

So now you finally know

That you control where you go

You can steer…

~Steer, Missy Higgins

Although we didn’t know it yet, Missy’s mum Margaret, was our lesson for the day. Especially for all the yoga teachers in the room.

All of Margaret’s kids love yoga and she’d always wanted to join them but found it almost impossible. She had some very serious back problems and could not join in a regular yoga class. But she could still breathe, and as such, yoga was possible.

Mark promised to help her find “her yoga” – a practice she could do, that would benefit both her body and mind.

She was game for it, and so after listening to our dialog with Mark for a while and watching while he put us through more asana practice, he started to ask her about her situation. I won’t go into what she told us specifically, but essentially any movement beyond very gentle forward bends was out. No rotation of the spine.

It meant that her practice was mostly seated and on her hands and knees. Very little standing, no twisting and nothing energetic or advanced. At the start of the session she mentioned how her mind drove her crazy with non-stop thoughts, but by the end of practicing “her yoga” (which we practiced with her) she felt so much better and found her mind was much calmer.

Now, Margaret’s yoga doesn’t look like anything you’d find in a yoga class, or even in what is taught at yoga teacher training. But still, yoga it is. And, with continued daily practice, it should benefit her every bit as much as a full-on hour and a half yoga class works for other people. Because it’s appropriate for her body and because it allows her to consciously engage her body/mind/breathe connection.

Other reasons it can still be defined as yoga are directly related to the principals of Strength Receiving that Mark taught us:

  1. Breath movement IS body movement.
  2. The breath starts and ends the movement.
  3. Inhale from above, exhale from below.
  4. Body, Breath and Bandha are a seamless process.
  5. Asana, Pranayama, Meditation, and Life is a seamless design.

There’s a lot to unpack in these principals, but as I’m still unpacking them myself, I’d suggest you buy Mark’s book and/or get to one of his workshops if you can. I promise you that you’ll love it!

Towards the very end of the day, as we sat in naturally arising meditation, Mark had us chanting and placing mantra at various points of the body. Repeating the mantra at the heart centre, the crown of the head, the shoulders, the belly, the groin, the upper legs, the knees, the top and bottom of the feet.

Try this using any mantra you know. It very much felt to me like “self-puja” (or self-worship). Not as in blowing smoke up your own… y’know. But honouring your Self with love and respect. Recognising the miracle of your existence, and that your yoga practice is a sacred contract with yourself to remember who you are, every time you practice.

I’d say the most important thing I got from my time with Mark was the transmission of his gentleness. He reminds us that our yoga practice isn’t meant to be a struggle, but a pleasure. And that we have all of the tools we need for uncovering our own sense of beauty and divinity.

As he recently wrote on Facebook:

Technically, a yoga practice must make a person feel better. Then it is correct practice. “There is no bad yoga. If it’s not good, it’s not yoga!”

And when I get the chance, I’ll spend more time with him again. Absolutely.

~Svasti

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This is my yoga…

31 Monday May 2010

Posted by Svasti in Spirituality, Yoga

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

abandoned, Asana, Giving, headstands, heart openings, japa, kirtan, Mantra, Meditation, mortality, Puja, trees, Yagna, Yoga

La Gitane over at Yoga Gypsy just wrote a post on this exact topic, and I thought I’d turn it into a bit of a meme. Or a mala, as she put it!

But actually, going back to 2005, there’s also Linda’s post on Paz Yoga. Then more recently, This is My Real Yoga, and Show Up and Shut Up.

Not long ago I wrote Yoga is…?? but it was more of a comment on the fact that there’s still a whole bunch of people in the world who still have no idea what yoga is beyond some vague concept of physical movement (which is okay, really).

And now, here’s my version – THIS is my yoga – well, some of it anyway…

Love.

Kirtan.

Sharing.

Breathing.

Random headstands.

Pre-dawn meditation.

Laughing when babies laugh.

Befriending cats and dogs in the street.

Finding out the truth about who I really am.

Heart openings. As many as I can manage, every day.

Running my fingers over beautiful patterns in tree bark.

Coming to terms with the full capacity of being a human being.

Yoga asana in the studio, at home, in the park, at work, in the dark.

Getting really real with myself & seeing reality without the multitude of filters we embrace every day.

Understanding I’m not what I think I am, and being able to get glimpses here at there of what I really am instead.

Not pretending. There’s no point in being fake with myself or others. Genuinely acting from compassion, which doesn’t always mean what we think it might.

Really getting the pointlessness of grasping at things. It doesn’t mean I don’t want things (possessions, lovers, money etc) but it does mean I end up not wasting my energy because I don’t have them.

Had a conversation with a girl last week about how there’s a perception that people who are into yoga and spiritual work are all “love and light” all of the time. And how when I first stepped onto this path consciously (as opposed to always being on it but unaware) that I thought that’s what being spiritual was. Now I know that spirituality is gritty, sometimes dark and very, very real. No fantasies. No fluff.

Learning to put aside the never-ending monkey-mind thoughts, the ones that want to drag me down into fear, hate and anger. Or distract me with material things I don’t really have any interest in, or cause anxiety if I let them. Yes, seeing those thoughts for what they are and learning to walk on by without getting too involved.

Learning to exist in the world without feeling the need to manipulate myself or anyone else. That’s a big, hard lesson because one of the stories that’s been running most of my life is that of feeling abandoned. We all attempt to seduce, coerce, have our own way, influence etc. We all do it, even in very tiny ways. Babies learn the favourable responses of adults around them and how to repeat the behaviours that caused the response they want. We teach them our game, and they learn to play. But as adults, we need to learn to disengage from that aspect of our habits and culture, because it takes us away from who we really are.

Learning that giving to others is one of the best things we have to offer to other human beings. Whether it’s a hug, food, money, a conversation or whatever. Giving opens up the heart. It’s not about stroking your ego – instead it’s about realising you are no more or less important than anybody else. Everyone in fact, is equally important in this world. Keep giving, no matter what.

Really, REALLY realising that in the end, we’re all going to die. It’s one of the conditions of life, and part of what makes it so special. But also realising that I am not this body, that who I am is part of something much bigger than that…

Honouring all living things as part of the whole, including rocks, trees, the ocean and the wind.

Riding my push bike, wind streaming through my hair and singing joyfully and loudly.

Participating in puja to witness divinity in all living beings, myself included.

Helping other people in whatever way is appropriate and useful.

Discovering where I think my limitations are and aren’t.

Yagna ceremonies on full moon and new moon.

Dancing like a wild woman.

Cups of tea with friends.

Endless rounds of japa.

Midnight meditations.

Surrender.

Learning.

Stillness.

Mantra.

Joy.

Yeah… those are just some of the things that yoga means to me…

If you’d like to play along, please do so – and perhaps link to the other posts on the same topic to keep the mala threaded!

~Svasti

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Sankalpa of Paramahansa Satyananda

09 Wednesday Dec 2009

Posted by Svasti in Spirituality, Yoga

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

mahamrityunjaya, mahasamadhi, Mantra, Paramahamsa Satyananda Saraswati, sankalpa, Swami Satyananda, Yoga

Thanks to Sevapuri (@yidl) for pointing me towards this stunningly beautiful sankalpa (see below), these photos sent out via the Mangrove Mountain Ashram in Australia, and this lovely post of the writer’s experience meeting Satyananda in person (a post that’s well worth reading).

And also, thanks to Linda-Sama for sharing this marvellous looking DVD with me: Yoga of the Heart, featuring Swami Satyananda (I’ve purchased it, and will do a review here some time!).

These are my guru’s words to his students on hearing the news of Swamiji’s passing:

When a great master leaves his body it is not a time to be sad but a time to rejoice. We can give up the fruits of our practice for his quick transition in the clear light. It is important to pray that he will be re-born quickly so that he may continue to be a blessing for all beings.

He also wanted to remind us:

…about feeling the immense gratitude for Swamiji’s presence in the parampara and that to show true gratitude is not to be sad of his passing but to realize the fruits of the practices that he has passed down to all of us so that we may too be a source of grace and inspiration for all beings.

Swamiji’s sankalpa

I am an invisible child of a thousand faces of love,
That floats over the swirling sea of life,
Surrounded by the meadows of the winged shepherds,
Where divine love and beauty,
The stillness of midnight summer’s warmth pervades.

Life often cuts at my body and mind
And though blood may be seen passing,
And a cry might be heard,
Do not be deceived that sorrow could dwell within my being
Or suffering within my soul.
There will never be a storm
That can wash the path from my feet,
The direction from my heart,
The light from my eyes,
Or the purpose from this life.

I know that I am untouchable to the forces
As long as I have a direction, an aim, a goal:
To serve, to love, and to give.
Strength lies in the magnification of the secret qualities
Of my own personality, my own character
And though I am only a messenger,
I am me.

Let me decorate many hearts
And paint a thousand faces with colours of inspiration
And soft, silent sounds of value.
Let me be like a child,
Run barefoot through the forest
Of laughing and crying people,
Giving flowers of imagination and wonder,
That God gives free.
Shall I fall on bended knees,
And wait for someone to bless me
With happiness and a life of golden dreams?

No, I shall run into the desert of life with my arms open,
Sometimes falling, sometimes stumbling,
But always picking myself up,
A thousand times if necessary,
Sometimes happy.
Often life will burn me,
Often life will caress me tenderly
And many of my days will be haunted
With complications and obstacles,
And there will be moments so beautiful
That my soul will weep in ecstasy.

I shall be a witness,
But never shall I run
Or turn from life, from me.

Never shall I forsake myself
Or the timeless lessons I have taught myself,
Nor shall I let the value
Of divine inspiration and being be lost.
My rainbow-covered bubble will carry me
Further than beyond the horizon’s settings,
Forever to serve, to love, and to live
As a sannyasin.

~Swami Satyananda Saraswati

There is something in that for all of us! Reading those words, I find myself melting and dropping all of my pretence and struggle. Even if only momentarily. So, I’ve decided I will create a poster of the sankalpa with photos of Swamiji – something to hang up in my home and re-read often, to be continually inspired!

For those who know the mahamrityunjaya and if you feel inclined, it would be good to do some rounds of this mantra and dedicate them to Swamiji.

~Svasti

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Un-caffeinated

29 Tuesday Sep 2009

Posted by Svasti in Life

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

AFL grand final, ancestral burial ground, Care Bear, coffee habit, cold turkey, cremation, funeral, graveside service, green tea, Mantra, tombstones

Balloon hearts - artist unknown

The funeral was nicer than I expected. For one thing, the wild wind, rain and hail held off til later in the day (just in time for the AFL grand final, hehe!).

Sure it was cold, and definitely surreal. I’ve never been to a graveside service before… and the cemetery itself was weird.

Sort of a bad clash between the old and the new, what with 70’s style concrete graves, modern standardised tombstones towering over others, with their gold lettering on black stone, all looking the same except for the family name emblazoned at the front. And everything from Greek Orthodox to Catholic, Presbyterian and Church of England graves. All hanging out next to each other rather peacefully, in a way they probably wouldn’t if still alive.

And hey, little did I know that several generations of my maternal family line are buried there, including my grandfather, great-grandparents, great aunt and uncle and several others. A modern ancestral burial ground. Go figure.

Have to say, while holding my mantra and cuddling my niece, I was thinking how glad I am that my post-life plans are for cremation. All this space taken up by the deceased and expensive monuments to the past… just doesn’t work for my sensibilities.

Also, more people showed than we expected. Some of Margaret’s fellow housemates and carers turned up. My parents, sister, brother-in-law, nieces, my paternal uncle, and get this, the Yeti (aka my rarely seen brother)… okay, he did skedaddle before the service ended but hey, it’s a show up.

I couldn’t find a nice enough looking toy cat, so I’d bought a little purple Care Bear finger puppet. My niece and I placed the bear amongst several wreaths that would eventually cover Margaret’s coffin which, for the service, hovered over the open grave containing her parents – she’d outlived them both by a good ten years or so.

Mum gave a lovely eulogy for Margaret, reminding us all of her playful nature, so it was in the end, a good service.

And we threw Narties into the grave, instead of flowers.

Later, I went to my sister’s place to paint, dance and generally have a little fun.

By the time I got home around 8pm, I had a raging headache which settled in for the rest of the weekend. But then it hit me… been having these headaches nearly every weekend lately. What was the common thread?

Dang!

This naughty, naughty writer has been indulging in a coffee-a-day habit for about twelve months now (any more than one a day and I climb the walls). But on weekends I tend not to bother. It’s a workday habit. And actually, I didn’t drink coffee at all for many years because I’d read enough to understand what a powerful and damaging drug it is.

But then the lovely soothing latte aroma seduced me once again… doh! And now it seems, I’m getting coffee withdrawal symptoms when I go without for a day or two.

In my view, that means it has to go. No more once-a-day-lattes during the week. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, its feeling penned in by my own habits!

So I’ve gone cold turkey and I’m now on Day 4 of no coffee. I still drink green tea which has a teensy amount of caffeine, but nothing that’s gonna give me a case of the jitters, like a latte does.

Monday’s headaches were as bad as the weekend ones, but today (Tuesday) I’m feeling kinda okay again. Just need to keep hydrated to stay on top of it all.

There’s been so much going on, it’s been kinda hard to keep up with myself. But I’m hanging in there… more stories soon!

~Svasti

Spellbound turn-o-the-year musings

31 Wednesday Dec 2008

Posted by Svasti in Learnings, Spirituality

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

Asana, Divinity, Enlightenment, God, Guruji, Happy New Year, Love, Mantra, Musings, New Years Eve, Non-dual, Sanskrit, Yoga

Written after a good hour of book browsing and buying…
(thanks to my employers for the Borders gift voucher!)

It’s easy to love with abandon a child, our favourite sport, poetry, chocolate, alcohol, movies, nature, our lover…

But not our Self.

We are cynical about such things. We have trouble thinking we’re more than what we see in the mirror. Often, we think we’re even less than that.

Human beings are truly magnificent – if we can get over our own suffering, selfishness, self-importance and smallness. Greatness is inherent. Waiting for us.

Yet, often we don’t want to expand the boundaries of possibility too far – in case we can’t recover ‘when bad things happen‘. We don’t want to open our hearts too much to another for the same reason.

We have trouble with the concept of God, especially those who are not traditionally religious, like me (a pagan/yogi). Whether it’s the connection to our own divinity, the use of the ‘G’ word, wavering between direct knowledge, belief and doubt… what we can’t see, we question.

There’s a profound issue with our ability to see our Self as God, all beings as God… and to give ourselves over to that larger possibility of human life.

But to me, love of God/Self is actually, the same thing. And, also the same as loving anything else in our lives – our favourite TV show, popcorn, porn… whatever… it’s the same. Just… those things are a smaller version of that larger concept of love.

The obsession/small love for ‘objects’ can arise from the sub-conscious desire for union of self with Self. Unlimited, a sense of connection that when we get it – be that through orgasm, a sunset, realising one of our dreams, meditation – feels so incredibly wonderful. We project this experience on whatever object is around. We want that feeling to last forever. And when it doesn’t, we’re disgruntled.

Home base for human beings is that state of union as a permanent experience.

Trini Girl Blue wrote today that she feels people would shun her if they knew her inner secrets.

Perhaps. More fool them.

Perhaps not. Not everyone thinks that way, thankfully.

This is just fear and the sense of isolation talking. I’ve been in that space too – and continue to experience it off and on. But this state lacks any of the love we easily extend to another person/object.

Some of my most wonderful moments of opening have occured when I’ve told a friend something I was sure they’d think less of me for… only to receive love and support and a different viewpoint on what I thought were my ‘evils’.

Are we afraid of our own divinity so much, that we push aside any possibility of seeing ourselves that way? This is self-cruelty. Are we so afraid of our ability and capacity to be whole and real? To be connected to others – everyone and everything else?

Tonight I sit here alone, deciding if I should venture out and listen to some music – or stay in and meditate (what do I need most of all??)…

Right now my only company is the cat.

Or is it?

This room, if I choose to feel it, is alive with love. There’s… an inter-connectedness of all things…

When I perform yogasana, I clear my channels…

Yogasana in Thailand with my kula

There’s not really a set of channels for each person you know.
Actually there’s only one set of channels for the whole lot of us!
~Guruji

And so I awaken myself through asana to the mass of swarming energy that is life.

I sit for contemplation or meditation, and I lose my sense of I-ness. As a separate being, alone, without other.

When I chant Sanskrit prayers and mantra, it’s the vibrations that tune my heart – allowing me to open wide and have that feeling for myself. To know that it’s true…

The paradox of me – my yogini Self and my suffering Self… I’ve learned and experienced a lot of very profound things in the last eight or so years since I met my Guru.

Whilst the wisdom is with me daily, those experiences of everything being one – they haven’t cemented yet. If they had, I’d be enlightened! 😉

So for now, I honour the duality whilst respecting the non-dual knowledge and experiences I’ve learned and earned.

And here I am, in all my imperfect glory… dealing imperfectly with what I have to deal with… knowing full well its not the entire picture.

I am human, I am flawed
I am human, I can grow
I am human, and love
Is my weakness
And my greatest victory!

~Svasti

Wishing everyone a good dose of peace and harmony on this eve of new tidings. May 2009 bring you insight, love, healing and happiness. May you achieve your heart’s desire.

~Svasti

Over the rainbow bridge

02 Tuesday Dec 2008

Posted by Svasti in Spirituality

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

After death state, Cancer, death, Energy, Grandpa, Mantra, Om Shanti, Strange dream, Yoga, Yogis

One of my yogini sisters has been duking it out with cancer for many years now… she’s young, and vital and yet… cancer kept up its slow inevitable march forward.

Being initiated into the same yogic lineage (and I don’t give a toss if you think it’s a load of crap) means energy connections between me and my fellow yogis (as well as family and some close friends) I feel more easily than others… and word came down the line today that she’d passed.

But not before I’d spent most of last night almost comatose on the couch from around 7.30pm, weirdly tired, and completely falling into a deep, deep sleep during the twilight hours…

And this morning before awaking, dreaming a strange dream:

You know those photos where someone’s arm or feet or another body part is in the shot, but that’s all you see of them? The main person who’s featured appears to have dismembered body parts floating in their general vicinity? In my dream I met a man, of Asian appearance, with incredible Photoshop skills and he was systematically removing the unattached limbs from several photos. They looked like they’d never been there. I was amazed he could do that so well…

Morning arrived, I was still exhausted, and inexplicably I felt unwell. So I stayed home from work and around 1.30pm local time, received the text message of her passing.

I knew it was coming; we’d received an email just a couple of days ago.

Those in our yogi school had been asked to send the energy of our practice and prayers to help her through this time… passing of life into death… through the bardos where images clung to as reality in the world we believe to be solid and permanent show up again… and where, if we so choose, we can reside ever after in a dream-like state… much as we do anyway… just another possible way of existing… Who says it’s all ‘like this’ or ‘like that’ anyway?

It’s the after-death state(s) that some yogis and yoginis practice for throughout their lives.

We practice not just to live here and now as humanly and humanely as possible, but to navigate the various stages of letting go – slowly unfurling and shrugging off corporeal shackles to grasp the wider view of what life is and how death actually, isn’t separate, but part of it… beyond the tangible with its rules both societal and physical.

In this world, we humans grieve for what has been, fixating on something that after this moment ‘right now’… no longer ‘is’.

My paternal grandfather’s passing a couple of years ago was like that. With my own father so angry at him for not calling the ambulance (or anyone) when grandpa had clearly felt heart pain for several days before he died alone in his home with the blinds still drawn and his bed not made.

There was a viewing before the service where I was to speak as a proxy for my father who’s voice was not reliable (neither was mine). I slipped in early, before anyone else arrived.

In an impossibly small coffin at the end of a narrow room lay his shrunken form, no longer my twinkly eyed grandpa, so gentle and sweet in his silent ways. He was no longer an inhabitant of this form, if he ever was. If any of us ever are…

Right there is a good philosophical argument for cremation, which is certainly my preference…

As I offered prayer and mantra, I knew I wasn’t praying to this lifeless inanimate flesh but to the surrounding environment… where I felt him to be more real and present than this frozen grandpa-like shape.

Do you start to wail and cry if a person goes to another room in the house? This death is inevitably connected with this life. In the sphere of Immortality, where is the question of death and loss? Nobody is lost to me.
~Sri Anandamayi Ma

Aum
Shanti, Shanti, Shanti!

~Svasti

Carbon based lifeform 2.0

06 Thursday Nov 2008

Posted by Svasti in Spirituality

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Breathe, Change, Growth, Inner work, Integration, Mantra, Meditation, Om namah sivaya, Opening, Presence, Quickening, Yoga

There is a quickening…

Despite myself I’m being reprogrammed at operating system level. Certainly I’m not practicing as much as I’d like, either yoga or meditation. But integration, yes. Before, it would take so much longer for me to realise I’d lost presence… Now presence is lobbed back to me, like a tennis ball. Oh there it is again. Spontaneous yoga within body and mind even if its not external. Om namah sivaya, om namah sivaya, om namah sivaya. A dog barks – you are Siva too, I explain. In between times I’m reactive, I’m angry, I’m anxious. I worry. But then… oh its you again. A pretty shrub covered in Spring blooms – I see the spaces in between. I fret. I stress. I react. But now I’m a homing pigeon set to return to Source. Inner voices are strengthened but still I question. New parts, there are new parts! Breathe. Mantra. Breathe. Mantra. Breathe. Mantra. Breathe. Mantra. Breathe mantra. Breathe mantra. Breathe mantra. Breathemantrabreathemantrabreathemantrabreathemantrabreathemantra…

There is an opening…

~Svasti

The pain, the pain

24 Wednesday Sep 2008

Posted by Svasti in Spirituality

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Bangkok, Brahma, Broken bones, Erawin Shrine, Ganesha, Incense, Ink, Loei, Mantra, Offerings, Pain, Pappy Ganet, Prayers, Puja, red eye, Senses, Sukhumvit, Tattoo, Thai tattoo

En-masse, the people of this world have an aversion to pain. Its part of the survival mechanism, is it not?

From my experience I think physical pain is easier to deal with than mental pain. That’s possibly influenced by the five times in my life where I’ve broken bones (eight in total). Plus the multiple sports injuries and operations (too many to count). Not to mention a bone graft. I feel like I can get to know physical pain. I understand what makes it better or worse. I can see when I’m getting better. Compared to years of depression and trauma, physical injuries are a cake walk.

Yet it’s amusing to think that I was afraid of getting a tattoo for years because I thought it would hurt.

Though perhaps, I was just waiting for the right one. I never wanted a rose or some arbitrary design I’d eventually grow to dislike. I hadn’t seen anything that got my attention until my Guru took his shirt off on our 2007 retreat in the US.

He had a huge Thai Singha Lion in the middle of his back and I was very attracted to the design, the style and energy of it. Very. Like, purrrr… over a tattoo.

At this year’s retreat word went ’round: we had a chance to go and see the man (Arjan Tong) who’d done my Guru’s ink after retreat. WOW!

There was a lot of interest but my Guru didn’t want all and sundry going, especially if it added to anyone’s idea of themselves as “spiritual”.

He surveyed those who put their hands up, asked questions where he thought people were kidding themselves.

I thought you already had a tattoo, he says. I say nope! He nods. That was the extent of his questions for me.

In the end there were two groups of five to go on different days.

It was important to bring offerings, not just money. In fact, we’d been asked not to pay more than 500 baht ($17AUD) so as not to risk insulting him even though it wasn’t a lot to us. But if we brought rice, flowers, fruit, sweets – that would be respectful and well received.

We took a Thai “red eye” bus overnight from Loei to Bangkok. Not recommended. There was scant time or room for sleep as we poured into a friend’s tiny unit to shower and change. And a little meditation and prayer. Aum namah sivaya.

Somehow we flagged a cab in peak hour on Sukhumvit and we were off to the outskirts of Bangkok. Somewhere!

An hour later (thanks Bangkok traffic) and a few wrong turns, we’d arrived. We wouldn’t have known we were there except for a tiny Thai lady who walked up to our cab and almost dragged us out, beckoning us down an ordinary looking lane way. Left turn into a two-man aisle.

Walking past the backs of people’s places, or was that the front? At the end of the lane was a red gate with a red embossed trishul.

Through the door, past people waiting, a sharp right turn and up rickety stairs.

Whoah! The room is alive. Its clear puja (ceremony) has just been completed with the offerings and incense spread under the wall to ceiling altar.

Puja offerings at the altar

In fact the whole room is an altar. My heart is running a mile a minute, the back of my skull feeling like it’s been removed and is expanding dramatically. Wait, I know this feeling from my meditation practices…

We’re sitting on the floor, remembering to take everything they offer us (water, food) as we wait, so as not to be rude. All looking at each other, knowing eyes: This place is off the hook.

The altar is made up of statues and pictures, carvings and images. So many. Members of the tattoo lineage Arjan is a part of. We wait in near silence.

The monks arrive, giving us incense to make offerings. Pray to your god, they say. Everyone who comes in does this too, and soon there’s twenty or more sticks burning at the same time.

Our eyes burn as the incense is pumped around the room by a fan turned on to combat the extreme heat of the day. These are only minor distractions though.

One of Arjan’s students – a Thai man named David – speaks to us, helps us prepare. His English is excellent and he also talks to us about his own meditation practice.

An hour later Arjan himself appears. There’s no rushing this. His eyes light up when he sees our offerings, particularly the rice. He takes his snuff, makes his preparations. This is a ritual folks!

We all jostle nervously – most of us want to go first, deferring to each other. The order changed again. We are all a little bit afraid, but it was something we want regardless. I’ve been told it’s gonna hurt like crazy but I don’t care.

My eyes feel as large as saucers, the back of my head and my spine are expanding. No longer limited to what I generally consider the bounds of my body.

I end up going third. I kneel, placing my money in the polystyrene offering plate decorated with orchids. David and I talk about what I want – not that its necessarily what you’ll get! David translates Arjan’s words back to me – we’ll give you a lovely figure design, everyone will love you. No, I want to have love for all beings, I protest. Well, when you love everyone, then everyone loves you.

I lean forward and hug my knees to my chest. I have to stay as covered as possible. Three men stretch my skin, pulling it taut like a canvass. Arjan draws freehand to guide his work. Then takes the long old fashioned spear and dips it in ink. I relax. He starts and I think – this isn’t any worse than pricking your finger when sewing. And I’d done plenty of that!

This wasn’t pain, not really. But even when it felt a little sharp at times, through breathing it was possible to relax that and remain in the moment. Guruji had spoken to us about zoning out, and I didn’t want to do that.

Smelling the incense, feeling hands and the spear on me, seeing nothing externally as I closed my eyes and meditated, hearing Thai conversations of Arjan with the men around me and the whisperings of my fellow yogis. Tasting the sweat rolling down my face.

David is instructed to give me a mantra to repeat silently until Arjan is finished. When he’s done Arjan prays over his work, tangibly putting some serious energy into it. I turn and bow. I’m given another mantra that I now must do before each meal, three times a day. Every day. Good thing I like ritual!

The remaining two people in our party have their tattoos done as well. We’re all ecstatic!

We bow our thanks when the last of us is done, and farewell the now very crowded room. This time we get a cab to the closest BTS station and train it back to central Bangkok, which is much faster.

I can feel my tattoo. It doesn’t hurt and it barely bleeds, unlike western ones. But it pulses warmth and energy. It radiates and opens. There’s a sense of bliss. We go and visit Erawin Shrine (the wish fulfilling Brahma) and the Pappy Ganet (Ganesha) shrine before finding our hotels for the night.

I know some of my friends had the same experience as me – that it wasn’t painful at all. But others (including the guys) found it almost unbearable.

And I wonder. What is this thing called pain? Why does the same experience cause different levels of suffering for different people?

Is it just that some people have had more dealings with pain, and therefore their tolerance increases? Is it transferrable? Because I’ve had so much physical AND mental pain, does that mean that things phase me less and less? I don’t think I’m less sensitive, in fact I think I’m very sensitive. But perhaps I am less-so in some ways?

Does it also mean its harder for someone to reach in and really touch my heart?

~Svasti

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