Manifestations of Devi – from Sw. Satyananda

Tags

goddess, Ma, manifestations, maya, Swami Satyananda, Tantra, Yoga, yogic philosophy

“…Devi is the great power behind this creation. She is called Maya because out of creation has appeared maya in the form of this world. Being the ruler of maya, she is Mahamaya…”

“…In her prakriti aspect, Devi is the source of Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara; she has the male as well as the female form…”

“…Human beings also have within them all the elements found within the universe. This body is a universe in miniature form. The creative power of the universe is lying latent in the human body also…”

These excerpts are from a short but sweet satsang (spiritual discourse) by Swami Satyananda.

From a yogic perspective, everything is the Mother, or Goddess in various forms and this satsang explains this eloquently.

If you want to read the whole thing, head over to the Satyananda blog. You’ll have to scroll down to get past the announcements that seem to sit before every post.

Every single sentence in this piece can be unpacked in greater detail if that’s your thing.

Personally I think it is a very beautiful summary of everything I know and love about yoga.

Enjoy!

~Svasti

Simon Borg Olivier workshop redux

Tags

circulation, Hatha, internal force, Kundalini, relaxation, Simon Borg-Olivier, Stretching, Tantra, workshop, Yoga

Here I am, finally reporting in on last weekend, where lucky, lucky me got to spend a day and a half learning from the wonderful Simon Borg Olivier.

Simon is all joyousness, fun, passion, love, enthusiasm, knowledge and wisdom. His teachings make so much sense, and yet some of what he has to say flies in the face of what is taught to many yoga teachers.

Seems to me that many of the most interesting yoga teachers out there each have pieces of the “yoga puzzle”: reviving and expanding modern-day western-world yoga from the benign practice of “stretching”.

Simon is another of these teachers.

In this particular workshop – a day and a half of teachings and practice – Simon spoke of Hatha yoga as being the right-hand side of Tantra (which concurs with all of my previous training). Tantra, of course, being a series of practices designed to bring awakening of consciousness via raising kundalini energy. He also spoke of a little of left-hand Tantra – which includes practices of extremes and taboos to achieve the same result.

[Note: my training in Tantra has included these aspects, but also a strong focus on various forms of meditation, ritual and deity yoga.]

Far from being the generic name for yoga until it branches out into Iyengar, Ashtanga and all the rest (the refrain of “all yoga comes from Hatha yoga” being extremely common), Simon speaks of Hatha yoga as being about creating internal forces. These forces, if used in the correct way, can bring about awakening of kundalini.

And it’s with this view that we began the workshop (the room was packed wall-to-wall with yogis).

So let me give you a taste of the weekend, if I can. There’s so much to say and my puny brain has no hope of remembering it all, let alone fitting it into a single blog post…

Simon’s style of practice has a very funky flow to it – lots of beautiful flowing arm movements and both small and large movements of the body. There’s plenty of video footage on Simon’s website and blog for you to check out if you like.

He walked us through making tiny movements with the body that are in effect the same as the grosser movements – forward, side and backbends, for example. But rather than a side bend that focuses on the bending side of the body, Simon asked us to think of lengthening the non-bending side. This still creates a side bend, but without jamming the spine.

Another thing Simon asked us to focus on was keeping our lower belly “baby soft”. By that he means not sucking the belly to the spine in most instances – instead, the belly is engaged by pushing the belly button away from the spine. This action creates strength and space, but also once again, does not squish what shouldn’t be squished. In fact, it’s possible to create firmness in the belly while keeping it soft, and still be able to hold a conversation without gasping for air.

We also focused on circulation of blood/energy (they’re one and the same, right?) by engaging all body parts – the trunk, arms, legs, fingers and toes – in each asana. Not just having some parts of the body come along for the ride. I have to say that being quite sensitive to energy as I am, this part of the work had a huge impact on me!

Simon posits that if our circulation is working properly, we don’t waste energy. That profuse sweating and/or numbness or coldness in our body while practicing suggests our circulation isn’t working as effectively as it could.

All very interesting stuff!

And hey, I know I’ve got some work to do on the circulation front. Coz okay, I might be a pitta/kapha constitution, but I sweat a hella lot even when practicing in a cold room!

Another important point from the workshop surrounds the common yoga teacher instruction of making sure your shoulders aren’t raised when you bring your hands over your head. How many of us were trained with that instruction and have in fact, said just that to students?

The thing is, that by pressing our shoulders down when our arms are above our head, we are in fact jamming the spine. Which isn’t particularly helpful for circulation and the flow of energy in the body, yes?

He also emphasises a point that I’ve never forgotten from his teachings 12 years ago: that yoga creates artificially tense situations for the body, in which we need to learn how to relax. In fact, Simon says that he relaxes throughout his entire practice (even in all those “fancy” poses, as he calls them), which is better than just waiting for savasana at the end!

Interspersed with all of these lovely little wisdom nuggets, we completed three full practices over Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday, while Melbourne’s grey skies opened up intermittently. With lots of intense instructions to go with the asana, wow did I sleep well Sunday night!

The other brilliant thing about re-connecting with Simon via this workshop is that I discovered there’s someone teaching his style of yoga right here in Melbourne, and actually not far from where I live.

Can I hear a HUZZAH? Coz this yogi now has a new yoga studio to call home. 😀

I’m not sure if Simon teaches much further afield than around Australia and Asia, but if you ever get the chance to do some yoga with him then go for it! Not only is he a lovely, adorable person but he’s got an encyclopaedic knowledge of the body and yoga.

Enough for now. My brain had a wee melt-down this weekend and I need some rest…

More about that soon.

~Svasti

P.S. Please note the above are my recollections of the workshop, so if I got something wrong, my apologies!

P.P.S. There’s also a lot of stuff Simon covered that I haven’t mentioned above. There just isn’t the space here…

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

Why I have a Guru – part 4

Tags

Astronomy vs Astrology, Chile, Essence Nature, Guru, Love, Meditation, Norse mythology, Overseas travel, Porridge, Runes, Sadhakas, Scotland, Snubbing your Guru, Summer gathering, Tantra, UK

This series of posts has once again, sat idly by for a few months now! For the full story, I recommend that you read part 1, part 2, and part 3 first… ‘course, if you don’t want to, then just read this one…

I didn’t see my Guru for two years, and it’s not that he wasn’t in town or I that didn’t know about it.

He was, and I did… A (my ex, and one of his kung fu and rune students) took great delight in telling him – she doesn’t want to see you – which he told me about after the fact.

A’s actions didn’t make me happy exactly. But I’d been a little miffed at how hard it’d been to contact my Guru when I thought something kinda serious was happening (in retrospect, all I can say is… it wasn’t that serious). And that when he did get in touch, his letter didn’t really help me. So, I consciously avoided spending time with my future-Guru.

Then, in late 2000 I planned something of a whirlwind trip – the UK, Scotland and Chile. The runic tradition I studied (as mentioned in part 2) was based in the UK, and was having a summer gathering of sorts, somewhere mid-north east of London.

Scotland was for spending time with friends and extended family, and Chile was to hang out with a friend who’d moved there to be with her astronomist husband (note: never ask an astronomist their star sign!).

Little did I know my Guru would be attending the same gathering. He was there to see his runic teacher – another pretty amazing person – actually descended from Norse nobility; the family tradition of this man (rune breathing, weapons-based martial arts, healing, mythology, trance work etc) was what we’d all been learning. He’d originally taught my Guru and three other people his family’s oral tradition, and then asked those four to spread the teachings.

It was via this rather circuitous path, I’d met my Guru. And this gathering was to pay our respects, learn from the master himself, and train with others who studied the same thing.

Thousands of miles from home, somehow my Guru and I both ended up in the same place at the same time. Camping in a field opposite a very old church and eating stodgy English porridge for breakfast.

We re-connected immediately, as if the last two years never happened. He asked why I’d stayed away, and although we talked about it, those reasons no longer seemed to matter – our connection was unblemished.

That week, luxuriating (NOT!) in the damp English Spring weather, we bonded again practicing martial arts, and discussing Norse philosophy.

At the end of the gathering, I found myself on a train back to London with my Guru and two Scandinavian guys, with an offer to share a couple of days and a room with my Guru before the next part of my journey.

It’s a time I remember with much affection. All teachers have their ‘teacher’ mode, and then there’s off-duty time. This is what we shared, and I delighted in his goofy silliness and incredible curiosity.

We did martial arts training in Hyde Park, tracked down a funny little shop that sold hand-carved walking sticks, did laundry, watched movies, listened to music in a Virgin megastore, went into expensive hotel lobbies to find out the cost of their over-priced rooms, ate out and of course… just talked.

We discussed Tantra, Hindu philosophy and our future student/teacher relationship. He did his practice at night on the edge of his bed, while I slowly faded into dream-ridden slumber, the kind that means I get sonambulently talkative. Awake or asleep, there was no mistaking my fear.

Yet he answered all my dumbass questions, and was outrageously indulgent of my desire to discuss every inane detail of my relationship breakdowns. I spilled my guts about things I never tell anyone! He listened, didn’t judge and slowly kept bringing my awareness back to one or two small practices he’d already got me working on.

Here was a clearly remarkable man. Definitely, not like any person I’d ever met. And for some reason, our paths crossed not once, but twice. He offered mysteriously enticing knowledge, the details of which we only lightly touched on, and for good reason (it’s not easy for the untrained western mind to grasp the multi-layered nuances of yogic philosophy)…

More, he never really seemed to look at my my external physicality. It was as though he saw something behind material form (I’ve noticed him do this many times since then).

But I was scared and uncertain, which of course I expressed. He said there was no hurry, and I shouldn’t take initiation unless it was what I wanted. In the mean time, there were things I could do to explore this new knowledge.

He gave me book titles to find and read, preparatory exercises to do (with a much fuller explanation this time), people back in Sydney to get in touch with, and there would be a retreat the following year in Canberra he wanted me to attend – so I’d see him again within a few months.

After two full days of being roommates, we parted company. I, to South London on an errand for my mother before I flew to Scotland. He, to Canada – he’d invited me to join him but regrettably I already had other plans.

Yet I was over the moon, joyous to have shared private time with him like that.

Years later, I remember my Guru speaking of the moment where sadhakas are suddenly faced with a reflection of their Essence Nature looking at them from the eyes of another. Immediate knowledge descends, that the person attached to those eyes can help you eventually recognise this within yourself – no longer just a reflection.

Although it would be another four years before I took formal initiation, I count our shared time in London as my first concious moment of recognition. But definitely not the last, or the most intense.

To be continued…

~Svasti

Why I have a Guru – part 3

Tags

Guru, Runes, Sivananda Saraswati, Spirituality, Tantra, The Matrix

Just so y’all know… the picture at the top of part 2 is not my Guru – it’s actually Swami Sivananda Saraswati. A truly wonderful man – born amongst the high caste of India, he studied to be a doctor, then ‘squandered’ all of his family money on caring for the sick and the poor.

My Guru and me – a meeting

So. A couple of weeks after the rune workshop I attended, I drove an hour across Sydney back to the beach-side home of my Guru-to-be. This time we met in the upstairs part of his fascinating house – a place I was to spend a great deal of time at, over the coming years.

I followed him around the kitchen while he made lunch, trying to figure out what questions to ask him. But I was a little unsure, and so he asked me a few questions to get the ball rolling.

G: So are you interested in spiritual work, then?

Me: Yeah, I guess I am. I have no idea why I’m here… just that after the other weekend, I wanted to come and talk to you again.

He kinda giggled a little at that point.

G: Okay, so generally in spiritual work, it’s about wanting to grow. Having that true wish to grow above and beyond what you think is possible for yourself. Does that sound like something that you’re interested in?

Me: Definitely! I mean, I’ve had all kinds of spiritual experiences of one kind or another. Been involved in all sorts of pagan things – but none of them have really been ‘right’, you know? They’ve all felt pretty empty in the long run.

I remember telling him about this energetic experience. He seemed interested, sorta.

But he never pushed any ideas onto me, though. Didn’t sensationalise anything.

Also, he never said anything like: ‘I’m a Guru and you should get into Tantra and follow me’. Never.

In fact, he barely told me about that side of what he taught. Though he wasn’t hiding anything either, but didn’t big-note himself or explain too much at that point.

Instead, we talked runes. We talked about the breathing practices I was already doing and ways to explore and expand on that.

He gave me some additional practices which would add other dimensions to what I was already doing. He suggested I keep track of anything I noticed.

And he asked me to get in touch if I had any questions.

This was the tricky part. He was leaving the country after living in Australia for years. But for various reasons he was now returning to America.

I still didn’t know yet he was my Guru. Only that he was incredibly wise, kind, and willing to share with me what he knew.

Waaay back when…

Cast your mind back folks – the late 1990’s were a time when not everyone was on teh interwebs yet! Horrors!! Can you believe it? I know, right!!

I did have email at home by then, but my Guru did not. I was given a postal address in New Mexico – where he ‘might’ be. It was all very sketchy.

So, I started doing these practices – but my fiancé (at the time) was very suspicious of my sudden interest in my Guru.

Mind you, that relationship was falling apart anyway. And my complete fascination with a man he’d never met (regardless of the fact that this man had now left the country), didn’t help matters.

But what could I do? It was a very, very powerful experience and connection.

The early years – in absentia

There are several common experiences people have upon meeting their Guru – if they ever meet one, and if that Guru is in fact their Guru (and just coz you meet someone like that doesn’t make them your Guru at all) – often the first reaction, if there’s a connection – is either love or hate. Something very strong anyway.

My infatuation though, gave way over time. I realised it was not a romantic expression of love. But rather, I’d met someone who was more interested in my potential as a human being than anything else. He had no concern for any physical or material definitions of who I was. He wasn’t trying to get in my pants.

He only ever wants to know about my capacity for spiritual growth, and is thrilled whenever something new opens up for me.

Meanwhile, my world rapidly turned upside down with the instructions given to me by my future-Guru. And there was no one around I could ask about it all. I can’t quite explain what I mean though… except things were unravelling.

Like… the very fabric of my perception of this world was being unwoven. Disconcerting? Youbetcha! I was freaking out a bit, but still… enjoying it all at the same time. It was along the lines of… starting to see atoms instead of solid shapes. A bit like that scene at the end of The Matrix with the play between computer code and solid shapes (but not quite so green and black).

And none of this on drugs, I promise!

I wrote to him, but he didn’t get my letter for a long time after he returned from India. In the meanwhile, I was more than a little worried by my experiences.

Eventually I received a letter from him – an aerogram!! But there wasn’t enough in the letter to really assist me. So at that point, I had to give up my practices because I was losing my grip on reality – which affected my ability to function in my day to day life.

Always a little sensitive to energy, its possible I had more pronounced experiences than my Guru had expected. But it was enough to scare me into stopping things in their tracks.

I was mad at my Guru and mad at myself… but mostly I wished I was near wherever he was. So I could ask questions and just keep learning.

[Read part 4]

~Svasti

Emphasis

Tags

Diacritics, Mother Goddess, Puja, Sanskrit, Sri Chakra Yantra, Tantra, Worship, Yoga

Helloooo from the house of our Pandit, where day one of our training is now complete. Its almost 9.30pm and as such, almost time for bed (on account of the fact we tend to get up real early in retreat mode). Somewhere between 5.30 & 6am).

Today’s schedule was to drill our understanding of Sanskrit and correct pronunciation.

And something that’s very important is emphasis. As in, a word can look the same in diacritics (English transliteration of Sanskrit letters) but if there’s a little symbol of some kind over or under a particular letter, that changes everything.

So, there needs to be some careful attention paid to such symbols, to ensure, for example… you don’t end up calling someone a prostitute instead of referring to their nose. I’m not kidding!

A little bit like how misunderstandings can occur between people using what we think is straightforward language… awareness and consideration are always useful skills to possess in order to avoid such mistakes…

Once we’d drilled letters and sounds and the alphabet all morning, we spent the afternoon chanting a number of sacred texts – things we use in our yoga practice anyway, but now have much greater understanding of and control over how we pronounce them.

The end of the day was interesting… we went to the local Hindu temple, which is actually a Sri Lankan Saivite temple (dedicated to Shiva – which is our linneage as well). It was a juicy puja – the hair where it attaches to my scalp has only just stopped tingling… several hours after we got back, actually.

They were performing a (very Tantrik) Sri Chakra Yantra ritual – which is about the worship of a living, married and happy woman as an incarnation of the Mother Goddess, for the benefit of all beings.

Thing I love about this stuff, is not just the worshipping of women, but that worship is considered an art form, personal and individual. Ya gotta feel it!

There’s no preaching, and beyond a few guidelines, there’s no set way of performing any Tantrik puja. There’s a freedom there, to commune with God/god as you see fit (or not).

And in my estimation, that’s how it should be.

Namaste…

~Svasti