barefoot diary

LOVE + PAIN

2011-12-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

friday, dec 9
riverside, ca

‎"love is pain" my son said when he was 18. like all the jail tattoos the gangsters have. sometimes yes, it is. and sometimes it feels better than anything you imagined was possible to experience and sometimes worse than anything you think you have the strength to live through.

i am sitting parked in my truck outside a liquor store with my son and a pack of his teenage friends drinking 40s of cheap beer leaning against the hood. They make jokes, push each other around, slur their words a little more. they get louder and prouder as the drink adds up.
i am talking to the director of the documentary we are making in India about the work i have been doing there to teach yoga to women sex workers in sonagachi, the red light district of india. most of them are mothers too. i look in their eyes and see my own worry and pain reflected back in bottomless black eyes, wet with almost-tears. people tell me that "i am doing god's work". i wonder if they would imagine this crusader sitting and watching my own son get fucked up on a friday night.

i dropped out of high school too. i slept in makeshift shelters and flirted with disaster, played out being a homeless hobo. maybe it is the blessing-curse of the spanish gypsy ancestors. i hear empty glass bottles rolling on the asphalt from the ones they have finished, the rickety sound of things getting a little too loose.

a bigger kid walks up to my sons group, he is dressed like a cholo. i keep talking on my cell phone to anka about our details for the next trip to india. I see things are heating up outside my truck. the bigger boy is getting angry, he is talking to one of my sons friends, who is about half his size. his arms are waving to emphasize something. i hold my breath. this is not a good part of town and there are gangs here, and this kid definately looks like he's in a gang. suddenly, he lifts his shirt up, does he have a weapon? it is possible to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. he is showing a tattoo on the side of his torso. the smaller boy is holding his ground. then the bigger one starts laughing and shakes the smaller ones hand. everybody relaxes and i realize all the other boys had been standing frozen too, waiting to see if things were going to jump off. i breath again.

i wait awhile longer, letting my son spend time with the friends he doesn't see much anymore. i am looking out my windshield my eyes lock with the big cholo. he tilts his chin up in an acknowledgment and i tilt my chin back at him. respect. he says, "who's girl is that?" and walks over to my window.

"these your kids?" he says.
"only one of em" i say. "i drove out from joshua tree to pick him up".
a moment of silence as he stands at my window.
"it's a full moon eclipse" i say and point at the moon in the middle of the sky above us.
"what's that?" he says.
"well, the moon goes blood red and dark, you should watch it"
he stares up looking contemplative at the white disc in the sky.
he has a friend he came with parked on the other side of my car. the friend looks like an older gangster.
"what are you looking at?" the friend says. he is wearing a plaid shirt and has a moustache.
the cholo laughs and ealks away from my window to his friends car.
i tell my son i want to go and he and his friends pile in my truck, reeking of cheap beer. they are laughing and telling jokes. my son says when we first pulled up one of his friends was like, "you got a girl with a nice whip". "no, that's my mom's car". one of the boys said the kid who stood at my window just got out of jail for 13 months for stabbing someone. shit gets real. this is normal life here.

i drop off the friends and drive my son stinking ad reeking and passed out in the passengers seat under a full moon in the rolling desert. it feels like we are driving through the isolated, rocky terrain of mars. we get lost and i stop at a gas station. i look around at the beat up cars in the parking lot, the teenagers in clusters around the gas pumps waiting for the next party. it looks like the kind of town where everyone is missing teeth from doing too much home made meth. my son is beligerant now and wants some weed. so he goes to one of the teenagers and talks to him. the teenager looks at his cell phone. i am getting pissed in the car, i am not waiting for some bullshit hook up at this gas station in some devil's asshole town. i pull my car around with the engine running and roll my window down. i want him to feel me waiting, pissed. i take a deep breath. patience. he gets in and we leave. i shake my head at the lump passed out next to me in the passengers seat. patience.

the next morning we have breakfast and a good talk and go for a hike.

sometimes i think, it's just a part of life, we all evolve, teenagers on the cusp of adulthood have a lot of wildness to get out. and sometimes i don't know how i am able to help so many people, but feel so helpless with my own son. it's a great gypsy joke, and somewhere the gods, who must be crazy, are laughing even when i cry. my son makes me so happy-sad. so proud-worried.

love is pain. love is bliss. love is love. it cannot be weighed, measured or contained in a word. love is a riddle, a koan, one word that you will spend your life unraveling. to get to the the meaty heart of the matter, the meaty, bloody, beautiful, throbbing heart of the heart. to the love of the love. the egyptians said when you die, the gods will weigh your heart against a feather. how much does my heart weigh? is my love lighter than a feather?

"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”-Jim Morrison

Warrior-lunatics of LOVE

2011-12-09T12:48:00.000-08:00

when i feel overwhelmed, i ask myself, "what would cesar do?"
waking up to survey the theater, the battle field, to fulfill his role in the play?
i bet some days he was like, "damn, this is impossible" or,
"look at all the armies mounted against me"

it's like that sometimes...there is too much to do, too many people asking for answers, needing attention, too many particles of maya screaming and dancing, pulling in different directions...
i think to myself, "cesar must have felt this way".
and yet you serve your dharma. so i may die today? just another day on the battlefield. so i may fail, i will live to fight another day. and in times of peace, i will eat drink and be merry, but i will not shrink like a coward from the theater battle field of life for i am a warrior of love...

like a kamikaze pilot
i just might strap into a love bomb of my immanent destruction
take aim at what i love
and blow the fuck up
you'll find scraps of me- of this love lunacy- in every cup of coffee

warrior-lunatics of LOVE
i need you to throw down your non-refundable love, money and pride onto the poker table of life and belly up to the Mother in the tavern of lunatic lovers...
She deals the cards in your hands
She says you better risk something if you wanna be a player
otherwise go back with all the other sheep sleepwalking through life with fast food religion and drive thru sex
it's time to lay your love on the line- like a tightrope walker - not a gawker- i walk the line

Breaking Taboo, Opening Sexual Secrecy

2011-12-09T11:32:00.000-08:00

Breaking Taboo, Opening Sexual Secrecy
I am sitting down to write a book, to share my experiences, to share what I know...

Sexuality has strong code of secrecy in both the mainstream culture and in the Tantric lineage I am a teacher of. Sometimes the secrecy is good, in that it allows a sense of privacy, a place where our spirit is free from the world life and the energy is ours alone, secrecy can be a tool for individuation that is healthy.

Often though, sexual secrecy has come from a deep shadow of fear. There are sexual secrets that are hidden because wrong has been done, it is best to open and air these wounds so all can evolve. In the path of Tantra, there has been secrecy for fear of judgement and punishment. Many tantriks and mystics from all over the world, all cultures, have been punished, sometimes by death, for practicing. I have seen my own death in past lives for carrying this energy as a woman and practicing and teaching. I am thankful that in this day and age they cannot drown me, burn me, cut out my tongue or lock me up for heresy or insanity. Knock on wood. I have had people close to me try to have me put in a mental institution "for my own safety and good". I have also been diagnosed as mentally ill and taken medications before I remembered who I was, what I came to do. The world is crazy, so if you feel out of step and crazy, you just might be sane.

I hope that this book serves as a map for others to find their way back to the Goddess and themselves in this confusing world. We have forgotten so much, we choose to be sleepwalkers in someone else dream. Wake up sleeping soul, wake up! May the unconditional love of the Mother Goddess comfort you and you find harmony of the sacred energies and great spirits that have created us. May we remember our place in the great Wheel of Life and play our parts well. May you find joy in your suffering and re-birth in your death, May we all remember we are ONE and act accordingly.

Gu-ru is a word that means teacher, but it is a coyote word, it means many things. It means light and darkness, so that we can understand that we are not only light, but also dark and that it is the mysterious womb of darkness which holds the light of the stars. A teacher will show us our darkness as well as our light. Guru also means "one who points the way". No one can walk the path for us, but we can see teachers and they can point to a way, we all fumble our own ecstasy to get where our hearts and should deeper longings call us to.

I am a Kali devotee, she is the Mother of Bliss, she gives bliss and liberation by making us face what we fear to become whole. Her face in the full moon is Lalitha, the Goddess of Sri Vidya Tantra, she heals by offering us sugarcane and pleasure, beauty and love. For my initiations into these godesses and this path through my guru, Sri Amritanada, I have been truly blessed.

As a woman, I also teach Vama Marga, the left hand path of taboo, so it is not surprising that I would break taboo of lineage custom in sharing secret practices openly. I have my teachers blessings in our lineage to do so. Many teachers have hidden their practices and have been brought down because of it. It is time for a new paradigm in teachers being more open, more authentic and human. The powers that be are still at work even if we, as teachers, unmask ourselves.

May this book and the opening of sexual secrecy into a more open inquiry bring more self-awareness, healing and empowerment for us all.

Eating pain

2011-12-02T19:58:00.000-08:00

"what is the purpose?" my 19-year old son says
"of what?" i ask. we have been talking about him getting a job.
"of everything" he says and his jaw is working back and forth, his black eyes are shining with anger. "sometimes i think the world would be better off without me"
or i would be better off without the world, i think to myself

i sigh heavily, i feel very old and tired
"i don't know" i say. "i feel like that too sometimes"

i look out the window of the ihop restaurant in a strip mall, somewhere in nowheresville, california. cars go by. this world, this life. the way we live, the way we treat each other. there is an elderly black waitress shuttling around plates and people's orders, she seems too old to do the job, but happy to be doing it.

i shake more salt on the french fries and watch the little white particles sift and fall through the cracks. i flip the ketchup bottle open and pour the bright red sauce on the chipped plate next to the fries. i shake a little of the bright orange hot sauce on top. i dip a fry into the spicy-ketchup mixture. repeat. i am not really hungry but it is hard to be with my son when he is expressing his pain. i know it is good for him to let it out, but it's hard to hear. it tugs at my sadness, anger, shame and guilt. this is not any disenfranchised youth, it's mine. the product of my upbringing.

i eat the pain, as if the spongy potatoes will absorb the excess karma, the quivering of my cells in the face of hopelessness. at least i can shit out the fries tomorrow. probably not all of the pain.

after he works himself up, he works himself down and says he feels better. opening the wound we don't have answers for somehow still feels better than holding it all in.

"i like people like that waitress" he says. we both smile. somehow she is a beacon of light, of someone making the best of their circumstances.

Writing, Fighting, Fucking and Self Doubt...

2011-12-02T14:19:00.000-08:00

friday, dec 2
joshua tree, ca

i hate it when people say they don't get stuck writing. that it just flows "spontaneously". well yes, if you let creativity just give you a little blow job, a little breeze under skirts, a small poem is sure to emerge from the tickling.

but i am talking about commitment not whimsy. when you commit to write something and to finish it. a book, a screenplay, a thesis. commitment of any kind acts as a magnifying glass to expose all the hidden warts and blackheads we wouldn't notice otherwise. commitment is serious business.

just yesterday morning i was teaching a yoga class and one of my students rolled over and did a somersault when i was pushing her into an adjustment. we fell on the floor together laughing. it is good to stay relaxed and go with the fall once you are falling, but sometimes it's harder to hold your ground than go with the flow.

like sitting down to begin writing my tantra book. suddenly i feel very inspired to go for a hike, to do yoga, to catch up with friends. to even pay my bills! that's the siren call of distraction from the task i have set before myself. will i succeed or will i fail? because failure is possible. even though God won't judge me for it when i face the pearly gates, i could fail to finish this book in the 14 days i have allotted for myself, a pressure cooker i have put myself in, a crock pot of creativity. ride or die.

i had a tae kwon do teacher who studied in korea. one of his masters said to him, "satori (sublime awakening) is in the moment of getting hit while sparring". know yourself, know your opponent. because it is the truth, it is the power of now. you can dance around and think you are a lot of things, but in the moment of contact you know exactly who you are. i am the jaw that was hit. i am the skin that stings and will bruise. i am the lungs on fire gasping for breath. i had another woman in a martial arts class say to me once, "you aren't afraid of getting hit then?" she shrugged her shoulders when she said it, a small judgement passed on my gonzo sparring nature. i thought how i kinda like the smack of skin, the crunch of bone, the taste of being alive. contact makes me high, it's why i like sex so much.

everytime i sit down to write in discipline (not inspiration)...i wonder, "do i have anything of worth to say?" does any of this matter? and the existential abyss yawns open and threatens to swallow the small, flickering candle flame of my purpose with it's sulphuric breath. that smell? that's the smell of self-doubt. smell your armpits. yes that's the sweat of fear. fear is the cutting edge of excitement. i jab with this sentence. i round house kick with that paragraph. who am i sparring? the blind and invisible universe from whom i must wrestle my words. say my name universe, say my name.

who can withstand such a fire?

2011-11-18T08:10:00.000-08:00

venice beach, ca
friday, nov 18

the great refuge from the mind is the body
the mind goes in a thousand directions,
but the lingam and yoni only go in two
man and woman
in and out

consciousness also goes in and out of itself
from darkness to light
with every inhale i am born
and with every exhale i die
hold you breath in
hold your breath out
where did you go?
these are saying that can only be understood through direct experience

when my lover touches my body, i feel the silent One stirring inside me
my body heats up like a burning coal and the serpent begins to move
in figure eights through my spine
and i wonder, who can withstand such a fire?

so much of my work has been done alone
has cost me much
and still, i have withstood such a fire
i have not turned to the left or the right
the fire has burned through the center

i try to please you, my lover
but still, i am a handmaiden of the mother
if you stay or if you go
we walk the edge of the knife and never know
my heart can be broken
and even psalm could die if her life force poured out her broken heart
but still i would serve my mother

i am not good and i am not bad
i am, like consciousness
devouring myself

Can we make a difference?

2011-11-13T08:30:00.000-08:00

Can we make a difference? Can we make the world a better place?

I am getting ready to go on another journey to India, to leave my home in America and travel and teach and go to the red light district to teach yoga to a sex workers co-op there.

I woke up in my warm bed in Venice beach this morning, in sunny southern California, and stared up at the ceiling, my eyes still heavy from sleep. I asked the ceiling and God, (if God is in the sky beyond the ceiling), does it matter? Does any of it make a difference? Why not stay in my warm bed? I could feel my partners body, heavy with sleep beside me. I could feel the soft rise and fall of the blanket with his breath. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have made a home here. I would still be traveling like a gypsy from plane to plane, to spread the word, to spread the good news, as Jesus called it.

You have to look a lot of suffering in the eyes to share the Good News. I think of the friends I made last year with the sex workers in Kolkata. I think of the woman with the burned face, when I asked her about how it happened, she said "they poured gasoline on my face and lit a match". Is it possible for humans to treat each other this way?

I go to teach them yoga because it saved my life. I came from a lot of suffering myself and nearly lost hope for living a few times in this life. I hit a rock bottom in an emergency room and knew if I went to yoga every day, it would make my life possible, sane. A lot of my own suffering came from a background of sexual abuse. So many of the sex workers have similar stories. So many men and women everywhere I teach do. Shame is a terribly binding force on the human heart. There are no easy answers when it comes to sexuality. The sex workers are not victims, they are strong, resiliant, funny women who are finding a way to survive and thrive. They have organized into a workers union and fight to have sex work acknowledged as real work to, to have the rights and respect of any worker. Of course, this work exists on the fringes of society, and most of society would rather turn a blind eye.

What can we do about this? How can we make change, make the world a better, safer place? The more I do the work, the more I realize how big the problem is, how many faces there are, like an ocean that multiplies itself with each new wave. I realize my own limitations and I wrestle with my own ghosts.

My own son has been angry with me for many of the trips to India I have made. When I called him last year from a crackling phone line in Varanasi, he said, "Why are you trying to help people in India when your own son is in pain?". Good question. I just know I have had to. Other times he has told me he is proud of me. My heart goes up and down, but the path keeps unfolding straight ahead, one step at a time. I try to balance it all, to be a good mother (good enough), to follow what is my path. Why do I call it my path? Because it pulls me forward when I don't know why, towards some invisible place, I know it is the truth because I feel it comes from my gut. My guru told me that the spiritual path is standing on the edge of a cliff, knowing you can't go back to your old life, and feeling like you will die if you take the next step off the edge of the cliff...but instead you land on a bed of roses or you fly.

Can we make a difference? I know I have made a difference in myself. I am not good or perfect, but I feel that I am doing what my soul came to do. When I was younger, that was the worst pain I had, was feeling deep inside me that I had to find a way to share and express the work my soul came to do. When I think about going back, I get a funny feeling in my stomach, a loss of gravity as if I am on a roller coaster. It is the feeling my body has when I am afraid. Sometimes it means I need to turn back and sometimes it means I need to walk forward. Not much interesting or powerful work has been created without confronting fear, even fear is a great ally in helping become our best.

I want to teach these women yoga, I want to make their lives and stories visible to the world. Where shame and suffering have been hidden, let us shed light and breath fresh air into old wounds. Will it make a difference? Who knows, I just know what I have to do.

for more info on this project go to: www.couragetorise.org
to support the project, buy the benefit music cd -go to: www.mothermedicinemusic.bandcamp.com

Pilgrimage, The hero's Journey

2011-11-13T08:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

Why go on pilgrimage (Hero’s Journey)?
The path of pilgrimage is as old as time, as dusty as the bare or sandaled feet wandering the desert, mountains and rivers. Seeking, seeking something to be answered from inside from a physical journey taken on the outside. They say no matter where you go, there you are. You cannot escape yourself. This is true, but Place and Land and Temple will change you. There are people living in other cultures. They are different than us, thank god, and have things to share with us. To share no on the flat pages of a book, but in the rocky terrain, in the smell of spicy sweat and exotic foods. These people have built statues, temples, churches; have placed stones to cast ominous shadows from the sun, foreboding prophets in a silent language that can only be learned by gnosis, the personal experience made real in flesh. And sometimes the pilgrimage is to something made by hands larger than humans.

Different physical lands are all places on the body of the Mother, and they have earthly and astral downloads and activations for the hungry seeker. These pilgrimages are prayers made of effort, sacrifice, determination and ecstatic longing. It is said by many traditions that once you commit to a pilgrimage the testing begins. Why? We do not know, we only know it is so. The Sufis say that most people cannot stay in the dergha because the atmosphere is too thick, too concentrated for most minds. Most minds are scattered . You need single focus. They say you can only stay in the dergha when you have only one question left. What is the question? They won’t tell you.

The hero follows the call to adventure, to pilgrimage. After facing outer obstacles and inner demons she returns home a prophet. She doesn’t look the same as when she left, a strange glow of inner fire in her eyes. Will she find rest after her adventure, her arduous journey? No! The integration back home is often the most painful of all. A prophet is not welcome in their hometown. The prophet speaks uncomfortable truths. The hero returns different when their relations want them to stay the same, not to rock the boat.

Pilgrimage brings adventure and acceptance. What god has for each is the portion each will get. It is enough. Inshallah

Have you felt called to journey to India? Land of saints and magicians...Land of sweet and spicy chai and mystic holy rivers...Let me share the magic with you...

In all her holy rivers and mountains and crowded cities, India whispers in your ear, "Remember your Soul"

I have been traveling to India to study Yoga and Tantra for the past five years and have been bringing groups of students to experience on a cellular level the Motherland of Yoga. Just the trip to India will transform your life...India has a gift to share, to remind us of what is magic and what is most holy within ourselves, to light the flames of devotion and the path of ritual and remembrance.
Swami Sivananda said: "Love, Serve, Give, Meditate, Purify, Realize, Know yourself, be happy and be free"

to learn more about this India Pilgrimage go to:

http://track.namastelight.com/v/1/8b27413b3450c9eea4efef529f3cb9d40eb6a23893679b9b

FLY OR DIE CROW

2011-07-08T13:19:00.000-07:00

FLY OR DIE...
MY KALI CROW MAJIK WOMYN...
THE TIME IS POWERFUL...THE MOTHER IS NOW...
LIVING THROUGH US SHE HAS NO BODIES BUT OUR OWN...
CROW WOMYN TEACH TRUE LAW...
THERE IS MANS LAW AND THERE IS TRUE LAW...
WE BRING THE SWORD THAT CUTS AWAY THE ILLUSION
LEAVING US SHIVERING AND EXPOSED IN OUR RAW NERVES,
WET PUSSIES AND NAKED SKIN...

WE MOLT TO COVER OUR RAWNESS INTO ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL VEIL OF ILLUSION...
IS IT POSSIBLE TO LIVE WITHOUT ILLUSION, WE WHO ARE MADE OF THE ILLUSION, WE WHO DREAMED OURSELVES,
WE DAKINIS BIRTHED FORTH FROM THE 3RD EYE OF THE eye-in-EYE, YES-I, JAI JAI...
CHOOSE YOUR ILLUSION MY BLACK CROW RAINBOW BUTTERFLY WOMYN...
REMEMBER YOUR MAJIK, SHE WAKES YOU IN THE WIND, IF YOU ARE LISTENING SHE WILL INFECT YOU AGAIN...
INJECT ME WITH YOUR LOVE GUN, INFECT ME WITH YOUR POISON,
DEATH NEVER MADE ME FEEL SO ALIVE

YES I
YES I
FLY OR DIE
BLOOD IN BLOOD OUT
THE ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH
THE MOTHER

a rant about writing:

2011-06-01T03:19:00.000-07:00

a rant:

"I feel there is something unexplored about women that only a woman can explore." -georgia o'keeffe

as i write, it is interesting the feedback i get. because of the sexual nature of my writing, i get a lot of men writing very juvenile comments. i also get marginalized by the mainstream of spirituality. as if i can be put in a box as "sexual".

my friends, are we not all sexual creatures? have we not come from sex? is the fabric of our existence not made of sex?

but we put it in a box. most religions and philosophies speak of all kinds of imaginary cosmologies, but the thing hanging between your legs is barely touched on. it goes in a box in storage. in a closet. and festers. if i am airing out that closet, i am experimenting with saying the unsaid. speaking about the most personal and universal experience we all have with out own sensuality and sexuality. but which we make every effort to hide from the rest of humanity. and when sex is spoken of, it is in the most garish way, which shows the explosive nature of repressed energy. if we looked at it more often, there might be more subtlety in our understanding, experience and communication.

i do not expect everyone to understand what i am doing, because even i do not always understand what i am doing...everything swirls around me...and then sets itself into place perfectly...chaos as part of the creative process...it is being done through me...this whole thing, this whole LIFE thing is birthing itself through me and is a mystery to me...

sometimes i feel judged...but that is mine to carry and make sense of. still i feel driven to create, or to allow what is pushing through me to be birthed.

people say i am fearless but it is because i am afraid of everything that i have put myself against the blade of my fears to experience more, i do not let the fears keep me from tasting my desires. i am terribly sensitive in my moments alone. but i do not let the sensitivity keep me from speaking my truth. this is not a statement of valor, it is simply how i observe myself to be built.

to the men with the sexual comments:
why are there so many idiots in this world? seriously, if the fb chat comments i get from men are any indication of the state of collective human consciousness...i am disappointed in our evolution. it would be nice if there could be more subtlety in the PLAY.

tame your penis for goddess sake! can i speak of the universal experience of sexuality, of being spirit animals without a bunch of high school come ons? i mean, seriously...i am exploring saying what is usually unsaid...but which is the common fabric of our consciousness...

to the spiritual community:
i am also disappointed with the spiritual communities lack of a sense of humor. everything is taken so seriously. can i have a fucking emotion without having a bunch of yogis clucking under their breath that they are praying for my peace? it is so condescending.

what about art and exploring differentiation instead of trying to be a bunch of sheep repeating OM OM OM... it is tiresome...where is the tolerance for individual expression and differing points of view? difference makes the world VIBRANT

there is an expression going around, "life is a comedy, not a drama"...really? i thought it was made of both? must i always put on a smiling bliss face for you? can you cherish your suffering as well as your joy?

i had my cup of coffee. please enjoy my mornings verbal droppings. that is all.

love
psalm

LA GITANA...#2 excerpt from new book...

2011-06-01T02:04:00.000-07:00

ST MARIE, sunday, may 29

i think of my mother and feel very sad. i become a little girl, i curl on the bed in a little ball. i cover my naked body with my wool shawl, like the favorite blanket i had as a baby. i want my lover to hold me. i want someone to hold this terrible ache and emptiness. i weep alone, unashamedly with no one to witness me. so much of the hero i called forth has to be found in myself. at some point the crying stops and i feel the heat of the sun from the window on the bare skin of my thigh. i run my fingers across the warm skin, it makes me think of my lovers fingers touching me. i become aroused and i take out my laptop. i photograph myself masturbating, it turns me on. after i come, i fall back asleep. i am so tired. i wake from my nap a few times fitfully, but i cannot move, my limbs are too heavy. finally i wake and stretch, i have been asleep for maybe hours, time has disappeared.

i shower and dress. i am ready to go inside the church, i have circled it for a week. i am ready to go to the temple in my heart where i hold my longing for my own mother, i have been circling it for years. i feel a great moment is approaching, a moment of the angels, a moment of my healing will come when i enter the church.

i go out to the square and they tell me the church closed at 4pm, it is now 6pm. they say it is closed on mondays and i leave tomorrow, i already bought my ticket to seville to fly early tuesday morning. what a cosmic joke! i write shiva that i made the pilgrimage and danced in the courtyard and slept on the beach, but never made it to the church. he says that is my way anyhow, fuck the buildings i will find god in the streets.

the difference between external worship and internal worship is that external worship is what can be seen from outside, in the form. people put on their best clothes and file into church trying to get points from god or at least the priests and their neighbors. internal worship has no piety and cannot be seen from the outside but is a constant state of offering all life to the sacred flame. everything is sacred, even the profane. i met a monk in india who said i should not wear my prayer beads while taking a shit. he said it would offend god. i said, how can i offend god by taking a shit? god made me and god made the shit. the other teachers all say be good, but i say be bad. you have been so programmed you do not even know good from bad.

i do not know what will save me but i know it is nameless and formless. i may not be good but i am burning, and that burning is a purifying flame. what will i become from all this burning? the moth is attracted to the flame until it is eaten by the flame and becomes the flame. that flame sets others to burning. do not ask if your path and teacher give you peace, only ask if they set you to burning.

it is shaping up to be a long, lonely night. by body is on fire with the memory of my lover inside and nowhere to release the energy. most of the people have left from the festivals and all the corners that had been full of musicians and dancers are empty now. i haunt the streets like a ghost that night, following the sounds of guitars. outside the church close to midnight, a group of young men are playing guitars. a woman in black approaches the group. she has black hair, a black cowboy hat, eyes rimmed in black and her blouse, skirt and shoes are all black. her face is lined with a life that looks hard, but full of good stories.

she waits for the boys to finish their song and then removes her guitar from it’s case. she begins to play and sing, the voice of a woman who is used to singing alone. her songs are in languages i do not understand, but the brave longing i can understand. her songs make me see wide open prairies and horses. they make me think of freedom and loneliness. one of the young men begins to accompany her on his guitar, but she waves for him to stop, she is playing alone. her fingers strum the guitar strings and sometimes she beats out a sound with the tips of her nails that sounds different then the way i am used to hearing the men tap the soft pads of their fingers. when she is finished a young man who looks like a traveller, dark and unwashed, kneels to give her praise. we have all witnessed a miracle here in the church courtyard. then she waves to accept our gratitude and walks away.

Excerpt from my book "LA GITANA (The Gypsy): A Pilgrimage to the Black Madonna"

2011-05-26T07:31:00.000-07:00

LA GITANA:
Pilgrimage to the Black Madonna
excerpt from book in progress as i am writing it in France

in any language or religion, the true name of god is the name of our own mother.

this book is dedicated to my mother, whose name is bella. whose face my eyes have not seen for 12 years at the time of writing this book. her name is bella. i repeat her name, i pray to her, for her, i circle her madness in my life. tough crazy gypsy witch god fearing woman, may you be blessed and may you bless me, your daughter. amen.

i have seen when they burned me in past lives, when i was tied to the stake and shamed, as if fire could drown my spirit, which returns lifetime after lifetime, wrapped in a new body of flesh and bone. "they" are the non-believers, the ones afraid of the great mothers power, the ones afraid of the agreement they made with death to be born, who now are afraid to live and who move through this world with their spirits sleeping, locked inside their insatiable bodies. their souls are thirsty so they drink more wine. their souls are hungry so they eat more food. how alone it must be to not remember who you are, a child of the great mother, the birther of the cosmos. and those non-believers have called us witches, the ones who remember, the ones who worship in her name. they have forgotten the ways of the sacred profane. the symbol of the mother is a snake eating her own tail, through death she is reborn.

Preparation for the pilgrimage
NYC May 20

A hymn for the lovers:
Somewhere between grace and insanity we hover like urban angels testing our leather wings against the blood and cut and guts of the Matrix. We fly to rise and change the world. All we have is love, all we have is prayer. all we have is each other...two become one and kill each other with LOVE to become none. World without End, amen.

love will kill you every time. i turn over in my sleep, my hungry fingers seeking your body for some reassurance that all of this is real. i fly away again tomorrow, or at 1am, it is already today. we stay up so late that tomorrow always becomes today, time doesn't exist when you are already dead. two pirates adrift in a ghost ship, adrift between dreaming and waking. your body is cold to my touch, i am confused. there is no heat, no desire in you. i need your desire now, i want to know you want me, i want to feel safe in our connection before i leave. i run my fingers along the smooth, warm skin of your back, you live inside this skin, but like a house with a locked door, i can't get in. i think of running my fingers lower, to touch the man root of your body, the electric place, but it feels like it would be desperate now, and i don't like being desperate (or at least having anyone know i am). you i think i will die if you break my heart again.

we get out of bed. i sit and watch you roll a cigarette, the loose brown strings of tobacco gently coaxed into the thin paper by your nimble fingers, you bring it to your mouth and lick the edge to seal the cigarette. i want you to touch me like that. i am wretched once again. i feel myself start to go numb, a cool detachment begins to separate me from the heat of heartbreak. i will walk alone again, i know how, i am the priestess, the teacher, i am the brave warrior woman. i know how to do this, how to walk strong, alone, where mere mortals fear to tread. they worship my bravery, my courage, my recklessness. most people are afraid to burn their homes down, i burn them all…yours, mine, ours. i see the lie, the falseness in myself. the free woman…free from what? "be patient with me" i say. "i have been on my own trip for so long. i don't know why i have to go on this trip, but i do. it has to do with my mother". my tongue gets thick and i can't find words for the thing inside me. "i have a hard time trusting. the pain from both my parents being gone is so deep". i have not expected anything but independence, freedom and being alone in this life.

"i don't want you going to places i don't know how to pull you out of yet" you say. "i don't want anything coming between our medicine". "what medicine?" i ask. does he mean the medicine plants he carries? does he mean the tantric goddess lineage i carry, the healing through sexual energy? "the medicine of our connection" he says. the simplicity of what he says pierces my heart. there is a medicine in our loving that is so powerful now. his love is my truth serum, it makes me let go of my layers of protection that guard my soul more than anything does now. in time, everything that is real in the moment becomes an idea, a worn out cloak we forget to remove once the moment is past. this is true even of my role as a teacher and a healer.
"i just want to see you with no clothes on" you say. "i don't want to see you hiding anything". we are standing on the street corner in new york at 2am smoking the hand rolled cigarettes, it could be anywhere. a man and a women wrestling with love. i gently butt my forehead to your chest, to your heart and you hold me, frozen in time. we are immortal. a bar on the corner is playing an old song by cheap trick, "the flame". the gods have orchestrated life's jukebox for us again. "you'll be the first to be the last" the song plays and the words are perfect in the middle of the night in the middle of the street.

we go inside and you take off all your clothes, our skin touches like warm velvet. you stroke me and pull me to you. i grow wet and compliant. i sit astride you, your lingam the blade that pierces me open from root to crown and i move like an animal from deep instruct. sometimes my eyes are closed, sometimes they are rolled back in my head. sometimes i open then and see you, beholding me and it is almost too much to bear, the obliteration of my self into us. two become one and kill each other to become none. your lingam inside me the blade that killed me. my false ego is dead and all we have now is eternity, we died for love. your lingam covered in my blood, there are some agreements older than the rascal time, older than the moon. shiva is the dying god, dying like the emptying of the moon. we merged, the golden serpent laced between our spines. we are the medicine, you are always inside me, always dancing in my spine. i am drowning in happiness, is it possible to be this full? i say, "baby, you are the medicine". you say, "ride it baby, its yours."

NEW YORK CITY May 21

i call a cab to take me to the airport, and have them meet me at the neighborhood mexican food joint. i start practicing my spanish, "uno mas margarita por favor". i gulp it down and grab two fish tacos to go, the cab is waiting outside. i kiss my man goodbye in the street, the look in his eyes pierces me with their grey-blue sincerity, something to come home for. i slip into the yellow cab taking me to another mystery. the cab driver is blasting salsa de columbia. he is from mexico, he speaks to me in spanish, it has already begun. high on tequila and life, i spill out of his cab at the airport.

MADRID June22

i land in madrid and start walking with a crumpled piece of paper and an address for a place to sleep tonight. one of my students in hawaii arranged for me to stay at her dance teachers school here in madrid. the air is warm and moist, the old building and cobblestone streets are charming, lovers lay embracing each other on the grassy park lawn. i start to pass two people walking slower than me, i smile to myself. when i was in new york, he said i didn't walk fast enough. here i am walking too fast, i like walking slow better. in my head i tell him, "what's the hurry baby, we're already dead, right?". if we are dead we might as well take our time in life.

i find the school, it has beautiful, big spanish windows and indian patchwork pillows. the dancers from the school take me out to tea and then a hookah bar, where we smoke sweet minty perfumed tobacco from a glass hookah pipe. i suck in a long drag and hold the moist steam deep in my lungs, when i exhale the smoke rises and envelopes me in a fragrance for a moment. the dancers coax each other to get up in the restaurant and do solos for each other, the men who work at the restaurant turn the music up. the women call for me to dance. i am so jet-lagged i am falling asleep in my tea. i ask for more moroccan drums or african drums so i can dance. they find a good song and i rise from the table and stand bare feet on the floor, listening to the beat with the skin of my feet before i begin to move. even if everyone is watching, i am still alone. i don't have my dagger (i didn't want to risk it being confiscated by airport security) so i grab a butter knife from the table. i listen to my feet, the beat and the power of the blade, even a butter knife likes to cut things.

i begin to dance, carving the space around me with the knife. in a swirling world of chaos where anything is possible, i make decisive cuts with my knife, cutting a line from the future to the past. this is a dance of action, holding the sword of time in the formlessness of space. my body starts to move faster, i am sweating from the fire in my spine, the serpent has woken and is dancing through me. my legs lift higher until it is more of a war dance, and why not? you have to be a warrior in this world. i dance for the angels and i dance the demons through me. i slow the dance but keep the heat, so that i can send the power, the shakti, through my hands to one of the dancers sitting near me. i dance a blessings for my spanish sisters, i give them the power surging through me. i stop and they clap. they tell me afterwards it was beautiful to see me dancing alone with god.

there is a peaceful revolution in the streets of madrid, people have built a tent city in one of the main squares. they are protesting all the government parties being corrupt and not representing the people. the night is warm and thick and there is excitement in the air. i stop and dance in the center of the drum circle, everyone is surprised when i say i am american, with my black hair and gold nose ring with a chain that attaches to my earring hoop. the drums beat of a universal language and we are all brothers and sisters in search of freedom. i dance in the cobblestone streets, i dance for their justice, for the uprising of their hope.

i walk back to my room alone, it is after 2am and the streets are being hosed down by giant trucks. i am lost and wandering for awhile. i ask some british tourists if the know the address i am looking for. they are young and pissed drunk. one of the boys drops his jeans in front of me and i walk away, no time to waste with idiocy. i hear them talking behind me, "of course it scares people when you pull down your pants" and "but she doesn't have any fucking shoes on". i smile to myself, i must look strange. i walk through the park under large white statues of horses against the inky black sky. i finally find my room and try to call him before i fall asleep, no answer. i know it is silly, but falling asleep in the strange room in spain, i wonder if he was in the arms of another woman.

MARSEILLES June 23

back at the airport to fly to marseilles, i screwed up and didn't print out my boarding pass and they are charging me 40 euros. i feel like i have the flu from jet lag and i can't afford to be wasting money, my eyes water up but i don't cry. another nervous breakdown from the deconstruction of travel. i pay the fee and wait in line to board the plane. i am exaughsted, my eyes are burning. i tried calling him again, but still haven't gotten through. a little bit of panic runs through my body. "let's not give in to desire" he said when i left. "i am not looking for anything else" he said. i wonder if he will wait for me. "you're off on your own mission" he said the night before i left. i have been on my own trip for so long. now i want to make room for two, but will he wait for me?

i sleep on the plane and wake as we are descending at sunset in marseilles. the earth is pockmarked rocks near the shipping port and looks like a crusty shell from above. the clouds are pink and golden in the abalone sky. we are flying low over the orange-red terra cotta roofs of the french countryside. my phone beeps, it suddenly has reception. in the no mans land of the french airport, i get a text, "baby". my stomach flips. he still loves me! i remember the first time he called me baby, when i got up to get coffee after a night in the magic mushroom medicine together. we hadn't had sex yet, even though i had married him in the medicine, when he held me and the golden serpent laced our spines together.

we were still just flirting around each other when he pulled me to his lap as i was walking by the chair he was sitting in. deep in the melting of the mushroom magic i kept disappearing to a dreamlike place and re-emerging as if i was coming up from deep sea diving. one of the times i went under my mind to my subconscious i saw a vision, i was taking the vows of the priestess, of the lineage and he was there. and i saw he was the one who i could become who i am and be safe with. whether this was a dream born from my desire or a vision of dharmic law existing between us from other lifetimes, i do not know, only time will tell. the next morning, i woke up before him and laid there for hours, wanting to enjoy the thick syrup of breath moving in the space between our bodies. i didn't want to break the spell by moving. finally i got up and was leaving to get coffee, and he opened his eyes. i asked if he wanted coffee, he said, "thanks baby". my stomach fluttered, i liked it when he called me baby even though i didn't know what it meant, our dance still such a young thing and and fragile, i felt like a foal testing it's new legs. he called me baby for a few more days, then disappeared to be back with his ex-lover where his heart was calling him. i went on a two month mission around the world. from the beaches of hawaii to the brothels of kolkata i taught the mothers liberation. when i got back she had broken his heart and now he calls me baby again. will our love survive? i choose to love like a meditation, to see what comes without trying to control. anyways, i write better when i am lonely and longing.

on the train, i find out i made a mistake. i should have taken the train from the airport to arles, not marseilles, i went in the opposite direction, i will have to go to arles tomorrow. the attendant on the train asks what i will do. i say i don't know, maybe sleep on a bench in the station. he says in a heavy french accent, "you must have a lot of courage". "if you were my daughter i would be afraid for you". i tell him i am not afraid, i travel all over the world and always a miracle finds me.

all these rooms look the same...4am in marseilles...sleeping in a mostly clean white box with a somewhat working shower, wifi though. no tv. would be in french anyways...law and order in french would give me an orgasm...

it gets later and still i cannot sleep. it is still the middle of the day in my jet lagged body. i think of what the train man said, about being afraid. sometimes i do get afraid. but then i remember i am psalm fucking isadora! the angels and the demons listen to me.

on my way to the black madonna, i think of my mother. i think of crazy powerful women and gypsy blood and caravans and loyalty and how it is possible sometimes that pain is thicker than blood and we disburse. there are a lot of pretty women in the world, but what about the ones that scare the shit out of you? i go to the dark mother tomorrow.

i hired a private detective a few years ago to try to find my mother. he said she must be hiding out from bill collators and th tax man because he couldn't find an address. he said in his experience it doesn't go well to show up and surprise someone who is trying not to be found. so i circle the globe on a pilgrimage to the mother. maybe by moving in the physical world, my prayer will stir the invisible sea and change the weaving of what is keeping us apart. i walk in both worlds, a pilgrimage with my feet in the world and a pilgrimage for reconnection and forgiveness in my heart. the real pilgrimage is circling things inside me, the black madonna is the icon of the dream mother in my own consciousness. i worship the mother, i long for her, i journey far and alone in this world, i suffer for her love. my pain has made me strong and other people come to lean on me now, come to know the mother as she is channeled through me, i am an excellent vessel because i am so empty, my longing a fire that has burned me clean through.

someone once gave me a box of darkness and i dance inside
blood red lips and flamenco curled fingertips
the world is ending and i will dance calling in the spirits of chaos and oblivion, ushering in the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning

there is a temple in india of the mothers genitals,
you walk to the holy of holies,
a dark pit of water and stone.
a box of darkness, the mother's womb,
from where we all came and where we will all return.
someone once gave me a box of darkness,
i thank my mother who birthed me for this living mystery.

ST MARIE DE LA MER May 24

sometimes the burning is so intense
the travel wears me down and makes me emotional
so does drinking cheap liquor from strangers bottles and dancing barefoot in the streets with glass in my feet til 1, 2, 3am
so does traveling a woman alone not sure where i am sleeping every night
i hunt myself
i hunt my heart
i hunt my longing
i turn away the water so i can stay thirsty and use the thirst to hunt the root of my thirst
last night i followed a group of italian hippes and slept on the beach with blankets lent to me by a man and woman who came to me and asked for kali's blessing
this world is so many layers of beautiful delusion
the veils wear thin
i am the illusion

i am thirsty, road worn and broken down
i laid down on the sidewalk yesterday until a policeman came to see if i was ok or just another drunken gypsy over the edge
no more pride
i was laying on the sidewalk in pain and bliss
staring at the pink and blue abalone sunset sky
tears streaming down the sides of my face
i felt like i was floating
am i in this world or the next?

i pilgrimage to the black madonna
i am writing postcards from france back home to an address i found on the internet when i searched for my own mother
the statue of the mother i pilgrimage to is my own mother that lives inside me
my longing to see her face
i have not seen her for 12 years
they say blood is thicker than water
somewhere between all the confusion, abuse and pain, the pain was thicker than the blood and our caravan of gypsies dispersed
i pilgrimage to my hope that love is stronger than pain
i have not gone inside the church here
i have not seen the black mother's face except in the tourist pamphlets
all the idols were created for us to project our longing onto anyways
the power is in our longing not the statues
they say this mother is covered in many fabrics so only here eyes are showing
oh mother you remain always a mystery to me

i come with a sword...healing abuse with anger

2011-04-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

maybe this post has nothing to do with you, maybe you have no history of abuse. but the longer i teach, the more i see a lot of the reaching for love and light we are doing comes from abuse that needs healing.
who is the abuser and who is the abused? don't we all have to learn to love each other to heal, to see we are all one?

i have run into two camps, one that focuses on victimhood and blame and one that focuses on forgiveness.

the one focusing on victimhood and blame doesn't see a true transformation of pain is possible.

the one that focuses on forgiveness is often trying to take a spiritual bypass and whitewash the issues to move straight from the suppression to forgiveness.

i received this email recently,

I've got to tell you that I think it's the biggest fallacy in spiritual teachings that we've got to love our abusers; especially when the abuser is a parent. "Honor thy Father and Mother?" That's the first lesson in perpetuating abuse to the next generation.

I think that we don't begin to release the repressed feelings trapped inside us until we learn to DIS-honor the people who abused us. Otherwise, our unconscious minds won't let us access those repressed feelings in a meaningful way.

After that, we can work on healing the damage the abuse did to our neurology.

After that, we can love the abusers.

After we can express and integrate the repressed feelings of shame, anger, rage and grief, then we can reach a true kind of love, not a spiritual bypass.

This reminds me of a teaching of Jesus when he said,

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law--your enemies will be in your own household."

a great deal of physical, mental and emotional abuse comes from our own families. it is a hard thing to understand being angry at the people you love. sometimes these relationships get worse before they can heal. the psychologist carl jung described this process as individuation. learning to separate yourself from your family, culture, society, to become self aware. in tantra, the healthy ego center is manipura, in the belly and solar plexus, in your guts. the element of this center is fire.

what place does a sword have in healing? sometimes a wound must be cut open to air and find healing.

Jesus also said, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword".

so jesus contradicted himself, as all great spiritual teachers do. truth doesn't fit into neat categories. this life and the spiritual path is a sloppy human interaction of fumbling towards love and forgiveness through human relationships.

anger is a double edged sword, it can be used to slice through and transform, or we can get stuck in the habit of anger and bitterness without the transformation. anger is strong medicine, but it should not be avoided on the spiritual path for fear of it's power. anger is an emotion close to the surface, grief lies sleeping deep below in our subconscious. anger can make us aware, if we are able to follow the reaction to it's source. anger always stems from an unfulfilled desire. the way of healing, letting and moving on is to grieve our unfulfilled desires, not suppress them. without fire, there is no transformation. my guru says, "keep the power in your heart, otherwise it can be cruel".

Tantrika on monogomy and polyamoury...

2011-04-07T09:21:00.000-07:00

thursday, april 7
gibsonia, pennsylvania

i got an email from a tantrika sister
asking:

"As a tantrika, I find it appealing to explore my love freely, to explore the depths and heights of my sexual power and my own capacity to love, transform, heal and co-create magick. As a magician, I recognize that my magickal intelligence is in part formed through my capability to be, do and flow through or with any person(or thing) as I perceive them (or it) to be in a sense, a part of my own being. Loving, intimate and erotic relationships offer a unique opportunity to explore the perception of the self in relation to the other. In this way the sense of self expands through selfness, selflessness and oneness with all.

I believe that the tantrika is inherantly polyamorous. What do you think?"

yes i believe a tantrika is inherantly polyamorous but i believe that the word polyamory and its western definition often fall short of it's layered meaning for me

i do not know if i could love monogomously
it seems to be a thing that comes in the beginning very strong when i meet someone who truly turns me on
all my energy goes into the flame with them and i want to nourish that one seed
i notice it isn't my mind that does this
rather, it is like a force of nature
(are we really so different from dogs sniffing each others asses?
meat puppets for the potent alchemy of god's pheromones?)
as there are phases to the moon, there are phases to loving

sometimes the love waxes and sometimes it wanes
sometimes it is completely full and other times completely empty
one of the interesting things about comparing love to the moon
is that the full moon is the time of endings
when the fruit is most ripe, it is about to fall from the tree
and decay, ripeness giving way to deconstruction of one form
to feed the earth and become another
when my loving is as full as a full moon
as ripe as a big cheese moon
i hate to think it is about to fall
but isn't that what we see in nature around us all?

and when the moon is empty, desolate
that emptiness is close to being filled again
but it is so hard to see in the darkness, in the emptiness of the grave
where the formless mystery is stirring her sweet cauldron of spells
to surprise us as they mature and are animated into form

i have hurt many hearts and my heart has born much hurt
i like to stay in the game, keep my heart open
in that way i am a player
i do not have any specific philosophy on monogomy and polyamory
it seems people are wired different
some more towards stability and monogomy
some more towards freedom and polyamory
what i do notice is people tend to preach their path
the monogomists think it is highest to connect and find your many faces through long term union with one other face
and polyamorists think it is highest to let go of attachment and let loving come and go freely through many faces

i think i am both polyamorist and monogomist depending on my season and reason
and add a third, because i often travel my path alone with long periods of celibacy
(nobody expects that from the tantrika!)
maybe you could call that unigomist?

shakti energy is freedom energy
is it possible to drink from the left hand cup and not stir the chaos cauldron for societal monogomy?
that would probably be difficult.
i practiced tantra in secret while i was married
i fell in love with other men too
i am not married anymore
i have had men ask for me to give myself to them only and i have said no
i have wanted to give myself to one man only and sometimes they say no
i change my mind
but so the moon changes her costume
i do not think i am fickle
i move to the rythm of nature and change

there are many people espousing free love who are not in a right way with themselves
and they are using the others bodies
let's hope they are maturing
there are many who judge others sexual energy and who make cages out of monogomy
lets hope they can be less afraid
either can be a way to hide
most important i think, is the self enquiry to be willing to look and see who we are
no more free love, now it's real love!

this tantrika is not monogomous because she is making love to every atom of all the the worlds!
infinitigomous!

p.s. i reserve the right to change my mind

love
psalm
kamakhya devi

Why write a book? Who cares?

2011-04-05T11:27:00.000-07:00

tuesday, april 5

pittsburgh, pa

i am finishing editing my first book, and i wanted to share the introduction:

freedom + pain + truth + liberation

why did i write this book? aren't there enough books already?

sitting and watching corpses burn in kashi, at the banks of the holy river ganges, i wrote:

" i wonder to myself, if i rip out my guts telling my story, will anybody care? will it change the world? i am driven by something unholy to be here, to write. i pray to the god of heaven and earth and the holy river that it will make a difference to someone, most of all myself."

my indian friend rohan told me, "all the world will be in your book, the the burning ghat, the shakti, the coming and going". he is silent for a moment. "sometimes with our eyes we see something beautiful, and then we don't see how difficult it will be. like the sun was beautiful this morning, but the burning body was hard to see. we see both. this is truth, no?" "yes, this is truth", i say, "satya". "in america, we say the truth will set you free". "truth is pain though, truth is hard, no?". "yes", i agree, "it can be. but the truth will make you free".

in the process of writing this book, i have doubted myself many times. i have doubted the importance of sharing my story, asking myself, "does anybody care? are you just making a big deal out of yourself?" i have doubted my talent as a writer, my ability to wrestle articulate words to share in language from the silent masses of emotional clay that form my personal subconscious. i have doubted the rightness of telling so much truth. it is the truth from my perspective and may not be the way other people in my life story see the truth of our experiences, but i have gleaned my stories to the bone, slicing away anything that was not true to me, so that it cut through many of my nerves in exposing these bones. sometimes i feel as if my fingertips are burning as i touch the pages of this book, the words are burning. i have asked myself, "is it the truth?" and this has been my measure of the rightness of carrying so many souls along with my own in this book.

much of this book was written by some force outside myself, my fingers would move quickly and the most difficult part was to sit there and witness my own life like watching a movie playing on the computer screen in front of me. many times i would cringe or cry or feel ashamed of myself. many times i had to get up and walk away. but always i was drawn to come back, to let this terrible force of creativity surge through me. and even when i doubted myself, i knew it was an important part of my souls purpose to write my story, to speak out to the great, nameless sky, to hear my own voice echoed in the void of all time. i say, brothers and sisters and gods do you hear me? do you bare witness to me baring my soul? and even in the solitary task of writing itself i am answered, i am met. i speak to the great invisible mind of the collective unconscious and i know i am never alone in this experience.

i have written to be exposed to others and to bear witness to myself. this book is a soul retrieval, shining awareness into the dark places and closets i have hidden pieces of me from me. and one day, when i was busy doubting myself, i got this letter from someone i never met, who was reading my blog on the internet:

You are a mirror to my unlived Self. I asked for inspiration, I asked for
something, anything to give me one morsel of hope today. You, Psalm, you speak my truth. You have the courage I haven't found. You gave me hope today. I have to trust and speak and stop being silent. My body pays the price of this with the pain I am struggling with. I have to embrace all aspects of Myself. Thank you Psalm. Thank you for being you. Your journey is bold,
brave and honored. I know it has not been easy. You are a pioneer and a wayseer. Blessings to you. May I find the courage to walk into the unknown.

"You are a mirror to my unlived self...I have to trust and speak and stop being silent. My body pays the price of this with the pain i am struggling with". I took a sharp breath in when i read these lines. yes to the soul, yes.

I hope this book gives freedom. i have broken the molds of a lot of "spiritual teachers" in exposing my own raw path in this book. i like to think that this book is crazy wisdom, a freedom teacher. may we all give voice to our unlived lives, and those we have lived but hidden in the shadows. may we remember who we are.

love
psalm

the other hand of life

2011-03-29T05:55:00.001-07:00

tuesday, march 29

philadelphia, pennsylvania

her withering hand rests in my more fleshy one and from time time, it twitches. a hand that is bony, skeletal, fragile. the skin is so soft. i think, "how often have i worried about what i weigh?"

i hold the hand of you mother, not my own mother but the mother of my best friend. i feel the love between a mother and daughter. i feel the physical pain and fear of death. in her sick bed, in the room, there is a great feeling of suffering, but also of silence and light, a kind of holiness. who can say how each of us should face life and death? but remembering the ones we love helps.

i have come because your daughter asked me to sit with you, to meet you, and now i feel i know your daughters heart better having seen instead of only heard of you. you ask if you can meditate laying down i say yes, it is the same as praying or relaxing. focusing your awareness on the object of your choice bringing your mind back to concentration when it wanders. i teach you to inhale and let the pain expand, to surrender to what is. exhale send relief to your daughter, not to separate in the pain. your breathing becomes richer and a deepening silence fills the room. tears fall down my cheeks. i chant to krishna to keep your heart filled with love. i chant to kali the great mother for protection, courage and strength.

great mother we are all your children, help us to feel your love. as this mother loves her daughter, so you love all your children. may you feel peace in your heart knowing the strength of your daughter. i can tell you how beautiful in the world she is, and sometimes she worries about you, but her heart is filled with love and gladness when she thinks of you. all these moments string together our lives. your daughter says she feels guilty when she argues with you now because she is afraid she might not have much more time with you. and it reminds her of when you would leave her at college the two of you would always get in an argument because you didn't know how to say goodbye, and even the arguing is ok. like sometimes when she dances, she dances a little harder to express all the emotions inside her. may we all taste this life and each others love, may the great mother take care of us all, amen.

Whores and free women

2011-03-26T07:28:00.001-07:00

who or what is a WHORE?

a woman in a workshop in cleveland last fall told me she belonged to a neo-pagan group called WHORES OF BABYLON and that the word WHORE used to mean a woman who owned her own property. perhaps related to the temple priestesses in ancient times who practiced sacred sexuality, doing rituals that were offerings to the gods and sexual in nature. because of their positions as priestesses, they were not married like most women in their societies and they earned income through the rituals that meant their survival did not depend on the marriage union to a male husband/ provider.

i like the idea that a whore is a woman owns her own property...OWNS HER OWN PUSSY...meaning a woman who has discovered how to enjoy sex for herself, and not just to lay down to be filled with babies, as is often the case of woman in repressive patriarchal societies.

i travel to india often, and many of the women there who i have talked to still don't expect to enjoy sex. they lay their bodies down as a wifely duty to their husband. this is so upside down from the natural way of things, in tantra it is the woman who has more sexual energy than the man. when women have not tapped into and opened their sexual power and pleasure, those are the times it seems the man has more sexual energy. in many societies, a woman who would claim to enjoy sexual pleasure would be labeled a whore, a bad wife, an unfit mother. the supression of the sexual energy is directly related to the supression of the women. why? because women are the energy of sex and desire. show me a culture where the men are covered in burkhas so they won't entice the women to sin. and the woman who is accused of enticing the man to sin is punished or shunned. eve ate the apple. the woman and her curiosity and desire fucked us all up.

i grew up in a household where my mother told me to keep covering up. she told me all men think about is sex, so we needed to protect ourselves. she would always be pointing at other women on the streets, saying how they were dressed like sluts, encouraging the men to act like dogs. i used to think that she was more obsessed with staring at the women's asses than the men. that's what repression does, leads to obsession.

my mother became a street preacher in her 40's. she began to run a sober living in her home. i had already moved out when i came to visit her one day, and she wouldn't let me in her house because she said i had too much sexual energy and would make the men sin and think of sex. i just remembered thinking that i couldn't help it, this is just the way i am. i am sex. and i was young and in my early twenties and probably was dressed inapropriatly testing out this new power i had, wanting to understand how it affected others and myself. i had always felt different, i never could swallow that sex was something that kept you from god, in it's naturalness, it always made me feel closer to god. when i found tantra, the worship of a mother god with practices to enjoy and empower through the sexual energy, i felt a completing. i was home.

a woman who has come to understand, appreciate and look forward to the pleasures her body is capable of is called a WHORE. a woman who feels that having discovered the power and pleasure of her sexuality and expects to enjoy her body and becomes aware that she can choose her sexual partners is called a WHORE. sexual energy is FREEDOM energy, which can also be expressed as chaos. this energy is so powerful, it can move like a tsunami and leave the destruction of a lot of societal conformity in it's wake. so we repress it mostly. how many husbands pretend they are not sexually attracted to other women they see to appease their wives? and yet, don't we all know this can't possibly be true? so we tell each other half truths.

we tell half truths to "keep it all together". to keep our commitments. when the energy of freedom/chaos begins to stir, it threatens to tear our houses down, much like a natural disaster, a forest fire or tsunami. sometimes the destruction is a part of a new creation process we can't see the shape of yet.

i had a student new to tantra send me an email, saying that when she talked to people after class, they had all lost their jobs, marriages, houses, cars...etc. she said was this a necessary part of the tantric path. i laughed because in america, i find a lot of students looking for tantra are looking to add something to their lives. add a better sex life, find how to call in a soul mate, experience more pleasure. well, the mother of creation is everywhere and everything, so why do we feel so separate? getting back into bliss nature is less about what you add to your life and more about coming into awareness about the blockages you have and learning to let them go. everyone says they want to release their blockages, but it is scary to let go of what you know, even negative patterns.

do you need to lose everything to be on the path of tantra?

that depends on the agreements you have made. if you agreed to a marriage or job based on a set of security issues you outgrow, then the day might come as you feel your healthy ego more, that you outgrow those agreements. then you will have a decision to make.

working with sexual energy, SHAKTI is working with the DIVINE MOTHER, DESIRE, working to weave between the urges for both freedom and survival...FREEDOM & BONDAGE.

oh ye man and woman, tame your kundalini, bow to hladini...the energy of DESIRE...do not hide from yourself your secret desires...do not live as a stranger to your own nature and mind.

Tantric Jesus

2011-03-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

corinthians 12:12 "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ." .

corinthians 12:23 "And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness."

what members of the body might jesus be talking about?

if we take it at the level of a metaphore for all people representing different parts of one body, it is like the lakota prayer mitikuye oyasin...to all my relations. in this prayer all aspects of creation are considered relations, animals and the earth and the celestial beings of sun, moon and stars as well. some of our relations, those members of our body we treat less honourably are like the homeless people we turn away from looking at, the people suffering on the fringes of society who become the ugly side effect of our evolution. looking at this kind of suffering is like peeling off a scab, lifting a rock hiding all the monsters. looking at the pollution we are creating on the body of mother earth is also uncomfortable, like in the movie "an uncomfortable truth". sometimes it's easier to take the motto, "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow i may die". and if you take a more mystical perspective on time, we are already dead and never were born.

another way to look at this is a hidden tantric meaning...
"And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour"
in the ancient tantric lineage i carry, the nature based worship of the sun and moon, sacred masculine and sacred feminine, the symbols are of the genitals, the bringers of life.

there are rituals to honour the sacred energies and also, in the left hand path, vama marga the taboo path, we have rituals to honour these potent parts of the body as well. as above so below the tantriks say. this way of worship is older than any written, systematized religions. pre-vedic, pre-bible. when i practice tantric rituals, time disappears. separation disappears. i am back in the formlessness of the creatrix womb, where i can feel the dark materials stirring, i can feel the desire of the formless to birth itself into the world of time and form again.

the jesus i know spoke of the mystery and pointed to the nature underlying all things. sure, alot of people could spit scriptures of what jesus said that would contradict me, that would make jesus seem more dualistic. but i said the jesus i know. the jesus i know through direct personal experience. the highest form of spiritual experience is experience, it is called gnosis..."to know" through the laying on of spirit.

when i was a young girl growing up in a charismatic church, i would go into trance when we sang, i would feel the sweet heaviness of grace fill my body and i was raptured to a place that was just as real as this daily world, but which ran parallel, and seeemed to be invisible to many. it was a place i could go alone, or in the group energy, although it could never be shared with words later. and then i would come out of this state that is called "perfection" and have the bible thrown at me, telling me what god says. but i was just listening to what god was saying in my own body, mind and heart. and those words in that book are inspired but they still are not god, they can only point the way to god, they can only make you thirsty to have your own experience of truth. in tantra, that is also the teaching of the guru, the one who points the way, but still you must stumble along yourself on your path. the sufis say the teacher is the flame that sets the seeker to burning. and still we must find our way to the mystery on our own.

the jesus i know speaks of tantra and the joining of the bodies and the reunion of flesh and spirit there. the bride, the bride groom and the bridal chamber as the gnostics say. one of the early teachers was marcus the magicians, they practiced worship of divine feminine, and what we might call the sex magic.

and if what i am saying sounds like heresy to you, i would kindly put in the request not to be burned this lifetime. let me meet my maker myself and be judged, if you believe in such a thing.

what is tantra?

2011-03-25T06:45:00.000-07:00

i got this question today via email:

hey psalm, what is tantra anyways... It can't just be a bunch of sex positions - there's gotta be something more to it than that right?!

tantra is life

and sex

and death

tantra is existential philosophy

tantra is worship and devotion to the mystery

tantra is punk rock to main stream spirituality

a bloody steak to a vegan

a carrot to a carnivore

tantra is the sweet love of the dark mother

sex is part of life

it's how we got here, so tantra looks at sex too

how can we try to figure out where we are going if we can't even look where we are coming from? how are you going to contemplate eternity when you are blind to everything below your belly button?

make an ally of desire

the disciples asked jesus,

"what will happen in the end?"

and jesus said,

"do you already know the beginning that you seek to know the end? seek to know the beginning and you will know all things."

sex is the beginning

god/goddess is abwoom the sacred father/mother god

the fertilizes seed at the center of creation

that is the architecture of sacred geometry, inside every manifestation, our human bodies

the fertilized egg, the central point of you and me

our whole bodies are a mandala of whirling arms and legs unfurling around that central seed

father/mother god, sacred abwoom

jesus also said, "there was a day when one became two. on the day two become one what will you do?"

sex is the joining of two bodies, but so much more than that

the physical body is only one layer covering the soul

what is the purpose of the body? it is a covering of the soul

we have 5 bodies

multiply by 2 people= 10 bodies, 10 mergings of the coverings of the soul

divide by 10 and you have zero= we are all one, coming from one source

the 0 is the sacred geometry for the yoni, the womb

big bellied, dark eyed one

the whole universe is her costume

on the day when 2 become one again, what will you do?

on my knees

2011-03-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

god has no bodies but our own,

we are the body of god

think about it

how are we treating god?

thursday, march 24

mentor, ohio

i left pinkie standing in the rubble of the street, of the red light district of kolkata. people come to collect the dirt from these streets, because although prostitution is shamed, they also believe there is great power here from kali, the fierce mother goddess. pinkie's dark face was illuminated by the orange neon street lights, her growing smaller and smaller in then rear window as my cab drove away for the airport. her still waving goodbye until she disappeared.

wow

i am humbled to my knees, to this earth

i just got back from kolkata, india to teach the women's empowerment program

to sex workers there

it was brutal and beautiful

i went to bed at night crying a lot, does anything make a difference?

it is really something to teach a class knowing these women are gonna have to suck a dick

to get food for dinner

(was that too crude? shall i find a way to make it less uncomfortable?)

that their body will be penetrated for commerce, for survival

and it's a trip cuz i'm still teaching the same yoga to them, to you

what do you do when you leave class?

i thought about the reflection of the womens empowerment circle

in kauai that i taught right before kolkata,

what i did in kolkata was share the empowerment practices,

but then to witness these sisters stories

to witness to the bare root of things

i gotta tell you, in kolkata, i was hearing stories that made me cringe

and somehow the stories are so much the same,

from the island paradise of kauai to the bombed out rubble of the red light district of kolkata

histories of abuse, hardship

the ferocity to survive, the dream to thrive

and one kolkata sister told me a story of growing up with a mom

who didn't believe her when she said her stepdad was molesting her,

so she ran away

but she didn't get far and so she came back

and fought her stepdad

and later her mom sent her away to school and there she heard people whisper

her mom was a sex worker

and the children shamed her and her mom drank poison to escape a cruel life

and this woman telling me the story, pinkie

her story didn't stop then. no it didn't stop when i was ready to be done,

when i flinched and wanted to look away.

she told of leaving the school, living in the terror of her stepdad again and running to an uncle who offered her money for sex, and when she said no, he said, "why not,your mom did" (how do we escape the stories of our ancestors, how do we change the lines of lineage?) . and she told a story of running to the police, a group of men who tried to molest her and how she hid in a burlap sack that almost caught fire and she had to run again.

and finally she was given some chance, though meager. and she is living in the sex workers co-op building even though she says she is not a sex worker herself, even though it is hard to turn down the money. but she says she can't repeat her mothers life. she realized that when she put a bottle of poison to her mouth, wanting to end it all, seeing no escape. but something in her rose up, and she said, "i won't let them say her mother did it and she did it" and some function of survival or pride drove her forward. and that's how i met pinkie. who is a beautiful young woman living in calcutta going to business school, who says everyday is still a struggle but her smile lights up the room and she speaks very good english.

and i came to witness but at some point in her story i made her stop. it was time to move forward. yes we must be honest about our wounds, we clean the wounds by telling our stories, but we are not confined to those stories. that is why this practice is so strong. we move forward. the power of the breathing changes lives, flips a switch and we are not those dim selves anymore, we are not trapped by the stories anymore.

and i asked pinkie if she wanted to keep teaching the classes

after i left,

and she said yes.

and things do change.

they do change one seed at a time, and the seed is the most potent,

because it contains all the information of the life sleeping inside it.

and pinkie is still teaching that class now for the sex workers on a dusty concrete floor, under a tin rooftop in kolkata.

i left her standing in the rubble of the street, her dark face illuminated by the orange neon street lights, her growing smaller and smaller in then rear window as my cab drove away for the airport. her still waving goodbye until she disappeared. and i leave you pinkie, i have to board another plane. and i leave you pinkie, with my prayers, my hope and my blessing. how can you be so small and fragile? i leave you to make your own story of your life. you are my sister. when you spoke of your abuse and your stubborness not to become your mother, i was you.

the wheel turns, the snake eats it's own tail.

and i thought that it makes a big difference the opportunities we are given in this world.

the sisters in kauai, some of them were abused too, but we ended up in the fertile lap of kauai. pinkie is on the mean streets of calcutta. and still, we share the seeds and we rise.

god has no bodies but our own,

we are the body of god.

i say amen, thanks for sharing this life with me, thank you for sharing your stories with me.

flying home, i got sick on the plane, i vomited in the tiny cubicle

of the airplane bathroom

sometime's you gotta let go

love

psalm

hopeful and heartbroken in the city of joy

2011-03-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

day 2 women's empowerment mission calcutta

hopeful and heartbroken in the city of joy

i am teaching yoga and kundalini tantra to sex workers in calcutta the city of joy and the city of much suffering
why? because these practices transformed my life from feeling like there was so much suffering in myself and the world that i didn't want to go on living, to having the strength to turn the poison of suffering into medicine for myself and then share that medicine with others to turn into into gold, the gold of human compassion

jesus it is amazing here
but i tell you this shit will break your heart
this one woman in the class today, she came and sat right in front of me, so intense she was to learn, to ask questions- they have a translator for me in bengali- and she with big black eyes that would get shiny on the verge of tears, she told me how she had to become a sex worker because her husband died and now her daughter can't live with her because of what she does to earn money to support her and her eyes get glassy when she tells me she lives alone. but then she laughs because she is so damn strong. i tell you life is not fair for these women, no they are living hard. and still that's not the question or answer is it? the fairness is not the question or the answer to struggle with. that has been a blind alley and i have raged against god, shaking a fist at the sky for many years. we must accept to progress.

practicing on a dusty concrete floor with a tin roof overhead the women made me promise to come back in august, i gave my word today because we are forming a bond here. and i have full faith the money and means will be provided for.
i want to bring a small group and i want to train others to do this outreach. in calcutta alone, there is a great hunger.

sometimes, so much raw suffering brings me to my knees and my guru said it is those times we must keep the faith. this faith is more than beautiful words. i am awake while the director of the documentary who flew in this morning and hit the ground filming sleeps and our guide sleeps and i am crying. that woman in class today she breaks my heart. and she invited me to her house for dinner next tuesday night and i know god put her in my life and do you know how many people just want someone to look them in the eyes and bear witness to their suffering? i don't have enough money to help all these women but i do have my yoga to share. and i am sitting there with my gold jewelry talking to them and you know, what the fuck man? i would sell it all to hand over the money but the difference has to come from then feeling their own power inside.

god grant me the strength, the courage, the wisdom
loka samasta sukhino bhavantu
may we all be happy and free from suffering
mitakuye oyasin...to all my relations

though this world is not fair
i love you i love you i love you

loneliness and fulfillment

2011-02-12T09:21:00.000-08:00

sunday feb 12
kauai, hawaii

a woman came up to me at the end of a satsang last night, she said, "do you feel alone sometimes?"
i said, "yes".
i am grateful in my life everywhere i go anymore i am moving in the grace of this energy of the mother since i have fully commited myself to serving her. everywhere i go in the world, every patch of earth i touch down, whether hawaii, india, detroit, i am immediately surrounded by allies, friends and students...and it is very fulfilling. still the fulfillment doesn't mean i don't feel loneliness and the loneliness doesn't mean i don't feel fulfilled. i dance with the dorge (sword), i surrender to the sweet blade, cutting away everything unessential, and it cuts me open as it cuts me in two...fulfillment and longing...we are one and we are two...we are a multitude.

Sticky Sweet Mother

2010-12-28T13:54:00.000-08:00

from india diary:

november 13

i love you all and i wish i could see you more

all your faces become one

but i was swallowed by the ever unfolding road

i am loving it being back in my other home

the hot black night brings me back to the womb and i am ecstatic free lunatic here

dark jungle velvet starless night with thunder clapping the earth like a bootie smack

everyone has gone to bed and the neon bulb illuminates the hallway, all the americans have gone to bed some complaining of the wildness here, spicy food, pollution, traffic and general chaos that is everyday life here in india

i sit awake and alone so exquisitely aware

awake when the rest of the world is sleeping

i smoke my beedie cigarettes which are rolled in dried leaves not paper and which open my third eye and get me high

and i sit alone

a woman alone

as always

a woman has sat alone

'with my thoughts

but they do not bother me

they run like an unfolding stream a ribbon of time that eats itself

that is the nature of the mind

like clockwork, like time

and here time is eaten by space

but i remember

i remember all the way back to the beginning before the sword of time

and before there was that logic clicking away the minutes of my life

there was this feeling in my heart

like a gasp of air in a deep wet ocean that never ends

i crawl from the belly of this primordial soup to peer at a new event horizon

i long because i live and

i live because i long

and i am not afraid

not afraid of the terrible calling of my own heart in the naked wet jungle night

the air so thick like black velvet that threaterns to swallow me whole like the snake swallowing a frog i saw here yesterday

in the jungle night i see rats skirting the walls and spiders in the halls and skinny dogs weeping as they dig for morsels of food in the trash we left out

and i think of a lover home and cant make a call

and i think why am i trying to call somewhere around the world in the middle of the night?

and i know i just want a compartment to put this longing into

but no matter how many containers i have

they will not contain this sleepless wakeful longing

i say yes

thirsty thirsty always thirsty being quenching in the belly of the

sticky sweet mother here

3 Christmas Snapshots

2010-12-25T07:44:00.000-08:00

i get a call from the reservation, it is cold there. conversations with native americans are short on words, filled with lots of spaces. they got the money i sent for christmas and now they are going to buy a present for the mom, the matriarch. i can hear the rumble of the engine and can see the beat up truck driving through the desolate, flat winter prairie, the crunch of the tires on the frozen earth, the steam rising from the heat of the engine hitting the frigid grey air. i can see all these things even though i have only been there in summer. in the summertime, wild, yellow sunflowers grow on the side of the road as tall as me and they say that as high as the sunflowers are in summertime, that's how high the snow will be in winter. joy and pain. i go to the reservation because i pray to the spirits to help me heal my family.

my son walks out the door after our visit. i hand him money for a bus to get downtown and a twenty and say, "merry christmas, don't say i never did anything for you". he laughs, we hug and he walks out the door. i feel a pang in my stomach, an emptiness. maybe in the same place he grew inside me. in that emptiness, i feel an excitement. the wheel turns and things will never be the same. i see his dark skin and punker jacket walking away through the blinds of my window and he grows smaller and smaller until he disappears. he is a man now. i see his youth like a flame making it's way in the world.

she sits somewhere, is she alone? is she alone on christmas? i picture a woman with a face like mine, more softened by time, i picture her staring out a window. i picture light on her face, such a beautiful face of sharp white skin framed by black hair. she used to say when we would argue that she would be dead someday and i would regret not getting along with her. she made me fear the ravages of time on a woman's desirability and beauty. but these were her fears, not mine, and i learned to cut them out with a knife when i was in istanbul with my teacher. the fear of becoming an old woman, undesirable and unloved with no company left but too many pets. i used to deliver meals to homebound elderly for thanksgiving, maybe as penance for not seeing my own mother. i walked into many sad, cramped, dark apartments that smelled of decay and cat urine. i hope wherever she is, wherever she has taken herself to disappear to, i hope she is laughing and knows that i love her. we let the light in.

Prodigal son

2010-12-22T07:31:00.000-08:00

has it really been six months since i have seen you?

and how many angry words have passed between us in this time?

so many misunderstandings

it must be difficult to let the dream die of who you wish your mother was

and to love me, this woman, instead

the prodigal mother has returned

right now in the silence, i drink in the sweetness of your slumber

how many times have i watched over you sleeping and marveled at the brown of your skin and hair?

of the impossible beauty of my own son, who is 18

flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone

i worship you

i worship the life that moves through you that was born to live on its on

and what an amazing thing that we can come together and i can fall asleep on your shoulder at dinner

you who used to fall asleep in my lap as a baby, as a boy

and now you are a grown man

it is not easy to become a man in this world

i am not a man, but the journey to become a woman, to become myself

to become human has been beguiling and exaughsting at times

and still continues as i search for patterns in the sky

and you here now, is part of me becoming woman, mother,

you help me know who i am, what i have come to experience

some people worship their ancestors

i worship my son

in these days of youth you are as bright as the sun

and determined to struggle as a gutter punk angel

god you make me laugh

showing up at my door with your hobo stick

a wooden pole with your clothes tied up in a blanket bundle on the end

there is nothing to hold onto as you shapeshift and grow

there was a time when you grew like a ripe seed inside me

and when you were born, i could always protect you

but as you grew, i could not protect you from the things we must each face on our own

like the inevitability of death and the desire to leave a mark on the world

and what a shame to go from being your god, the one who birthed and suckled you

to being slowly diminished to a hypocritical woman

because who has seen my shortcomings and suffered for them more than my own child?

there is nothing to hold onto

it feels so holy, as you sleep in your own silence to be here, to be aware of this moment. so pregnant with grace. i used to tell my classes, what is grace? grace is the when things change that you never thought could change. when things you thought were impossible begin to soften, shift and move

is such a small woman allowed so much glory in one life? can such a vulnerable arrangement of flesh and bones withstand the white surge of so much beauty? i keep asking for this container to be able to hold more.

Time to let go

2010-12-21T15:25:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, January 21

Venice Beach, Ca

the raving cocksmith with angel wings

its all coming down like the rain, alot of face softening into tears and laughter and making love with a new man who is my raving cocksmith with angel wings who just made me french toast and is cleaning the apartment for my sons visit this afternoon. the raving cocksmith says i have 4 faces. the fierce one, which i show the most. the nurturer, who is seemingly at odds with the fierce one. the traveler, who often looks off melancholy into the distance like i was last night. and the one i hardly show, the little girl who screams so loudly inside me that you can't hear her at all.

i drank red wine and told some sad stories and then crawled off in my leg cast to sit in the bathroom and cry alone. i turned on the water in the sink so i could have privacy with the sound of my sobs. not because i am afraid to show my tears, but because at times, i am like a cat who wants to lick my wounds alone in a corner, some very old animal instinct for solitude. the gaping wound opened again and the cool rush of infinite space and meaninglessness rushed through me like a wind or a ghost train. and i think, oh god, am i here again? sitting on some dingy bath mat in someone else's bathroom? rocking myself to sooth the sharpness of the moment? i crawled into bed and let myself be held and some part of me wondered, "does this man love me?" is anything for certain in this world as the floor keeps dropping out beneath me to expose the fine network of stars and far off galaxies and groundlessness beneath my feet?

the clouds are letting go of the rain...

it is time for letting go

winter

pruning back to the bones

what is essential?

it's not my time to go

back from india
travelled across continents and oceans and broke barriers of sound to
crash land a car back in la on my third day home

twisted metal oragami car wreck

what messages are hidden in the crushed metal?
broken ankle, cast, crutches

i lay in bed eating percocets and drinking red wine

it wasnt my time

a young hispanic kid at the clinic in the hood

where i go to get my cast because i don't have insurance

asks me how i got my cast and crutches that look the same as his

i say i broke my ankle in a car crash

he says he got shot

he says they tried to kill him but it wasnt his time

yea, i say, it wasnt my time either

the furniture in the waiting room are crumbling salvation army couches that belong in a grandmas living room
i sit in the hood with people of color who carry a large percentage of the hardship in america

in a dingy waiting room with scuffed and dirty linoleum floor, we are frozen in a moment of physical vulnerability under watery, pale flourescent light bulbs

the doctor rolls his eyes at an older mexican couple who can't speak english

who probably dragged themselves through heartbreaking odds to mop floors and pick produce and god forbid they raise their heads to be seen

a black woman gets dragged in by the cops hog tied

screaming "bitches, bitches!"

her blood curdling screams make me squirm in my seat

not easy to watch the parade of human suffering

her hair is undone and nappy, her pants keep sliding down to expose her ass crack as she writhes against the grip of the cops and handcuffs

the flesh of her belly hangs loosely with stretch marks but still she has the strength of superman

she bucks her body into a straight line in the air between where they hold her feet and shoulders, all the anger twisting inside her like a lightening bolt

looks like she made some bad choices, but also i am sure

her life hasnt been fair

whatever fair is

but certainly, it doesnt seem fair that most of the people living this hard are people of color

do we pray to the same gods?

it wasnt my time and

i am a goddam testament to the resilience of the human condition

dreams broken, bones broken

i lay in bed
writing, writing
so much letting go to do
i feel like i am in a great contraction
a cocoon of winter
the butterfly, while sleeping crouched in darkness never knows what it is becoming
i welcome unknowing becoming
and wait in white linens with grey skies in the window most near me

and listen to the gentle patter of the many small feet of the rain on the roof above me
i dont get out much right now
i wait to test the cut of new wings in spring
to test the velvet softness against the cold knife of the wind
like a newborn gasping in the cold oxygen
test the mend of the bone

bone deep, bone deep
laid flat on my back i write about my family
whose memories and predilictions move like the sea of marrow within me
they are bone deep within me

they are the architecture my blood, flesh and heart are hung on

my bones the unseen freeways tracing traffic patterns of my ancestors

the sorrow of the gypsies

my new lover asks about my family

i say i dont know where they are

we are people of the air, rootless

so much freedom and guilt

so much wine and song and passion and dance

we are the colors of red and black

when green turns to gold

you know winter is coming

pruned back to my bones, and further still

laying naked in the snow

the blinding whiteness of pills and pillows

i wait in the molting to see the glory of my next pair of wings

How long can i burn?

2010-12-17T11:22:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 9

Venice Beach, Ca

1.

how much can i bear? how long can i burn?
it is as if i am testing the container of my flesh, heart and mind
twisted metal car wreck

i see: a car turn in front of me, too late to break, oh shit
i see: airbag, smoke rising from outside the car, i see liquid on the pavement,

where am i?
i see: the inside of the ambulance, i see beautiful man asking me am i ok?

cops ask me questions but i am confused, he turned in front of me i say.

i am dazed.
i collapse on the sidewalk, there is too much pain to stand, i weep
i was supposed to see my son tomorrow
i crossed oceans flying from india and now the car is gone to drive the last hour and a half to close the distance between us
oh the distance between us when you live in my heart

i see: doctor, x-ray machine, broken ankle
i see: ceiling, cracking white paint, blue percocet pills
i see: lemon yellow sky at sunset with the long, skinny fingerlings of palm braches silhouetted in black, i cam smell the salt of the sea a few blocks away, but i cannot walk that far
i see: small, brave flowers pushing through the grass

all things have a life unto themselves are are sacred unto their own
like my son
has a life unto himself and is sacred to his own
i suffer for my love, whether i am good or not, i suffer for my love
when is it enough? when have i paid enough?
grief, loss and sorrow you have been my very close friends

and yes, i will grant you joy is never far away

how much can i take? how long can i burn?
i don't fight my mind, i ride the thought like a snake.
with each breath i say, how much can i take? how long can i burn?
how much can i take? how long can i burn?
how much can i take? how long can i burn?

break: mend, break: mend
is this the break that will mend?

2.

i recieved an email from kolkata this morning
the sex workers union says yes,

they want me to come teach the womens empowerment in march

in the red light district of sonagatchi i will redeem myself

i feel like an old soldier
scarred from battle
who knows what must be done,

who finds truth in the cut and taste of the battlefield, the bedroom
i love, i pray, i let go
i move where the road rises to meet me, what is asking to be done?

and i will have to develop patience for the longing in my own heart for my son
all i really ask is that he always knows i love him
please god, that is what i ask

when he was a little boy we used to play a game, we would ask each other,
"how much do you love me?"
"to the stars" he would say
"beyond the stars" i would say
"to infinity" he would say
"you win" i would say and make him laugh and try to run away as i tickled his torso and tight round child belly

how much can i bear? how long can i burn?
however much is alotted me, to infinity and beyond

Are there people somewhere who don't burn like this?

2010-12-16T19:55:00.000-08:00

Travel Journal
Kashi, India Nov 2011

1.
how do we find the strength to wake up everyday and face adversity, to face the suffering in the world and in ourselves? i will go ask the crippled woman begging on the corner, ma, how do you find the courage and hope everyday? is the blind human will to survive so strong? who is looking through these eyes? the one who came to taste this life.

i wake up everyday weeping, this morning is no different. what is left of me after all these tears i dont know, i feel like i am melting. my bones are turned to dust. i am less ashamed to cry. the mothers love is demanding, but it is also unconditional. a monkey sticks his dark, nimble hand through the window grates and steals rohan's matches.

i lounge on the crumbling sofa in the lobby checking my emails in the lazy afternoon. i order another pot of hot honey-ginger-lemon tea to soothe my cold. the sharp, acidic smell of cow shit and urine wafts into the hotel lobby and cuts my nostrils. why not, it's 3:15pm, right on time. it's always the right time for cow shit in varanasi. the past and the present collide in the alleys of bovine and human commerce. so ridiculous as to be farcical. i play a tinny version of the o'jays, "people all over the world, join hands, start a love train". and i dance madly, goofily in the lobby of the ganga fuji home and make all the indian boys working there laugh. they are shy. i try to grab their hands and make them dance too. for what is there to do but laugh as it all burns down? in my drunken master, rose colored, heart-shaped sunglasses. isn't it all ridiculous? isn't it all sublime? isn't it all gorgeous in it's brokedown glory? i say yes. tomorrow i fly to goa, and the wheel turns again. the road, the road, the path is momentum, finding stillness in movement. the more the joy, the more the suffering. what is in the center of the tandava, the wild dance of shiva's destruction where he waves his thousands of arms and legs? nothing. nothing is there, only space, and even less than that.

who sees through my eyes? my soul has come to see through my eyes. the dervishes were the mad ones. mad for experience, for all experience is creation. we are the ones who have come to taste this life.

2.

are there people some where who don't burn like this? after dinner, we went for a walk along the burning ghat, where they bring the corpses to be baptised in the holy ganges so they can be freed from karmas both known and unknown. then the bodies are placed on the pyre, the holy fire that has not been extinguished for five thousand years. the souless body burns like one more piece of kindling. "ram nam satya hai". only one thing we know is true, people die. the hazy smoke from the fire rises and shimmies, blurring the landscape into a dream. gray, frothy ashes are picked up and blown in the wind, ashes of another body touching lightly on my skin. where do i begin and where does the other end?

a woman was weeping inconsolably on the steps by the burning ghat. i never see anyone weeping here. i never see women here, just clumps of solemn men like crows. a ragged man sidles up to me and rohan, "want hash?". no thanks. "good hash" he tries again before slinking off. cows brush past me on the steps. lots of indians point to my golden face jewelry, my big nose hoop. they smile, "you married?" they ask. no, i say. "nice indian culture, you looking very pretty" they say. i tell rohan i want to go find my favorite chai wallah from the last trip. we wander down the crooked lanes until we find the vegetable market. our chai wallah has his ancient shop across from the open market where the sad looking vegetables are laying at the end of the day. the chai wallah remembers us. he makes the chai like it is his religion. each god is worshipped in his cups. the milk is boiled on hot coals and he squats before the fire and metal pot all day, crushing the man shaped ginger roots to a fibrous pulp. he measures the green cardamom pods, he looks reflectively as he adds each spice to flavor the tea. there is a picture of his father hanging from the wall across from where he labours in his little pit. we wait patiently for the best chai in varanasi on a hard wood bench under his father's portrait. he said this was his fathers shop before it was his. he was going away to school when his father got sick and he gave up everything to come back and carry on the family tradition. "three generations" he says holding up knobby, long fingers to us. his back is to the street, the wall is cut open with a square there, like a window without a pane, he sits in the ledge. there is a tall skinny doorway where we walk in. through these two rectangles, we can watch the parade of the street outside. six corpses are carried past in the half hour we sit there refilling our clay cups. his shop is on the lane that leads to the burning ghats. "ram nam satya hai" the men carrying the bodies and the men running behind in the procession yell. it is a great disgrace if no one pays for your body to burn. some bodies are just dropped in the river, the unknown, the disgraced. there are men who practice strange tantra who wait for those bodies to float down the river. they take them and use them in a ritual where they chant over the dead corpse and sit to meditate on it. the god shiva is a corpse and so this is a form of worshipping that god, of taking his energy. they say it gives a lot of power. rohan says that shiva is the only god who started as a man. he travelled from the south of india until he reached the icy himalyas, and practiced such severe austerities and deep meditations that he became a god. his naked body is covered in the ashes of the burned bodies, his hair is in dread locks wrapped high on his head, this is where he has put the river ganges to control it's wild flow. he smokes hash and eats medicine plants and meditates in austerity. he is a corpse himself, and represents the passionless observer. he is brought to life by his lover, shakti, who has incarnated in many forms of the goddess. through their lovemaking, the universe is created. shakti dances for the delight of the choiceless witness and he observes her dance of creating the world with love.

after chai, we walk back to the river, the ghats are empty now. the ancient crumbling buildings lit in the fog remind me somehow of paris. of a city risen from the deep waters of the subconscious mind. the impossible architecture floating on nothing more than mere mortals dreams of heaven and a bridge to the after life. the water is dark now, just a black mirror to reflect the half eaten face of the moon. the boats are docked and somehow so charming with all the bright colored paints fading and splintering. everything is crumbing and decaying most beautifully, with no signs of stopping anytime soon. somehow the hungry mouth of time passes it's tongue over varanasi and lets decay be something that lasts forever rather than that is the beginning of the end. the end has begun. the beginning has ended. there is one boat still in the water this late. dark figures move inside. they begin releasing the little bowls made of leaves with flowers and candles inside. they must have released over one hundred lights as we sat silently watching, each brave lamp bobbling in the water. the reflection on the inky water was quite beautiful and stirred something childlike in my heart. how fragile is each individual flame? how enduring is all this glory?

3.

i straddle the razor's edge between the sacred and the profane. my guru says adharma is dharma for me. no law is the law. this is the path of the left hand, the feminine tabboo. breaking taboo to find personal truth and freedom from the conditioning of society. friend, what law is written in tongues of fire on the bridal chamber of your heart? if you dare to look the truth will make you blind, then it will make you see, then it will set you free. in the end as in the beginning, the prophet bowed before the burning bush saying, all is god, all is god. all god is one. i am not promising my students enlightenment or anything else. who can say how the buddha became enlightened? only the buddha knows. the great ones have come and transcended to mystical understandings that were always fresh from their conditioning. they were the rebels. christ turned over the merchants tables in the temple. everyone is buying and selling salvation because it's just so damn hard to be a human and feel your heart in the great, crushing beauty of love and loss. the agreement with birth is death. the great ones have come and wandered in the wilderness, they have wandered away from the religions. and we all blindly go to the temples and buildings to be told what the great ones said. the great ones taught freedom and seeking truth through personal, mystical experience. i hand my student a bottle of whiskey as we sweat dancing on the rooftop under the dark sky of a new moon. i say, "vipassana this!" as he takes a swig. life is the meditation, stay awake soul, stay awake. all is god, or none. the only corruption is the belief in corruption, the soul is the passenger, the soul is eternally pure.

the more the pleasure, the more the pain, the more this life as the river of experience flows through the woman's body from the womb of beginingless time emptying back into the ocean of forever. we are the well that is thirsty for its own water, we are the taste that is hungry for its own taste. our tears too must flow back to the ocean of forever. our tears too are thirsty for themselves.

Beyond the beyond

2010-10-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

Sunday, Oct 24
Philadelphia, Pa

oh my lord, oh my soul
how long have i been thirsty in the desert of this world
thirsty for the taste of you?

oh my love
i have gone beyond
i have gone beyond the beyond
for you

i see the others praying in the temple
wearing white,
they cover their heads to pray
but have they known your secret kiss?

when i was a child you knew my most inner places
and showed me your most secret name
beyond the beyond
i have travelled
in my love for you

and now i stand outside the temple
eyes rimmed in black
lips rimmed in red
i look sideways at the pious worshippers
and go mad in the streets like a dog
hungry for you

The desert only knows longing

2010-10-22T21:13:00.000-07:00

saturday, october 16
santa monica, ca

portal log
i ate the magic plant and fell down the rabbit hole. i said a prayer, mother of this medicine, make my heart pure. make my journey in the spirit world and the world life be in a good way. this is my prayer.

the room was dark and we all laid in the bed, a tangle of our limbs heavy with the honey of the majikal mushroom medicine. the skin like soft velvet delighting in touch for the sake of pleasure again. feeling the sensation like a drop of water on the thirsty skin of the desert. the desert only knows longing. it is how it attracts the rain. it's hot, immediate longing has forgotten all the pain of the past and cries out now in voice of timeless yearning to be caressed as if there was no tomorrow and no yesterday.

i drifted in and out of a space of darkness like deep waters of inky stillness, i was not afraid, it felt like returning home to beginningless time.
the oracle said through me: "play, but first you have to die...then all the light comes"
first you must die...
journey back to the womb, which is dark, to the underworld, which is dark
if you are afraid to die, how can you be reborn? isn't that what jesus taught? not to fear death because resurrection is coming?

all of this sensation, pleasure and love are always here, so much energy that it is terrifying.
we walk the earth lonely as if there was not enough, when in truth, there is so much it threatens to erase our known existence.

the first time i went to india, my teacher asked me why i had come. the ashram is in the southern jungles and very few white people come there. i told him my life story that brought me to his feet now. my sadness, pain and regret. my years of stumbling through dark and dangerous alleys looking for some personal truth of god. like the woman who fell to the ground and touched the hem of jesus' cloak, i had wandered years lost and longing for the touch of god's presence. i told him of drugs i had used to escape pain and feel ecstasy. after i poured my heart out, he asked, "when you did drugs, what did you see?"i marvelled at his question. i had felt ashamed of the drugs as a weakness.
i looked at him confused and said, "it doesn't matter what i saw on the drugs, because it doesn't last, right"
he shrugged and looked away. "none of it lasts", he said.

jesus said, "let she who seeks keep seeking until she finds. when she finds she will be amazed and astonished. then she will be terrified. then she will rule over all."
i didn't used to understand this mystikal saying, until later that day after my teacher asked me what the drugs had shown me.

i sat on a hilltop in india. in front of the jungle temple of the god shiva's lingam (male sex organ). and i was made so that i could not stand and had to crawl on my hands and knees on the steps to reach the top. all my strength was drained from my body and my mind had thoughts which moved very slow. i was told to sit down on the earth, which i did. then i was told to lay on my belly, which i did. i felt the earth soften to swallow me and i travelled to the center of the earth's belly. time disappeared, and i do not remember anything, just being suspended like in the fluid of a pregnant belly, like a floating unborn baby. after time had passed, i became aware again, and sat up. i felt thick, like an insect in the sap of a tree, suspended like a fossil in amber.

i sat up and looked at the jungle around me. the hills around were shaped like a woman's curves. mounds of breasts and hips were the body of the land. i looked around and a strange awareness filled me. i made all this. i made all the earth. and there was no time, no beginning and no end. i sat for awhile, i don't know how long. an old man with tanned wrinkles skin like stained tobacco came walking up the hill steps to the temple. he carried the ritual items to worship the statue of the lingam (male sex organ). flowers, milk, incense. i thought it was sad he was going to worship the statue, to call god's energy into the stone. he could just come sit with me. i am god. and then i thought he could not see that, so he felt separate and lonely and had to worship the statue. my mind thought, "how sad". but then my mind realized it was not sad, it was just a choice we all have in how we see things. and in the end, it was all the same.

after more time passed a part of my mind woke up. it said, psalm, you must remember to go back to america. but that felt so far away. the same part of my mind said, you are a wife and mother, you must go back. and suddenly i felt afraid that my love was spread everywhere and nowhere in particular. maybe i would stay on this mountain forever.
let she who seeks keep seeking until she finds. when she finds, she will me amazed and astonished. then she will be terrified.

my mind said i must go down from the mountain and back to america. i must go eat some food.

i ate and drank some spicy chai and felt i was psalm again. but my mind was filled with songs of praise and joy, a happy simplicity. i sat next to my teacher and sang the christian songs i learned as a girl in church.

my teacher said, "are you usually this still?"

i said, "no"

Rage and transformation

2010-10-10T22:49:00.000-07:00

sunday, october 10
topanga canyon, ca

in the core training i am teaching now, we started by posing the question, "what are the blockages to feeling our power?". this training has turned out to be all women, and it was very interesting that in the first week with all the strong breathwork, what came up was a lot of heat, anger and rage. emotions that are transformational and powerful but often repressed. psychologically, rage is said to be a feminine emotion.

we met one morning outside by the beach and saw a full moon that was still full in the pre-dawn sky, the moon with it's big and yellow face hanging like a giant gong in the pale morning gray-blue. we stopped to take in the moon in our eyes, to drink the lunar nectar and do lunar breathing to activate the right brain and lunar channel of the subtle spine.

we stood in a circle facing each other and held strong stances for long periods of time until the bodies trembled and bones shook and the damn broke with cathartic release.

one of the sisters said "this makes me feel angry"
with tears in her eyes
standing in the circle i am reflected those tears are mine too, that anger mine too
yes, we must open the emotions that have been repressed
they are just life in flow being expressed
would you ask a volcano not to exist?
the red hot lava is part of the cycle of life
birth-death-rebirth
at the time of explosion it destroys things
but the lava cools and the volcanic soil is more fertile than before
nutrition
the elements ask to move through us and so often we try to ignore the invitation
we try to control the big life trying to move through us
and then these elements, ancestors, spirits and archetypes get impatient and knock harder
maybe they will have to knock your house down to get your attention
without destruction, how can there be renewal?
without death, how can there be rebirth?
we live forever in the wheel of creation
the play of the creatrix

thank you sisters for diving so deep so quickly
soul mining
heart shining

human feeling
we are yes
gods and humans
we are walking where angels fear to tread
feeling the cold dew on morning grass
beneath our stomp stomp elephant feet
earth will feel me
sky will hear me
as i stomp stomp
dance and roar
sisters show me more
of your sweet insides
in our container there is room for your light and shadow
i embrace you all
i embrace all of you and me
this is the mother loving
alchemy

there are enough religions of what happens when we die
after this life
give me the religion of how to be here now
in this body of bliss and pain
in this heart of love and loss
give me the religion of not running away
to a heaven that may exist someday
heaven and hell are happening now
give me the religion of this body, this breath, this emotional dream playing me like a song
sometimes a love song and sometimes a blues song
i welcome all the songs
all songs are one
and someday when we die
we will be one again too
for now give me the religion of how to weave between
one and two
the mother and the father

The untrimmed garden of my heart

2010-10-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

silently in the trembling corridors of my body i cry
do not forget me, i will not be forgotten
i will spread my wild thick dark tendrils
curling as my most enfolded electric hair
spread of ample thighs and ass slide inside your most secret places
until you cannot tell
your heart beating this fickle human blood from mine
like rich red blood of velvet wine
and white pearls of teeth clinking edges of crystal glasses
like a pauper at the banquet, my pockets are empty of social graces
i left the pack of wild wolves who raised me back at home
from the tender age of 17 i fell off the edge of my high school diploma
and made a more comfortable pillow sleeping with tattered alcoholic angels
on the runaway streets of amnesiac suburban towns

and of all the ways love is forbidden
and of all the secret things that grow wild
in the untrimmed garden of my heart
most of all
is this forbidden love from my family
and god you alone know how many days
have i cried for rain on my piece of inherited earth?
i have rent my clothing to lay down weeping
bringing rain from eyes not clouds to humbly feed the thirsty darkness
and i stand before the masses to proclaim like a feverish prophet,
friends, all that has been unfairly called darkness i call infinity,
the mystery
the misunderstood depths calling to be embraced from the void
the fig-mouthed fecund womb of forever disappearing into the night
and i offer what is left of this smoldering naked body to be smothered
in the insatiable mouth of mother earth
after destruction, all that is left is the eager seed of desire to create again

and in all the ways love is our most confusing and forbidden god
and of all the secret things that grow wild
in the untrimmed garden of my heart
i hold a place for you here family
father, mother
as i always have
whether stumbling blindly down sorrowful alleys
thirsty for the slake of drink
to quench the thirst of my spirit in the desert we call human relations
i hold a place for you like sad eyed pilgrims
carrying candle torches in midnight vigils for lost children
i carry an image of you burned in my breastplate
before i was old enough to understand
the road of battle and tatters of shambling, beautific, berry-stained love
down alleys with mouth full of powdered bones
and erotic breath of the magic seed,
caught on red tongue before spilled to dark pavement

i have cried out for you
for the recasting of the spells
the sorrow, the ache, the longing
the burning and tossing in sweat soaked sheets
alone and with lovers i have wrestled my angels
and questioned the gods of my people
and risked punishment, impurity and condemnation for truth
that flaming sword
the mend the seal that has been broken
to bring contentment and life and love everlasting into all our hearts

selah (amen)

the attic and the basement

2010-09-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

in my house there is room for light and shadow
as a little girl, i play in the attic and the basement
i imagine many things in the bare bones architect of my mind

inside myself the father and mother are making love
i ride the serpent and the dove
i crawl from the fecund root of my womb
to scratch with hungry fingers out of the
watery bloody sea sack that has born me
to emerge panting
fresh oxygen cutting my newfound lungs like knives
carving my heart open
to feel, to feel
i will not be numb
i will stay awake
through the pleasure and the pain
the love and the loss

raw
naked
i will not be ashamed of my form and flesh
that is spirit manifest
i sing, i hum, i howl
i wear all the masks
i tell the truth and i lie
and someday i will die
and the mother will desire me to be born to dance
in her creation in flesh again
and again i will say yes
fuck yes
to the invitation

What do butterflies remember?

2010-09-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

what do butterflies remember?
i read about the orange black and white monarchs
who follow the same migration patterns every year
they land on the same tree in the same town
the same exact tree
scientist have not been able to identify
what makes that particular tree attract the butterflies
they have tested the trees
but can't find any markings or signatures to make "that" tree special

how do the butterflies remember?
when it was their ancestors who made the migration the year before
to travel, to mate, to lay eggs and die
and these new butterflies, hatch from those eggs
grow into caterpillars chewing on leaves til they grow fat
they build their own cocoons
and devour themselves inside
to emerge from their tomb in triumphant flash of fire
orange wings
to test the mettle of those fragile wings like steel knife blades
that cut through the sky
carving their way back into the collective minds memories
of their ancestors migration patterns
a need as invisible as hunger
following a map sleeping inside their DNA spiral until the exact moment it is called for
to plunge into the stream of blue sky
and fly and feed and fuck to guarantee the continuation of their species
like a great mysterious clockwork

is this not proof of some invisible pattern?
some great mind moving invisibly behind us all?
weaving through us all
as we travel through our lives a mystery to ourselves?

what do our bones remember?
in the stories of our ancestors?
what invisible maps are tattooed in our marrow
deeper than the minds memory
is the memory of the bones (white like teeth)

i think of my own generations
my father, my son
my mother, myself
our needs as invisible as hunger
our flight patterns,
part of a great invisible clock unwinding the time for us all

Paper boat captain

2010-09-10T06:53:00.001-07:00

friday, sseptember 10
mentor, ohio

i am dancing
bobbing on the waves
of my little paper boat
that a child god made
the child god who adjusts the machinations of moon cycles and star traffic
in the freeways of the skies
that extend far beyond my eyes
and this whole world that my eyes can see is just a veil covering the bellydancer (who is the child gods wife-mother) breasts and thighs
undulating under the surface pattern of cleverly manipulated veils
in her dance of temptation
can i be content to be the witness to her dance?
can i relax and be the passenger in the child god's toy paper boat?
even when it springs a leak?
i stand at the helm like a fierce captain studying the horizon that always sings a siren song to me of urge and further into the unknown
bobbing in a small fountain that looks like the whole world to me
as far as my naked eye can see is water and endless sea
but from farther away, it's just one small fountain in gods plaza
which i like to imagine is something like a lively open cobblestone
square in italy with everyone chatting all lively and
sipping hot capuccinos and cold lemoncellos
captain, my captain
you are the whole world to me

Fast food and drive-thru sex

2010-09-09T06:18:00.000-07:00

i am on my way to a tv station to do an interview on tantra. it is for a mainstream morning show. i will be sandwiched between segments for cooking bbq ribs and the local weather forecast. they will want to know about sex, what tantra has to do with sex. it is funny to me that i am somehow turning into a sex guru. i didn't intend it professionally, though i have dabbled in it liberally and recreationally since the first time i got drunk in high school and let a boy grope my breasts at a party i threw at my house when my parents went to japan. so maybe i have a liberal arts degree in sex guru-ship?

how to explain tantra to this audience?

when people ask me what tantra is on the street, i often smile and get a mystical and mischevious look and tell them it is difficult to explain. it has to be your own experience. but today is not a day for zen mystery school riddles. today is a day to muster my skills to speak in a way that meets the viewers.

who are my viewers?

i look out the car window with the freeway, trees, cars and a body of water speeding by. freeways are like the arteries of our society. all the cars zipping along the veins of the road like red and white blood cells. traffic. the outer world always reflects the inner world. these roads are the same as the freeways in my body.

we turn off the freeway. i look at the city peopled with tall, gray buildings, their glass tinted windows winking in the cold morning sun. i think, god help us be free.

tantra is about weaving together opposites.
flesh and spirit. sex and god. why do these feel so opposite, so far from each other?
why does it feel like we are fighting ourselves, like we have split personalities?
the flesh is the spirit and the spirit is the flesh
isn't that what jesus meant when he said, "my body the bread, my blood the wine"?
didn't he mean that these bodies, our human bodies, are the holy communion?
tantra means weaving, weaving the opposites to mend back to wholeness.
and beyond healing, there is the glimmer of transcendence rippling on the membrane-thin skin of reality.
as another prophet, jim morrison said, "break on through to the other side"

we have put god so far away from ourselves.
tantra is about reclaiming the sacredness of our bodies, including sex. sex has gotten a bad rap. tantra says that sex does not keep us from god, it brings us closer to god. it can be a beautiful act of worship.

where do we put our worship? where do we put our capacity for worshippfulness? it is in our nature as humans to worship and adore. so what objects have we raised like monoliths and pyramids? we stare at the one-glass-eyed cyclops god of tv. we let the churches of science gather dust, the largely unquestioned and ignored priests of science babble to each other in ceremonies only the initiated attend. meanwhile, the unwashed masses gather for evening services at the bars, strip clubs and happy ending massage parlors. we live in a world of religious non-believers. we worship money, fear, power and pornos. fast food and drive-thru sex. worship is a verb. it is an act. it is as simple as a shift in our attitude.

you do not need to go to the temple to worship, to pray. the temple is your own body. the temple is the warm sun making playful giggles on your skin. god is not so far away. just a slight adjustment, a recalibration to magic, can turn every moment into worship at the church of the life that is. don't stand so far from me friend. let us go worship the lover together. with our eyes and with our breath. with the grape clusters of your breasts woman. with the strong root of your tree man.

Click here to watch the TV Interview

Bordertown

2010-09-07T23:36:00.000-07:00

tuesday, september 7
austin, texas

there is a bordertown
of skin
where our bodies are pressed together
in sweaty summer rainstorm with lightning
telegraphing strobing messages on the walls
awake, i listen to the rain like little feet
running outside

there is a bordertown
of skin
my bare belly and breasts pressed
to your giant rock of a back
as i curl my knees around your knees
like two apostrophes

two quotation marks
left hanging mid sentence
suspended in the syrup of sleep and disbelief
you used to be so angry
i used to insist on being so alone
you moved to another city
now i visit you in your bed

you are my lover still
you still move me so
and my tenderness
(like a new green shoot
of some persistent wild grass
pushing through the cracks)
surprises me again
and i am delighted
by my enduring innocence

there is a bordertown
of two lives
wrapped in ribcages
wrapped in bodies
our two lives run together for a moment
like the edges blurring between nations where cultures clash, blend and mend
mercenaries of love bleeding and slipping into each other,
our slick wildness filling the unpaved, lawless streets
we stay up all night laughing and dancing barefoot and drinking tequila to the music like
red and green tijuana colors melting together

in this lawless bordertown
there are no treaties here
except the ones we make now

The meaning of my dream

2010-09-07T23:05:00.000-07:00

1.
i dreamed a strong dream a week ago
my son was being bitten by a black snake wrapped around his body
and then it bit me too
and i screamed, "i am going to die"
but my son was not afraid
and in the dream we both laid down and the snake bit us many times
while we were laughing

what is the meaning of this dream?
i remembered it when i woke up, and it disturbed me
i wrote it in my blog

two days later, i boarded a plane
and i began to feel uneasy
i began to feel a pain for my son
i remembered the dream, the snake, the biting
dear god, is my son alright?
i had not heard back from him for a few days
i began to worry

our last conversation he told me
"your son's not doing so good"
"my grandpa is dying"

i began to worry he might be in danger, my son
he might have gotten into some kind of the endless ways a teenager can get
into trouble
can get hurt
can hurt themselves
i shuddered
so little i can do
i am often far away
and at the brink of 18
he is often pushing me away

my mind raced with fears
someone had said to me that morning, "does it always have to be so intense?"
i wished it wasn't
i wished i felt calm and peaceful
but i was in hell on that plane ride

full of fear
anxiety
needing to have confirmation my son was ok

and when the plane landed i called his number and the message said
"we're sorry, this number is not accepting calls at this time"
what could that mean?
was he blocking my calls?
i texted his father to say i was worried

i got off the plane and collected my backpack with the worn out jesus patch
i dropped to my ass on the cool, marble floor in the airport and slumped against the wall
surrounded by my ragtag bags
most of what own these days as i travel more and more
i began to weep
openly
i did not care who saw me in the baggage claim
broke down

i heard the alarm my phone makes when i get a message
a text from my son's father:
"my father passed away, driving there now.
gabe was the one holding his hand when he took his last breath"

i felt the cooling rush of relief
not because the death of the grandfather
but because that feeling of death and physical danger i had been feeling around my son was true,
but he was safe.

these dreams, these dreams
these waking dreams of life

these webs of thoughts and dreams
when we love someone, we are haunted by them
we are inside of them
as they are inside of us

2.
what happens when the patriarch of a family dies?
2 sons, 2 daughters, 1 wife, 1 grandson
the one who has stood for what it means to be a man

when death comes in the fall,
like a scythe
gathering the harvest
of the indian summer

he said, a man is tough
and he would choose to sleep on the floor
to prove he didn't need much
or maybe because he had nothing to prove

who will fill the shoes
of what it means to be a man?

Wrestling with my angels

2010-09-01T07:43:00.000-07:00

1.
Shattered Sanity Satori- aka Wrestling with my Angels

At the moment of awakening, everything is shattered
there is a story of a zen monk, who in the moment of his awakening heard a birds call
and could no longer tell if he was the bird or himself
it is disorienting, who am i?

another restless night, broken open
i feel so shattered
the bitter taste of my tears is on my tongue
should my heart rejoice unless i am burning?
it is so hot in my bedroom that i am sweating, kicking off my covers
the holy men say that thirst brings us closer to god
yearning makes us pray and prayer breaks the veil to ecstasy
well, by god i am thirsty and begging for mercy
there is no one left to cry to but the heavens
hear my cry, oh lord
all this burning is making everything i know die inside me
everywhere i look is the death, destruction, emptiness
my father, my father, why hast thou foresaken me?
if all my dreams are burning and dying inside this frail body
my bones are turned to ashes
then bring me a new dream
renew this charred, blackened earth
let me sing a new song
i am tired of hearing my own voice

Am I crazy?
Can we boil it all down
to psychosis?
Neurosis?
To storms in my brain?

I have a friend
who likes to explain my brain to me
he says it is a very interesting brain
firing off so many colors
well, fine then
you can explain my brain
but where does my brain come from?

Am I not made of star particles from the furthest galaxies?
And the photos from the hubble telescope
show rainbow colored clouds of stardust in the dark
container of limitless sky
when I close my eyes
I see these rainbow constellations
strobing and pulsing the light and color within itself
that is what is happening inside my brain
that is why I love tantra so much
it says, “nothing exists outside of you that does not exist inside of you”
science is only starting to be able to prove and comprehend
putting words to the mysteries

but tell me, what words do you have for the big, brown eyes
of a little brown boy
naked, playing at the water pump in a slum?
You would not dare drink that water
would you say his poverty breaks your heart and his naked joyful laughter
gives you hope?
there are no words for the mysteries of the contradiction of heartbreak and hope
in ordinary, everyday life

often, I wrestle with my angels, who morph into devils and back again
the deeper the darkness
the better the light show
and yet, this play is often painful
the ecstasy and the agony
the vast stretches of emptiness
razed by the fire of yearning
I have another friend who says
we walk in both worlds
it is disorienting

what does it mean to be shattered?
Perhaps a good shattering is what we need to see Reality
and yet, I fear the breaking

after the sundance
the medicine man who is always so strong
came stumbling out of his house
asking for another medicine man
they took him to the other side and brought him back
later that day, he was alright

what would you say if you could float through the stars
like you do when you sleep at night
wouldn't your mind be a little unhinged?
At the tremendousness of it all?

2.
Sons, Snakes and Poision

last night
in my dream
my son was holding a snake
a black snake
which became his friend and wrapped around his body
and I thought it was beautiful, but then I was afraid
I tried to take the snake away, but the snake bit me
and I began to wail
“I am going to die”
but my son did not get upset like I wanted him to
and then I stopped running with my wound
and I thought, If I relax
maybe the poison won't kill me
and then I laid down on the ground with my son and the snake
and the snake bit us both many times
and we laughed because we knew
we loved the snake
and the poison was becoming something else in our bodies
and then a group of people walked by like tourists
and the snake stood on it's tail hissing at them and the snakes body puffed up like a cloud
but the people just laughed and took pictures
and I told them if they did not respect and fear the snake they had to leave

Photo Postcard India :: Seva Movie Shoot

2010-08-30T07:14:00.000-07:00

Baguanala Slum, Uttar Pradesh
Holi Holiday March 2010

Dear Friends,
This last February I travelled to a rural slum village in the north of India to teach yoga as a women's empowerment service project for girls and women. This is a project for the non-profit 501(c)3 I started called Healing the Mother. It was an amazing and humbling experience. My friend Anka Malatynska is a film maker, and when she heard about the trip, she wanted to make a documentary about my journey. How my search for myself and personal healing has turned into a mission to share the yoga that saved my life with others. The light and shadow, the joys and challenges of connecting to help others, and having myself reflected back. I set out to change the world, and realized I was changing myself.

The photo in this postcard was taken on Holi, a holiday festival where you play the game of Holi, throwing colored powder at each other. When we would practice pranayam and asana, I would shout "Shakti!" at the women and they would shout it back to me, "Shakti!". This is the feminine energy of power, creation and life.

This November, we will be travelling back to the village to meet up with the women who participated in the yoga training in february, and bringing them by train to have a week long Yoga Teacher Training for Women's Empowerment at the Devipuram Ashram in the south. We will provide them with food, lodging and books so that they can study in an envirnment free from their village responsibilities. The goal is to teach them to be yoga teacher's in their own villages, for health and self-esteem.

Contact me if you feel called to join us in India this November.

We will be screening a short version of the movie at a fundraiser October 9th at the Bhakti Yoga shala in Santa Monica.

I wanted to share with you some of my personal journal entries from the February project.

in Service and Love
psalm

JOURNAL ENTRIES:

tuesday, feb 9
Varanasi, India

Hope
it is raining in the oldest living city tonight. a city so old, it has three names. falling rain always makes me feel like curling up in bed. and so i am. my 2 roomates are out at dinner, they will have to walk back through the narrow, twisting alleys in the rain. but maybe it will have washed all the cow poop away...

walking through these alleys, you see so many seemingly broken people. literally. their limbs broken, handicapped and begging. so many that you have to stop seeing them. no matter how much yoga you do, how much meditation, it causes pain to see suffering. it is difficult to look so much suffering in the eyes, to sustain the gaze.

today anka, the director of the documentary we are making about this trip, and i went to a village nearby varanasi to see about teaching yoga to some dalits. dalit is the untouchables of the class system. we were introduced to the director of the program by our friend appu, who is a brahmin, the highest of the caste system. he said that people are superstitious and say that if you touch an untouchable, your skin will burn.

these kids had very little, dirty clothes and snotty noses. but i did not feel sorry for them or depressed by spending time with them. it was as if we opened a can of joy. pure, unadulterated enthusiasm.

it was easy to look into their faces, to look at their eyes because we are sharing with each other. i am coming to teach yoga and they are open and excited to learn.

i think it comes down to that...it is difficult to look at the people begging in the city because i feel overwhelmed, underequipped and guilty, and because i am ignoring them. and because we are separate from each other. it is easy to look at the dalit children in the village because i am participating with them. so when we sustain the gaze, it is hope and friendliness passing between us.

Monday, February 22
Baguanala Village, India

suicide in the village
a woman's body was found in the river today. it was the first day of the yoga women's empowerment class i am teaching in this village. this woman was supposed to be in our group. she committed suicide after her husband beat her last night. she ran from her home and jumped into the river. it made my heart heavy to hear the news. and yet it is what i am here for. or, to be clear, what the yoga is here for. to give these women a sense of goodness and connection to strength in themselves that can with stand the difficult storms. it is easy to forget some of the difficulties and life or death situations people are living through when we practice yoga in beautiful studios in America.

life can be cruel. spread a little kindness. forgive someone who hurt you in the past. the wheel of dharma and human drama moves on.

i am in a village near benaras shooting the documentary about teaching yoga to lower caste women and children. it is all exactly as i could hope, and so it is terrifying. why is it terrifying when your dreams are coming true? i guess that's why its easier to play small and keep nursing the old wounds. this is like stepping off the edge of a cliff, what is possible, nobody knows? the faces of the children are so strong, the black eyes rimmed in khajol (black eyeliner). i sustain the gaze. even when i am afraid. even when it is all so much bigger than me.

i sat at the communal water pump today in this rural ghetto. the women and children are still so beautiful. even with dirty clothes and snotty noses.what constitutes poverty? lack of money and food? how many of us live in poverty of the heart and soul, isolated from what we love most. connection to beauty, to goodness. to a basic feeling that life is good.

i am frightened by the immensity of it. everywhere, the big eyes watching. doesn't it feel as if someone is always watching us? some call this god.

the little girls follow me through the streets calling me "didi", a hindi term of respect and endearment that means big sister. i have family everywhere in the world.

i pray for strength, peace of mind and courage, to look into the soul of the human condition which stirs things up in myself.

and so it is. amen.

Knife Dance

2010-08-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 30
Metor, Ohio

Yesterday, I bought a knife. I have never bought my own knife before, never wanted one as a child. I was at a fair and there was a witchcraft booth. I was raised christian, so I never would have gone before. But I broke up with the church a long time ago. The husband and wife who owned the booth wore black t-shirts, were heavy and smoked a lot. I think in high school they were probably goth geeks. I was a nerd myself, just a different kind. I took the silver blade in my hands and something about the knife felt true. My mind automatically began reciting mantras and I felt the power from my body extend through the blade. Like turning up the sound on a stereo. I wanted to dance with it. I felt the weight of the knife, it felt real in my hands. The knife wanted me to dance with it.

I bought the knife and found a place behind the bandstand where the musicians were playing, filling the warm, summer night with drums like persistent heartbeats. I unsheathed the blade from it's leather holder, it looked like a small sword. I began to dance. It is a dance I learned in india called tandava. There is no right way to dance, only that I must keep moving, to feel the spontaneous movement of energy currents through my limbs and I am given the strength and agility to dance the stories, the patterns of life. it is the dance of birth and destruction, the dance of the universe. It is a form of trance and meditation. I found that I was more flexible and graceful than I expected, and that my body moved like a snake and a bird. I would crouch low to the ground and then twirl and jump towards the sky. I would lift my ribcage and peel my heart open to the heavens with my fingers, like peeling a piece of fruit.

Sometimes I lifted the knife and felt like a warrior, noble and proud. Other times the knife danced anger and retribution and sometimes I felt as if I was stirring the dark waters of a sea before time with the point of the blade. People gathered and watched, they were unimportant to me. There was a part of me that liked being watched, that like the feeling of being exalted. But I did not change my dance with the knife for the people watching. I became more and more true to myself and the blade, which felt so much a part of me that it was like one of my own bones extending out of my body.

after some time passed, i dropped to my knees panting, and felt exaughsted but exilerated. i pushed the blade into the earth, it felt right, like that was where the blade wanted to go. and i kept my finger wrapped around the handle, i could feel the power running through my hand, and it did not want to let go.

I have read that witches dance the dance of chaos. And I know that tantriks like I study with in india have ritual daggers or dorjes, as the tibetans call them. I used to think doing rituals was a waste of a time, an attachment to earthly outcome. I used to think I could surrender so completely that my ego would disappear. I looked down on rituals people performed to “get” things. Rituals for wealth, abundance, health, love. I scorned asking god for things, I felt it was better to just lay everything down at god's feet. But maybe some part of me had become broken from childhood years of my prayers not being answered the way I wanted. Maybe that part of me stopped believing in prayer and only believed in surrender to a will I can never really understand.

“And that's the way it is". The Lakota native american people I get doctored by say this as they patiently sit smoking cigarettes in their front yard and watch the road. The knife dance was a ritual. Maybe ritual is less about trying to make things happen and more about accepting the way they are. I don't ask to understand, I ask to be.

In the slaughterhouse of love...(I knew no shame)

2010-08-27T16:24:00.000-07:00

"in the slaughterhouse of love, they only kill the best lovers"
-sufi saying

we are crazzzzzy mad way gone lovers drunk on the mothers sweet juice

1.
i fasted for 5 days in the cabin i was born in a few years ago and had a waking dream vision of approaching my own mother with carnal desire, i thought i would be rejected, but she welcomed me. her yoni was dripping wet and milk was coming out like pearls from her nipples. i drank from her thighs and breasts and tongue kissed her. when i woke up i couldn't move for an hour the physical orgasmic bliss paralyzed me.

i knew no shame

in real life, we have not spoken in over 10 years
i am estranged from my mother like other people are estranged from
their lovers
no wonder i am a goddess worshipper
pouring all my motherlove devotion into the fierce, laughing goddesses
in rough hewn stone temples with neon om signs
halfway around the world

i stopped asking to understand, now i just kneel at her feet
offering these red hibiscus flowers and magical incantations
breaking myself open
we are gypsies
we have no roots
we are wild, winding, whirling dervishes
of orgasmic, atomic sky flowers burning bright and urgent s.o.s. messages
in the sky
reading tea leaves and palms
slaves to destiny
inshallah (god's will be done)

2.
i drove up to the cabin like a bat outta hell
back home, my marriage was melting in the fires of my burning
and the impending explosion propelled me forward,
onward to eat the road
like a lusty demoness
i go to make tea for my shadow
to cry for a vision
as it all comes tumbling down
lalalalalalalaaaaaaaaa

driving 120mph on the grapevine, rout 5
that long brown vein that cuts through the heart of california
like a dry, dusty river
not like the coasts pretty, moist, wet silhouette
graced by gray ocean and green redwoods and
dramatic cliffs dropping off the edge of the youthful promise
of the west
into infinity which stopped making promises eons ago
not like the deserts holiness austerity like cathedrals
of boulders arranged by an invisible hand from the sky inspiring awe
in the quaking stillness
no, this is the taint of california
somewhere between the sex and the asshole
towns like modesto, bakersfield, fresno
abandon hope all ye who enter here

i held the wheel with one hand and scribbled in my notebook with the other
one eye on the road and one eye on the page
at 120 miles per hour
the heat of the day and my sense of excitement and dread made
my sweat smell sour
by god if i am meant to die, take me now

i scribble:
i have gone where good women are not supposed to go
i have heard the tinkling of stolen keys in the locks of
midnight temples
meeting with men
who are not my husband
i have laid my body down on altars smeared with mustard-yellow tumeric powder
and deep red tilak
smeared around the mouth of my fire
my sacred altar
the mothers mouth
i have dropped my name as i entered the room
like dropping a garment of clothing
and disappeared into the curling tail of incense smoke
i pierced the veil

i have torn the curtain in the temple
the separation the priests made
between flesh and spirit
and the temples white marble floor is covered in my red, red blood

i knew no shame

3.
on the 7th day
i emerge from my self-imposed fasting to join the christian missionaries potluck
who have taken over the commune i grew up on
i am high as a kite from fasting
"we are all one", is looped in my brain
i sit across from a man who asks what i do for a living
"i teach yoga"
"well that's ok for excersize, as long as you don't do that kundalini"
"kundalini is the holy spirit" i say.
surely we can cross the bridge of separation between us.
he looks horrified
"how do you know this?" he says
"because i have felt it in my body, it is the same as when we spoke in tongues in church"
how can i tell him this is how i have felt christ, as an ecstasy running through my veins
sexual and spiritual have always been one for me
this man begins following me, asking more questions
when he asks, i tell him i am part spanish gypsy, part jewish, part danish
"jewish?! you are one of god's chosen people."
"aren't we all?" i say
"yes, but jews are special"
great. he's got a jew fetish
jesus was a jew
mary magdalene, the prostitute was one too

i become annoyed with being shadowed and shake this man
then, suddenly, when i do not see him anywhere, i panick
what if he went to look in my cabin? there is no lock on the door
and inside i have tarot cards and a dildo
(for doing energy cultivation breathing excersizes)
oh i will be publicly drawn and quartered
i begin to hurry towards my cabin, down the hill, far from everywhere
no phone, no locks
no one to hear my screams

my heart is beating fast,
i stop in a field, i catch my breath
i see another vision
i am being burned in the middle of the field
they have called me a witch
they are shaming the womam who took her power, her sex back
they are afraid
what is a witch?
a woman who takes back her power
i am afraid

i am afraid to go to the cabin if he is there, and we are there alone
and why not rape the slut?
it is quiet there
it is peaceful there
there is no one to hear my screams there

i go back to the potluck and find a friend
and ask him to walk me home
we stop at the jew fetish guys cabin on the way,
i want to spy on my would-be spy
he is there, i relax
he talks of jesus
and about his son who commited suicide when he was 25
and left a grandchild behind for his parents to take care of
and he motions to his cabin where he says he has a wife who doesn't go out much
and i feel compassion instead of fear
aren't we all just finding ways to deal with our suffering?

the young man i made friends with walking me to my cabin
he moved to the missionary training camp because jesus
appeared to him on a mushroom trip at a rainbow gathering
descending from the sky in rainbow colored clouds
he says jesus told him to go back to church
but he looks lost and lonely, and the conviction drops from his voice
he is just trying to make the best of those early 20 years where nothing makes any sense
especially rejection from friends and girls
he tells me i remind him of one of the rainbow gathering girls
because i am open

the next morning there is a knock at my cabin at 6:30 in the morning
it's the jew fetish guy
i open the door and he stands frozen there, looking uncomfortable
i say hello
he says hello
"i can't remember why i came here" he says
this is not good i think
we are alone
no one to hear my screams
i invite him in and make him a cup of tea
i will transform my fear into love
"oh now i remember" he says,
"i wanted to invite you to the morning bible study"
i pictured them all there praying for my eternal soul when i failed to show up
"i prefer to pray alone" i said
he sipped his tea ans still looked uncomfortable.
then he said, "you have a mystique, i can't decide if it is spiritual or just sexual"
i bite my tongue and don't tell him that they are the same to me
he finishes he tea and leaves

4.
in the back of an indian taxi
an impossibly old car with upholstry organically dissolving into it's greasy self
with spings that cut my ass cheeks
no a/c, i sweat profusly and hold my breath
i am going to meet my teacher for the first time
will he be the one?
i feel my heart ache and my ribs felt like they were being stabbed
"it is my heart i have come to heal" i think to myself

we are in the jungle, and there are only indians here.

Double lives

2010-08-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

does a double life give you more freedom and power? if all the world is a stage, and we are just actors playing the roles, then getting to wear the different masks can allow for more expression and experience. it can bring the realization, i am not limited to this or that. i am not the mask, i am the energy behind the mask. and the energy behind wants to play all the roles. if i am a wife who has an affair, than i also play the roles of a lover and a whore.

the first time i practiced tantra with my male teacher in secret, i went home to my husband and said nothing. we made love that night. i chanted the mantras i had learned while he hovered above me, while i held him in my mouth. afterwards he said it was as if something strange had happened, he could not explain it. he said it was one of the strongest sexual experiences he ever had. the next day we went to the movies together, i rode on the back of his motorcycle. i felt the crisp wind cutting into my face as we speed through traffic, i held tightly to his back. we cut through the traffic, weaving in and out of the lanes where the cars were stopped waiting for the red lights to change to green. shouldn't i be dead? i broke all the rules. but i was not dead. i felt more alive than i ever had. i felt immortal. it was difficult to reconcile this feeling of personal freedom with my morality, ethics and the rest of the world around me. my guru in india said tantra is the path of freedom and bondage. i would not keep a secret like this again, but i will not deny that it made some important change in me either.

i am reading a book about the psychotherapist, carl jung. he talks about a point in his childhood where he began to feel his personality split. when he began going to school, he realized that he behaved differently around the other children than he did when he was home with his family or by himself. to fit in, he acted like a different person. he said at this time, he took a ruler from his school box and carved a figure out of it. a man with a top hat. he fashioned a jacket for his "doll". he took this image and found a box to place it inside. he hide the box in the attic of his house. he made a secret image of himself that no one else could see. somehow this secret knowledge made him feel his essence was still intact, had not been compromised. It helped him to feel that he was still whole and had not lost himself to the herd mentality.

in the left-handed tantra practices, there is a purposeful engagement of taboo, used to break the practitioner from societal norms. this term of "left-hand" or vama marga, originated in india. in that culture, the left hand is used to wipe the ass, and is considered "unclean". the right hand is used for cooking and eating and greeting. to touch someone with the left-hand is a terrible insult, a taboo originated for practical reasons. most taboos have been created for practical reason that make sense for survival. but what if we want more than survival, more than fight or flight? more than reactions to fear of dying? after all, we will eventually die someday, no matter how careful we are. and if we realize that we return to the source of everything when we die, we would not be so afraid of death. we might begin to act fearlessly and take more risks. society respects risk-takers. the heroes of movies take risks to go beyond the everyday roles of their village, community and culture. that is why we are interested in their stories. because by breaking the mold, they have a new story to tell, they bring back new information to the tribe. if they fail, they will be scorned and their efforts will be regarded as vain and useless. if they succeed they will be the heroes, shamans and healers.

my first tantra teacher was married and i was married. we practiced in secret. his wife was not interested in learning tantra, and neither was my husband. these practices were only for the initiated. the desire to learn how to work with energy and power of sex had to come from your own soul. now that i am a tantra teacher, people ask me if i teach tantra for couples. i do not specifically teach tantra this way. i teach it as a form of self-inquiry, to reach an understanding of yourself. in self-inquiry, all goals are questioned, there are no sacred cows. nobody likes to speak about it plainly and openly, but people who begin seeking, through western therapy or mystical eastern practices often have their proverbial houses burn down. they get divorced, they lose their home, jobs, cars and pets. sometimes they lose their minds too.

when i began sexual practices outside my marriage, i knew it might cost me my marriage. i was afraid of this, of hurting him, of being a bad person, of being judged and i was afraid i would not be able to support myself without my husband. but the desire to understand my own nature, which was so clearly rooted in sex, outweighed all other external realities. compared to the burning of my soul, my marriage felt like an external reality. it was only one part of me and i was desperate to touch on the white-hot center of me. the nexxus of the tornado, from which everything else was spinning around. creating and being devoured by itself to create again. so i dove into the white hot center and saw that the whole world was spinning.

when i studied with my sufi teacher in istanbul, we would turn in circles to the music. the turning becomes spinning and i realized that everything in the whole universe was spinning along with me. they say the dizziness makes you drunk. this drunkeness makes you taste the wine of your heart and become intoxicated. they say your soul lives inside your heart and your mind is the servant who guards the door to the throne room. but for most of us the mind has become a tyrant and keeps the door of the heart locked, the soul becomes a prisoner inside.

why does the mind do this? because the mind is afraid. the soul is not afraid. the soul just wants to experience through the miracle of the body, of the senses. that's why the soul waits in beginningless time to be clothed in another body, to have the experience of tasting, tongue to tongue, the warmth of a french kiss again. the soul waited for the marvel of tasting an ice cream cone, for the delight of smelling roses and manure, for the sting of a punch or kick in a good fight. and especially, the soul waited to be clothed in a body for the dance of sex. what more divine joy is reserved for mortals than the holy prayer of union?

two bodies slick with sweat running along the shore of each others bodies, driven by a deep instinct like the silver bodies of grunyon fish gasping and running for the beach. the oxygen burns their lungs, because they are underwater sea-breathers. they are running unknowingly towards their own annihilation. an orgasm is an annihilation. in one fraction of a second, you forget your individual self and return to the womb of beginningless time. through the weaving of the flesh bodies, the soul tastes it's immortality again in a flash of light. the soul came to live. the soul knows it never dies.

Sufi Ecstasy Pilgrim

2010-08-25T05:05:00.000-07:00

From my travel diary in 2008:

nov 17

konya, turkey

we are in the city with rumi's tomb, on a pilgrimage for the anniversary of his death. we have come to a dergha, a room crowded with people. so crowded it seems impossible that any more could fit, and yet the room is alive and when a new person comes, somehow the bodies move, rearrange and settle again. it is stifling hot and the air is thick. the women are wearing head scarves and mostly they are in the back of the room, as if by some unspoken agreement the men and women have separated themselves in half, the front and the back. but i do not want to be in the back of the room, i do not want to be a good sheep. what does God care for a head scarf? doesn't God know every hair on my head? so i edge my way into the wall on the mens side, in the front where the musicians are. there is an open space there where the men are holding hands and dancing in a circle. sometimes, one of them gets in the center and starts whirling.

baba is sitting in the front of the room. he catches my eye and motions for me to come to the center. i climb over people to get there, and then one of the men grabs my hand and i am pulled back and forth in the dance, bowing up and and down in trance like rhythm. we say, no we breath, the name of God, "allah". over and over, it is hypnotic. the rhythm is pierced by yells and shouts that make the energy get higher. i shout the name of God, allah! it has the same feeling as saying jesus or mother. "la il ilaha il allah"...there is no God but God, in the sufi way it means all the names of God are one.

zikir is ecstaic breathing, breathing the name of god and turning and bowing to bring on ecstatic states. it is very familiar to me, it is like speaking in tongues in the born again church i grew up going to. zikir means rememberence. tonight, i cried out for all the sins that have been committed against me and all the sins i have committed against others. i cried for all the joy and pain i have experienced. i cried out to the God i have known and the one i have not yet begun to fathom. i cried out for the soul of the child i aborted and the mistakes i made with the son i gave birth to. i cried out the name of God with the animal sound of longing for the love of my mother and father that i never felt i got. and down came the rain, the energy filling my body until i thought i would burst, like a locomotive and my body the tunnel.

still i felt myself resisting this locomotive and the resistance felt like a knife in my back. the ecstasy was washing through me and the pain was also stabbing me at the same time and it seemed impossible they could both exist at once so intensely. i kept trying to relax, to let go of my self consciousness and drown in the fullness. and then the pain in my back went away and my body was filled with a tremendous shower of light that was like the most intense orgasm and it felt like God was fucking me in the middle of all these people and i felt like dropping and writhing in the pleasure of the orgasm on the floor. but i kept holding the hands around me and making the deep throaty sound of the zikir and then crying out the names of God.

i felt i could not go on, i was exaughsted, but it felt like when you are having sex and the body and the nerves are finished, but some deep need drives you on to another orgasm. the sema has its own life and strength in the group energy, so i tapped into the person next to me and matched my breathing and movement to his and then i was riding his strength as if we were making love, as if the whole sema was a pulsating nucleus of dancing particles. and i was carried in the circle, in the drunken rememberance. i am laughing, i am crying, my limbs are covered in sweat.

finally the murshid calls for us to stop and i bow to him and he says,

"you made a beautiful zikir. who are you? you are my daughter".

Dreams & initiations

2010-08-24T05:54:00.000-07:00

1.
in the first dream
i saw my smiling face as a little girl, looking at me now
hair was golden brown
and my woman face now, with jet black hair
morphed with my face then
and became one
and i was smiling at me
softer was i then, older am i now
there was a great deal of power in my eyes as they stared back at me
greenish
and i knew we were becoming one, i was looking at my future self

2.
in the second dream
there was a man, naked
his arms were outstretched like his body was a cross
i got on my knees
and put his phallus in my mouth
and i wept
and used my fingers to dig into the flesh of his hips and ass
and pull him more deeply into me
devouring me, making me forget myself

i take a journey to my inner landscape to tell these stories
this morning i found one asking to be told
it feels like i am standing at the base of a mountain,
telling this story is an uphill climb
already i feel tired
at the top of the mountain there is a cave, the story is in the cave
a dreamweaver is waiting for me there
i pack a satchel for the climb, a simple meal of bread, cheese, eggs

i open my memory box and pull one out at random
like sifting through my grandmothers jewelry box
and as my house is burning down
i find a quiet room to playfully examine the contents
when the house is burning, the first instinct is to run out
what of staying inside?

i am the huntress
lurking behind the the forest and trees
following my sacred deer
who disappears and then reappears,
standing silent as the perfection of time in a bright sun filled meadow
we join forces, the huntress and the sacred deer
we go to the cave together
inside we find a creature, half minotaur and half alien,
the half that is the bull smells wretched of earth, blood, feces,
the half that is alien glitters with many-colored jewels

3.
in a third dream (a dream i had in india)
i walk into a room, a bedroom
i know this because the room is empty except for a bed
i feel a sense of dread
i have had this dream many times before, i am tired of it
on the other side of the bed there is a man
i do not notice his face, only that he is a man with dark hair
i cannot stop my dream self from walking to the bed, to the man
i am watching my dreamer
me and the man are separated by the bed
i think, "not again"
i cannot move the feet of the dream me, not to the right or to the left
then i realize, i can go up!
i float up and leave my shoes behind at the side of the bed
and i float to the sky and look down on the old dream
i realize i can fly

jesus said:
"i speak my mysteries to those who are ready to hear my mysteries,
she who has found the body is superior to the world
when you make the two one,
and when you make the male and the female one and the same,
and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye,
and a hand in place of a hand,
then will you enter the kingdom."

i fashion a mouth for mouth and a tongue for a tongue
the taste of your seed
bitter, pungent, earth and fire
i swallow your legions whole

"leave your shoes outside. your shoes represent your life. when you come inside, you are only energy now".
he was married and i was married, we were meeting in secret to practice tantra together. a few minutes before, i had been sitting in my car in the driveway of my teachers house. now that i had rung the doorbell, it was too late to turn back. i had pulled the trigger. i smiled stupidly. we were somewhere in the suburbs, in neat rows of sand colored houses. they all looked the same, i had to check the address twice, even though i had been here once before. i was nervous anyways. he was very dark with blue black skin. The color of his lips much darker than mine. He had black hair on his knuckles and tufting out of the collar of his polo shirt. He was dressed like a computer programmer, in khakis. he had a little belly, but other than that his arms were long, thin and lanky. i had not been to india yet, but when i did go, i saw that he had the same kind of body type as most of the men from the south.

he sat on his couch and i sat below, cross legged on the tan carpet. his house was clean but almost empty of decoration, nice but generic. his wife and children were on a trip now. that is why we were meeting at this time, because we needed secrecy. i was a wife and a mother. these things i tried to leave outside with my shoes.

Bi-polar

2010-08-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

wow

dark tunnels

these

memories

dropping into wormholes of visceral memory

working in the coal mines

the soul mines

spinning the poison into gold

with my silver tongue and mercury fingers

too much mercury will kill you

just enough will give you sublime visions

this soul is mine

i reclaim it

from the hobbits and trolls

the more visceral the wormholes the better

for the writing

for me, the writer, and you, the reader

writing is an act of discovery. i want to discover my relationship to my memories. i want to discover my relationship to you, the reader. i want to transcend the separation between you and me by taking the things i have isolated myself the most with, my private wounds and memories, and flush them through the burning of my words into the common language of all our experiences and dreams. i want transcendence. i want to break through the the other side. i pulse between the dark, small feelings of these moldy memories and the big, beautiful feeling of release when they are exposed. am i having a manic-depressive episode? every 2 minutes. it is a slippery slope considering where i have come from.

still, i dig my way through these impassable mountains of memory, persistently pushing like a mother in the necessity of childbirth. sometimes i get lost in a tunnel. this exersize is only fruitful if one part of my mind is strong enough to get out without getting too lost. i think of all the artists who have simply lost it, who died young of drug overdoses or were locked up in the looney bin from madness. they pushed it too far, to try to understand themselves, to break through the membrane-thin collective reality bubble and bring back handfulls of the sublime. in books and paintings they lost themselves and their minds. when you are pushing, do you always know what is too far? on the razor's edge, you only find out by testing your steps.

last night i could not sleep. i fell asleep with a faint sense of darkness, of angst, perhaps all is not right in the world. perhaps there are evil spirits, dark energies. but i am a grown woman, i put these childish thoughts aside and fell asleep none the less. i was woken by the buzzing alert on my phone that someone texted me. "fuck", a sense of dread that i would not be able to sleep again came over me. then the cell phone rang. a friend of mine telling me what a great night he was having, driving under an almost full moon, belly full of sake, having just made new friends at the restaurant he ate dinner at. he asked how i was doing. "twisting and burning", i said. "alone, here, in self-exhile in ohio, can't sleep". "well, you gotta get outta there then", he said. "otherwise you'll just keep twisting and burning". i didn't want to hear that. one of my favorite sticks for my mind to beat me with is that i am hard on myself for nothing. "i'll let you go back to sleep", he says. i wish it was that easy.

i lay for awhile with my eyes burning. how many sleepless nights have i spent in my life, wrestling with the feeling of darkness. i called another friend. "it's the demon time", i said. "the wind is howling through the trees, it is restless like me". "maybe it is telling you to follow it to a nearby graveyard you haven't found yet", he drawls in my ear. "no thanks, i don't need that to start up too". we laugh. i confess to him that i am afraid i am not doing anything, producing anything of value with my writing. that i am making myself miserable for nothing. he tells me that i am doing good, that i am producing something. i feel much better.

after we hang up, i still can't sleep. but when i close my eyes now, my skull is filled with a beautiful, radiant, strobing light. my body is filled with a comforting, sensual warmth, as if something soft is rubbing my whole being from the inside, invisible. i have always felt this. the fight between the light and darkness has often been fought in my body between the hours of midnight and 4am. since i was a little girl laying in bed. and the darkness always felt like a shadowy, oppressive force of dark intention. and the light always felt pleasurable in my body. that's why i understood immediately the language of the saints, nuns and martyrs who talked of being consummated with god, the bridegroom, in the bridal chamber. when the ecstasy overtakes me, i am transported to that place, that bridal chamber, and i am touched by the holy spirit. it is quite beautiful.

i spend a few hours running my fingers over the skin of my naked body, throwing off the bedcovers. i feel the hard jutting shape of my ribcage and the soft wrapper of golden skin. what miracle is this? i feel the wetness of my tongue as the taste grows sweet, the amrit, nectar of immortality releases in my throat as i salivate more. i brush my fingers like the hands of a ghost or the feathers of the wings of a bird over the shape of my breasts and nipples. they change shape at the tips and begin to feel cold and sharp. i am aroused. but in a thick sort of trancey way. i do not want to have an orgasm or come. i run my fingers lightly between my legs, feel the bones of my hips on both sides like a leather saddle. i run my fingers through the electric fuzz hair and touch my my private self. i linger momentarily, then bring my hands back to my breasts, my ribs. i listen to the sound of my breath.

i say some prayers to the angels, to the almighty goodness, i think of my guru in india. without my mantras, i might just be some crazy lady pushing a shopping cart down the street. i was diagnosed as bi-polar before. in another lifetime in this same lifetime. i think it was a spiritual diagnosis. i did not know how to weave between the ecstasy and the agony. between the feeling that we are all one and that i am alone in a cruel, meaningless universe. i was like a paper boat tossed on the waves of the passions. yoga is what saved me. made me feel like a functional human being. after a year of doing yoga, i tapered of all my psyche meds. i gave up on being normal a long time ago. i am functional. and beyond functional, i regularly dance in super-real realms of intensity of light and shadow that i feel is a beauty way to move through my barefoot lifetime on this small planet.

Circling my father

2010-08-22T08:07:00.000-07:00

reading jack kerouac on the road...

the lovers, the burners

all ended so tragically

you know that search for TRUTH, FREEDOM

they were courage teachers

and now this new age bullshit movement is so hermetically safe and sealed

no tragedy please

is there something in between?

does it matter?

my father was a burner

he was an elder in our church commune

he molested many of the girls

wonder if he just lost touch?

these are the questions i am circling with my book

the ache in my gut

he grew up a good new york jew

2 parents, 2 kids, a boy and a girl

squaresville, eastern european immigrants

escaping pogroms and witch burning to be good factory americans

my zadi, grandfather, would smoke cigars and play poker

he didn't earn much working at a sewing factory in the city, but by god he could play some poker

and from the winnings they had the first tv on the block

a bunch of greasy faced teenagers crowding around with my pops to watch the ed sullivan show in the jewish bronx

i imagine him just turning on to the 1960's and freaking out one day

fuck the immagrant american dreams

there's a whole world of magic out there boy

naked girls and love festivals and rainbow colored drugs

he made his way to hawaii and meditated on the beach, believing that they were "tuning in" to other people meditating around the world

and he ate fruit that fell from the trees and he said the cockaroaches were as big as cats

and it all sounded super far out hearing him tell his yarns sitting on his lap

as i grew up on the christian commune that he joined after all that freaking out

left him empty

so, here's a riddle:

what happens when you take a bunch of hippies who have been experimenting

with the far side, with sex, drugs and freedom,

and then give them good old time religion with a bunch of rules

speaking in tongues and being washed in the blood of the lamb

it's still counter culture cuz we were far from mainstream

i grew up milking goats and wearing a bonnet for chissakes (literally, for christ's sake)

what happens then?

in my case...

beauty, trance, ecstasy, magikal way of looking at life

shattered when it all broke down

due to my fathers indiscretions

and so my mind grew to believe there was a perfect life before, and a broken one after

good and evil

fall from grace

i carry the sins of my father for 7 generations

blood of my blood

flesh of my flesh

seed of my seed

father, i circle the world trying to understand you.

why did you do it?

what were you thinking?

and now you hide away, you won't even tell your own daughter where you live

because you are afraid they will come after you

you protect yourself before me

if you have remorse, you keep it to yourself

and send me mysterious emails about being proud of the life i have made for myself and being proud of me and so on

and i say fuck you

and i love you

and i ache and burn and twist for you

and me

and the whole world of mere angelic demonic mortals like us

you will not witness me father, but i will be witnessed

by the whole world

i am whirling

for the thousand fold suns that will light up our faces when we meet again on the spirit plane

The Heart of Tantra Manifesto

2010-08-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

TANTRA is not about sexual freedom or sexual control, it is about worship as a doorway to accepting the raw, naked moment of what is, the ground you are standing on is the ground to TRUTH...the BODY you are living in is spirit made flesh. can you stand naked in this moment with me and sustain the gaze? i worship YOU.

to integrate sexual energy with spiritual energy and experience oneness through the other, first you must experience oneness with yourself. why are you split? why is sex split from spirit? we are ashamed, we have run from the garden of eden covering our nakedness (innocence). For of such (childlike innocence) is the Kingdom of God.

the kingdom of heaven is within us and around us, not an imaginary place in the sky or a reward after we die...it is in the living, breathing NOW...know yourself and you will be known. in ritualistic temple tantra we worship the body as the home of god, and by showering our adoration on the human form, we claim our wholi-ness back.

we fear the body, we fear death. sex brings birth, which brings death. we are split. we want birth without death. pleasure without pain. love without loss. so the real tantra is weaving together the opposites, becoming a master. in tantra, there are techniques to pierce the veil of "ordinary reality", but they are disorienting to the mind. Because the MIND has perceived things as smaller than they are. When we see they are bigger, the mind is confused. "Where am i?" "Who am i?" "what life am i waking up to in the morning?" "Whose dream did i buy into?"
These are questions many people spend their lives keeping busy to avoid. Who asks these questions? The heart and soul ask these questions. When you start asking these questions, your life might begin to change, and it might scare you. would you light your own house on fire because your tears taste sweet to you? totality of pleasure and pain, the feminine chaos as a teacher. stir the shakti pot. you have to want more. burn your old dwelling places down to find a new home.

Because we fear DEATH, we also fear LIFE...life comes from the animalistic urge to pro-create, which is fueled by sensual DESIRE, so that the SEED fertizes the EGG. This seed matures and is born through the mouth of the woman's body. This is all feminine. Women are sex. Show me the culture where they cover the man's body in fabric to control the lust of the women. Women cause men to desire, inside the woman is the flame of SHAKTI, the magnet of DESIRE for sensual desire, for joining. If you are afraid of death/life, than you will be afraid of DESIRE, SHAKTI and WOMAN. and so we live in a state of PATRIARCHY now. we are afraid of the SHAKTI, the MOTHER. in goddess worship, we return to loving the DIVINE MOTHER. of course we must also love the DIVINE FATHER, but because of the patriarchal imbalance we find ourselves in now, i find it most beneficial to turn in the direction of the divine feminine and from that love, i will meet the divine masculine, since they are mated partners.

TANTRA means WEAVING...weaving light and dark, conscious and subconscious, matter and spirit, right and wrong, life and death and RE-BIRTH...yes the distances between you and i and us and god...weaving the fabric and the vagina 0's and penis 1's are just the binary code...what's the intelligence behind the binary code??? that's the exploration of inner and outer space...doing and un-doing...melting, blending, alchemizing...

the dual dissolves into the non-dual, but the the One becomes two and that is the hard part because the feeling of separation comes again. a lot of spiritual practice is chasing the Oneness instead of learning to move skillfully between non-dual and dual, as consciousness clearly chooses to do. if we only seek oneness, we will fall short in the human experience, which our souls chose to experience opposites. For what greater purpose of Gods have we smaller gods met face to face in this lifetime? Tantra is a play of the gods (you and me).

it is a problem to try to define liberation, samadhi, these spiritual words become like opiate for the masses, what does "love" mean?, "enlightenment"? anyone who has experienced these cannot explain them...

when i teach TANTRA workshops i say, "i'm not promising you anything. not a better orgasm, not a soul mate or enlightenment". all these concepts are commercialized and it is easy to make a lot of money pushing people's buttons ...But the goal you may begin with may be just the trick to get you in the door.
my guruji says the problem with tantra is people just wanting to get their kicks. but then he sighed and said, "but what's so wrong with kicks?"

FREEDOM is found by the individual. It is a process of individuating, becoming who you really are. It can feel like a lonely, painful process. Luckily, we have grace and guides. It is important to find a teacher. You cannot mimick your teacher, but you can follow their example to becoming a mature, spiritual grown up. Meaning take responsibility to be who you are in this life. Stop projecting and blaming all your relations, politics, etc for keeping you from realizing your dreams, your power, your freedom. FREEDOM comes from within.

It is also true that we live in a world where there is a great deal of suffering. So your own freedom is intrinsically connected to doing works with your hands to change the world in it's physical form as well. FREEDOM comes from service and LOVE.

Spoken words contradict themselves. Words are like teachers, they can only point the way. You must navigate the way on your own.

The TANTRA that can be spoken is not the TRUE TANTRA.

Saturday morning, syrup and pancakes

2010-08-21T07:06:00.000-07:00

saturday, august 21

pittsburgh, pa

drove 5 hours from cleveland yesterday to teach in pittsburgh

staying at some kind soul's house i never met yet, smells like cats

doesn't make much difference to me anymore, where i lay my head

saturday morning

woke up remembering how you move inside me like syrup and pancakes with melting butter

you standing in the doorway naked with a cup of coffee

rubbing your belly

which is not rock hard like the infomercials

but soft with honey bear fuzz, and thick around the waist like a real man

and how we used to make love in the mornings

before breakfast,

after breakfast

we used to say we had to charge the worlds battery by creating friction with our magnetic parts

well, i guess the world is still runnin'

anyways

because these days

i don't see so much of you anymore

and sometimes i just want to wrap my legs around you

to feel the assurance of your arms

the sweat of our bellies as you slide inside

and we make a solemn prayer

sometimes looking into each others eyes and sometimes looking far away

to the stars

and sometimes it seems like it should be as easy as making a phone call

or buying a plane ticket

but somehow, it's not that easy at all

the same magnetic force that used to pull you into me

(deeply)

now seems to be pushing us apart

and i mine my misery for art

to tell my story

of sin and redemption

of love and loss

like a good country song, except in my version,

everything you lose will come back again

What i didn't tell you

2010-08-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

the sensei says that when you fight, you meet the opponent in yourself. you meet your anger, fear and indecision. the indecision is the worst, because you freeze and can't respond to your partner, even if they are hurting you. you are confronted with the reality of the punch, the kick, the contact. you can't pretend you weren't just kicked. and you can't pretend you didn't just kick your sparring partner. satori, a moment of awakeness.

what i didn't tell you
is that i crawled on my hands and knees after you left, after you didn't want me to spend the night again. i didn't tell you that i felt so sick i was dizzy and couldn't stand up, like i was on a badly rocking boat. i felt like i had to throw up, so i crawled to the toilet and curled up around it, like a kitten licking it's fur. and i cried and cried, big, fat, hot tears rolling down my cheeks to the tile bathroom floor. god, i am so sick of this ache. i just want to be held and loved, i want to have someone pet my hair and kiss my neck near my ear and say it's all going to be all right. my girlfriend sat and watched me. she shook her head. she said it seems like the men in the world really aren't doing the women much good.

i think of my father. i just want to be held. when will this ache ever go away? will i always be this broken? my gut hurts like nausea. it's the buckshot size hole where my self-esteem should be. i want to be seen in my entirety, my wholeness. i want to fuck you for fun and have you take me seriously.

i haven't told you this because
the truth is
i don't know you that well
even though you slipped so easily inside me and my body was wet with yes, and i felt you travel to the center of my white, hot yoni that makes all the light in my forehead go white too. it was easy to go there. it wasn't as easy to recover balance afterwards. somehow, when i got out of bed, a spell was broken. what had flowed so easily like a dance was now feeling limited. a little confusing.
"i'm going to get coffee, do you want to come?"
"no, that's alright"
"can i get you anything?"
"i'm good"
i pulled on my dress and went out from the cave of nocturnal love into the sunlight. my eyes sting from the sudden brightness. ah, god's flashlight. i walked down the street, that funny kinda walk with hips extra loose and my pussy still wet. i secretly smile to myself. maybe i look like an ordinary woman. but i am not. i am full of slick yum.
"mango? pineapple, guava?"
"mango, pineapple, guava?"
the fruit seller sings on the corner
pigeons drop shit on the parked cars.
at the coffee shop, i regard myself in the bathroom mirror. what have i looked like to you in bed? my face always surprises me. i often turn the rear view mirror in my car to look at myself, instead of the traffic. like a toddler fascinated with their own reflection. is that really me? is that what i look like on the outside?

what do i look like on the outside?
on the inside i am aching
i think, did i sleep with you too soon? but i don't want to think of it like that, of playing games. i followed what felt real in the moment. we sparred, i got kicked and i kicked. maybe i met more of the opponent in myself. the old, sad buttons that get pressed by close contact, and like a child's doll a recorded voice comes out of me that says, "papa". and now i retract back into myself to lick my fur in dignity. we played hard.
a flash of satori in our spar, in our lovemaking.
am i broken open, or just broken?

Flesh of my flesh

2010-08-18T07:27:00.001-07:00

this morning my son told me he had carved my name in his palm. he was calling me from santa cruz. i could hear cars in the background and i pictured him standing on the street. i wondered if he was a little stoned. when he had come to visit me a few months earlier, i realized all my friends were stoners too. i sighed, you can't win them all. i asked him if he had gone to a coffee shop called pergolesi's. "oh yea, i love that place", he said and sounded proud to know the joint. i used to go there, when i was his age. 17 almost 18. before coffee shops blew up, before there was a starbucks on every corner, there was pergolesi's, a victorian gingerbread house on the outside and a gothic nightmare on the inside.

i had been there a few weeks ago, before i came to ohio to write. it was intimate to know we had both been standing on a street in santa cruz only two weeks apart. when i went back to pergolesi's that trip, i was walking down memory lane. i was almost giddy with my memories of my youth. it felt good now to have an experience to share with my son. he had been upset and not speaking to me for a month, but now he needed his social security number to apply for jobs. i am so glad when he needs something from me that i can provide. he said he put ink in the ridges where he carved my name to make a tattoo. it is strange, but i think there is something quite beautiful about that. he made a flesh offering to the gods of mothering. being a mother always humbles me, makes me feel like a very small and unworthy participant in the beautiful pageant of life. how could this beautiful life have come from me? his eyes are dark, intense and often troubled. he's got a dramatic tango with life. he will burn brightly and not go quietly into the night.

i worry for him. i made a flesh offering too. at sundance, a native american ceremony, i had offered 24 pieces of flesh from my arm in a prayer for me and my son to get a long, to be in a good way. it's not much to brag about, just a little bit of scarring on my left shoulder. looks like a cat scratched me maybe. but every time i look at it, i remember my prayer. there is a superstition around the practice, that the harder your prayer, the more you bleed. and my arm was dripping with red blood that day. i cannot quite describe the feeling of the tiny bits of flesh being removed. maybe the metal scalpel was cold, or maybe the air was cold touching the newly naked nerve endings.

the man who did the flesh offerings carried a silver aluminum briefcase. he set up a little altar of sage and a buffalo skull. there was a long line to give flesh offerings, my friend rachael and i laughed when i cut in line to join her, "just can't wait to give flesh offerings". somewhere, women are shoving and cutting in line to buy lingerie at a nordstrom's. when it was my turn, they told me to turn clockwise to enter the sacred space. i asked if i could turn counter clockwise, the witchy way. he said, "sure, i love that". and then i held the sacred pipe while he took the offerings from my arm. i felt the cold blade, the raw nerves, the warm blood beginning to drip down my arm. it made me focus on my prayer. the cold feeling from the cut made me feel like the spirits were touching me.

the night before, they had a night dance in the dark. the rest of the sundance ceremony is done during the day, in the light and heat of the sun. the night dance felt different. while the drummers played, and the dancers danced, the supporters would stand also and dance facing the sundancers. but looking always in the distance, to the sacred tree. i was so tired waiting for the ceremony to begin, i had fallen asleep in the itchy grass with my blanket. when the drums started i felt as if i was in a trance, like a heavy hand was holding me down, it was so hard to get the energy to stand. when i did face the dancers, i felt the cool night air, the blue-black sky and i saw the black silhouette of the tree. i began to pray to the tree. "creator, i will be dead someday. please take care of my son." and i wept. i have so little control over my son's life. he is becoming a man now. he has his own river to navigate.

flesh of my flesh
fruit of my womb
some people pray to their ancestors
i pray to the miracle of my child
to the life that runs in the river of time before me
and gives me faith in life

Dancing naked in the yard

2010-08-18T07:04:00.000-07:00

i am going crazy
i can't do it anymore

writing
writing

i have quarantined myself in this split level house in the suburbs of cleveland to write my opus
i read short stories to get in the mood
i read books on writing to get in the mood
i drink a cup of coffee to get in the mood
i pace the periwinkle blue carpet in front of my laptop
my mac that is cracked and battered from 6 trips to india, it is sitting in the breakfast nook, on a small round table with off-white lace tablecloth. it's screen is open and stares at me with it's one giant unblinking eye
i am mesmerized by the computer screen
i pace in front of it
like a cobra hypnotising me
rattlesnake charmer
i will wrestle you to the floor and get some words out of you

i run naked in the midwestern backyard at night after everyone has gone to sleep
for luck
who brought the gypsy witch to mentor ohio?
the summer night air is warm and a bit humid
trees not fences separate the neighbors yards
i turn somersaults and dance to the music in my own head
there is a great deep ordinariness here
that has it's own holiness, like a cathedral
the sky is silver gray, i can't see any stars
even here there is light pollution
i am restless in this nest
i am banking on the restlessness turning into writing
i go to bed at 4am

i get up at 7:30am
i make a cup of coffee
i go back to the laptop

yes i continue writing formless things
a mass of clay that i can begin to shape at some point
can't see the horizon for the waves right now
in the middle of the ocean
i wanted a life raft
but got pushed out to sea (see)

Sculpting with stones

2010-08-17T21:02:00.000-07:00

i used to sculpt with stones. big pieces of heavy granite that made me sweat and pant and grunt when i carried them. it was comforting because the stones had a life of their own. they were beautiful without me. unlike a white piece of paper that was nothing until i laid down my lines, called life and form from the ether. the stones would talk to me. sometimes i could not understand the words, but there would be a secret language between the organic lump and my own hands. my hands would caress the raw shape, feel the grain of the stone, try to see it's story. what do you want to become stone? what do you want to show the world? how can i help that process? i would lovingly pet and swaddle the stone like a mother pets her baby.

i worked with one stone that was white. it became a phallic object, but very pointed at the tip. in the beginning, i did not understand the lines i was cutting and filing. then one day i looked, and was making a scary penis. i carved an alien language of symbols and heiroglyphics on the sides of the shaft. i was afraid of sex at the time, and did not understand men. i lived in a neighborhood with lots of homeless people, and was terrified of being followed to and from my car. my breath would get fast, but i would try to walk slow and look nonchalant, confident. i had been sexually attacked late at night walking to my car the year before. and once, i was coming home around midnight from the laundromat, and a flasher jumped in front of my car. in the headlights he opened his coat to expose his sex. at first i was afraid, i drove away as fast as i could. and then i became angry. i was filled with rage and was embarrassed for my fear. i am the one with the car, i thought. he should be afraid of me. and i drove through the alleys looking for him, to chase him with my car if i found him. how dare he make me the victim? in general, i did not understand the sex that ran through my veins and dripped from my pores, always giving me away as a girl "who liked it". and yet i knew, like food, i could not live without sex. i had to find a way to have a healthy relationship to it.

there were times when i felt an energy coming from the sky through the crown of my head, through my body and passing to a man who was sexually attracted to me. even if i was not interested in the man, i liked the feeling of this energy and knew that because he was desiring me, the energy was pulling through. and i liked the heavenly feeling of the energy. it was it's own reward, this secret satisfaction between me and the invisible realms. there were times it was a man i felt particularly disgusted with, and yet i felt, who am i to deny him communion with this energy? i am only a vessel. this man should feel loved by this force.

i put the white stone phallus to the side and began working with soapstone. soapstone is the color of jade and grey clay and brown mud and pink coral. it is so soft, you don't even carve it. you make a rough shape and then you form it by wetting rags in water and rubbing the stone with the rags until it begins to melt into the grooves you rub into it. like silking a stone. this was so delightful to feel and watch. no hard hammering or chiseling, just the stone letting her body be contoured to my fingers and the wetness of the rags. that was many years ago, i have not sculpted since then.

India coming soon

2010-08-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

monday, august 16
mentor, ohio

a response to an email from my dear friend and guide in india, rohan

dearest rohan-ji
what a sweet joy to get your email!
and we are very close now because i have been thinking of you a lot lately.
so much looking forward to time together again. i am writing, writing, writing a book rohan. so much has been changing for me this year.

i still want to go to assam as sadhus with you with only begging bowl on steps of the kali temple, we will love the mother together. we will feel her love in the warm sun, we will not need food. let's take a pilgrimage there and fast for 10 days in december. we are together on this journey rohan-ji, in a very special way.

just had my heart a bit bruised from dating someone recently, really so much ache about the sadness of my father not being in my life. what to do? learn to love. again and again.

we will make the plan for you to meet us at devipuram nov 1. and then we will travel and such at least until dec 10, i may go to turkey then, or i may stay longer in india.

you are like my dark guadian angel, always watching over me.
you are a warrior for devi, the holy mother.
we are remembering who we are in this lifetime.
we will not soon forget even when the world wants us to go back to sleep, we will keep waking up.

loving you
psalm devi-ji

So many of me

2010-08-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

there are so many of me
different voices in my head different parts of my personality i live with
as i sit down to write my stories
these different parts of me chime in with their version of the same stories.

one voice is bold and rebellious and likes to shock. it seems to be a teenage me. a big, joyful walking middle finger to the hypocrisy of the man and the matrix. her element is fire.

another voice is wistful and aches and cries a lot. she seems to be a little girl grown into a woman who likes country songs. who enjoys the bittersweet chocolate melting in my mouth of memories, disappointments and heartbreaks. she feels soulful. her element is water.

i sit outside for an hour in nature, just to remember there is a world of concrete objects that exists outside of my own head. i think this is what they call meditation.
it keeps me sane, from spinning out into the ephemeral world of thoughts that move like wind through the invisible space in my skull.

someday i will cease to exist, but these trees will not. and my story also will pass from generation to generation. i have already achieved the solemn and womanly task of passing my genetic code to the next generation. and somewhere my son sits, on the cusp of manhood at 18, grappling with the same thoughts as me. gypsy legacy. angsty high school dropout bent on finding a deeper meaning to life and leaving a creative mark on the world. he is not returning my calls right now. a stabbing pain on a sunny day.

i bring my mind back to the yard in cleveland.
i think in japanese haiku poetry:
summer thick with bees
purple flowers nodding yes
green leaves can shimmy

i think that is 5/7/5 beat of syllables. i test by clapping out the syllables like they taught us in 3rd grade. haiku teaches to observe nature and to shave away the fat so that only the slim shining bones of the image is left. i want to see my slim shining bones in this book of my life i am writing.

the process of writing is painful. painful and liberating. it is a different kind of meditation. i think how nice it would be to sit and meditate on no-thingness, to keep dropping every thought. this is not true, that is not true. drop the thought. what is true then? the Ultimate is true. but you gotta find your own Ultimate. your own Golly-Gee-Holy-Shit-Wow---oh my god, it all makes sense now! and i would weep a thousand tears of gratitude in that transcendental moment of realization. yes, i like that ride. but right now i am on the ride of grabbing hold of my thoughts and wresting them to the floor, like oiled gladiators we go to the mat, to the gritty rock bottom of those fleshy truths. it is not easy to see all these thoughts and to hold them, validate them and then by doing so, they seem to happily go away into the no-thingness. we bow to each other, because seasoned opponents always understand that a good fight is just a good dance. testing our muscle. getting to know ourselves. and these are just all the parts of myself.

can my spirituality hold my humanity? can i reconnect with the oneness but also individuate? i think of my guru. i cannot become him, i can only become myself. that is what he did, he became himself. and in the process, he upset and disappointed some people. his wife, his daughters. one of his daughters was ashamed when he spoke openly about tantra in a newspaper interview in india. she thought he should keep the tantra a secret and just act like a good guru in the public. his daughter was living at the ashram and doing a lot of service to help make it run. she said if he continued to speak openly she would leave. he told me he said, "if you must go, then go. i cannot change who i am". on my last trip to india, he told me, "the difference between me and other gurus is that i say what i do. many of my followers have been angry with me for this. because the ashram could have been bigger if i played along. but i will not become a prisoner of my disciples".

i think of how my guru has inspired so many people to love themselves and each other more. and yet has disappointed some of those closest to him. his wife is not a left hand tantric practitioner. she does not approve of these practices, and yet she does service to feed me when i am there. tolerance is an important key. on my first trip to india, i confided in my guru that i had been practicing sexual tantra outside my marriage with a vow of secrecy not to tell my husband. i said i was not sure what to do. i did not want to lie to him, but i felt this was essential to finding my true nature, and to choose to not practice the tantra was like a death to me. it was painful to keep the secret, but it was impossible to choose not to practice. my guru suggested i try to share the tantra with my husband. he said it is difficult. he said when he did what he wanted, it hurt his wife. but when he did what she wanted, he hurt himself. he did not give me an easy answer, and i saw that these are things that must be negotiated myself, taking responsibility for my own desires and choices and how they affect others and myself. there is always some form of compromise in relationship. i idealize an idea of total freedom from conditioning and compromise, but that is not being a spiritual grown up, aware of my interactions with the worlds around me.

jesus said, "Is it your opinion that I have come to give peace on earth? I say to you, No, but division: For from this time, a family of five in one house will be on opposite sides, three against two and two against three. They will be at war, the father against his son, and the son against his father; mother against daughter, and daughter against mother;"

What is jesus talking about? isn't the spiritual path supposed to bring peace, harmony and happiness? shouldn't it make us understand each other more? but it is not easy to understand each other in this world. there was a time when we were One, but then the one decided to become many, and all of life is a dance in the tension of opposites. the most rational game plan for enjoyment and sanity i have come up with is to see the tension of opposites as a playful dance. without the tension there would be no container and we would melt back into Oneness. which everday mortals do in moments of intensity like orgasm, childbirth, trauma and shock. and which spiritual practitioners do in trance and meditations. and then we separate again.

i remember how my guru initiated me and asked me to go teach. how during the initiation ritual i felt like a hurricane had swept through the building, but when i opened my eyes everything around me was the same. but i was not the same. that hurricane happened inside me. the mantras he planted in my body are magical incantations that alchemized the elements inside my body and began reforming my DNA. and since that day, i have not been able to stop becoming myself, even when it has caused myself and those around me pain. and truly, that inner drive began long before that day, it pushed me all the way to that strange temple in the southern jungle of exotic india. that drive has been at my back to do or die as long as i can remember. some drive to find the meaning of life that is true to me, burning all the bibles along the way, or to let this life fall from me like an old piece of clothing that never fit properly. that drive has taken me down some dark alleys, sex, drugs and all sorts of forbidden things. i tested taboo because i was running from pain, but also because i am curious. i like to watch. i like to watch others and i like to watch myself. isn't God a voyeur too? isn't God the biggest voyeur of all?

is God only noble and benificent? and the devil a separate evil one who brings the shadows to our hearts? or is God all of it? reconciling the play of opposites in the powers that be and in me...i am working on figuring it out.

i am psalm.
what is a psalm?
"My days disappear like smoke. My bones burn like hot coals." psalms 102:3
"Arise, O LORD; save me, O my God: for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly." psalms 3:7

psalms are prayers or songs to god. but what gnarly, dualistic prayers they sometimes are. asking god to kill my enemy? to break their teeth? that can't be kosher. i have struggled with my own name as i have struggled with the christianity i grew up with. as i have struggled with making peace of the light and shadow in the world and in my own nature. my process of becoming myself is making peace with this struggle, that began with my name, which was given to me by my parents, who i am still trying to reconcile and make peace with.

a psalm is not a perfect prayer
but it is an honest prayer
it is standing and speaking the truth of the human heart to the heavens
the lust, greed, fear and anger
as well as the longing, loneliness and grief
and breaking open into tears of sorrow and joy
gladness and gratitude

a psalm is not afraid to show her human face to the divine
a psalm does not pretend to be something she is not

i am psalm
what is a psalm?
every fucking human emotion
praying to the heavens daring god to accept me
bathsheeba, fornication and all

i was born for this
not all this pretend spiritual shit
but giving permission to myself and others for naked- hearted emotional orgies
detachment?
detach this

from the center of my white hot yoni
you know you want it
you know you love this
LIFE

Flirting with insanity

2010-08-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

sunday, august 15
cleveland ohio

i am waking up in a strange bed. again.
where am i?
cleveland, ohio.
how did i get here?
you flew here to teach yoga and tantra workshops and write your first book.
ok, right. and why did i think that was a good idea? what the fuck am i doing with my life?
it's ok. people like you. you changed people's lives with the workshop yesterday. life has meaning.
but what about the people who don't like me?
don't think about that now, it only drives you crazy. think about the people who do like you.
ok. whew. that almost got sideways.

i am reading about jung's childhood, his dreams and premonitions from a young age.
it triggers my own memory. being 8, being afraid to sleep in my own room at night because i felt evil spirits. dark, cloudy figures like a mist in my room. daytime was safe, night time was not safe to be alone. i was terrified, i was too proud to let anyone know about my fear. i would run in to grab my nightgown, holding my breath, and run out. every time i felt i had narrowly escaped a disaster. i would sleep on the couch in the living room. or in bed with my younger brother. what strikes me now, is how i did not want to show my fear, how determined was my pride, and how i thought i might be made fun of. or how i felt these very strong inner experiences would be denied as silly imagination by those around me. i somehow instinctively knew to keep my inner world to myself.

of course, looking back now, i could rationalize the whole thing. there was a strain in my parents marriage, my father was molesting my babysitters. my subconscious must have known this. but instead of consciously identifying the frightening presence as my father, i kept it in the shadowy realm of dreams and figureless mists that might take menacing forms at any moment.

but there were dark energies at play, were there not? the human drives possess us all at different times. it is easy to feel we are just living someone else's dream. dimensions. i caste a 2-dimensional shadow. i can see my shadow, but my shadow cannot move without me, like a puppet. so, is it not possible that we are actually 3-dimensional shadows of 4th-dimensional beings, who are moving the meat puppets of our bodies without our awareness? how can we talk to these other beings? how can i say, "i would like to play a new character please"?

in my life's searching, i look for how to do this, how to go "beyond" the normal, perceived reality to a higher state of consciousness to affect change. i have found this is done through trance work. i started with christian trance in the charasmatic church i grew up in. singing and shaking until the spirit of tongues came on, and sometimes people writhing on the floor. sometimes laying on of hands and healing prayers. in india i found tantra, where we use chanting and the sensations of the physical body to alchemize our dna, to become god-like. in turkey, i found sufism, where music, chanting, strong zikhir (breathwork) and whirling bring trance states to connect to the "other". in america, i found the lakota sweatlodge where the elements of the earth, fire, water and steam bring strong states of humbling and surrender to say prayers to the Creator aloud in the dark.

all these forms are reaching to the formless, to a way of speaking to something greater than our limited "personality". whether we call that God, Goddess, ancestors, Allah, aliens or my own higher Self, the name doesn't matter.

They say if you want a different life, dream a different dream. Change your mind. But i am not the only dreamer. this is a collective dream. and if i want to change the dream, i need to change myself and the other dreamers.

in group trance, the music, the chanting, the movements and physical sensations make all the dreamers vibrate on the same level, frequency. then as one mind, they can re-write unconscious agreements with their intentions and prayers. my guru says, sacrifice the small to experience the big. in tantra, we press the pleasure button to cross through the veil of the ordinary perception, of the limited reality we have collectively agreed to vibrate on. in the lakota sundance ceremony, the sundancers pierce their flesh and through pain they break through the veil. either way, strong body sensation transcends the flesh body to feel the astral body.

the medicine man or woman is able to focus their mind to form a container all the dreamers can participate in. the medicine person is specially trained or has the ability to hold attention and tap into the images and blueprints of the collective subconscious. they often have a particular deity or spirits that they communicate with, this helps focus the mind.

when i hold a ritual, it is to transform the dream and the dreamers. on a psychic level i work for change in my yoga, tantra, prayers and meditations. and on a flesh level i work with my own two hands to touch other bodies, to bring food, shelter, to share the ways of healing and empowerment i have found.

ultimately, i am circling myself. i am circling my own disappointments and pain and trying to make the world one that feels good and safe to me. i want to change the stories. but first i must accept them. i must see my own stories and i must accept where i am coming from. my own limitations. i must hold my own wounded child and be humbled that i do have wounds.

i used to think i would be perfect, elightened. i would not feel pain or separation anymore. in a great burst of white light, i would remember i am god all the time. but who is god? what is enlightenment? i must be careful not to replace old drugs i used to numb my pain with these new drugs of spiritual high. i am just trying to be the best person i can be.

ah. dear. writing is like strip mining my soul. pulling into the nebulous past of childhood memories. flirting with insanity. feeling the huge black abyss of the subconscious memory, the tug between that and my ego-identified memories makes me feel a bit schizophrenic. which mask shall i try on? which rabbit hole shall i choose? the red pill or the blue pill? the collective unconscious is a swirling tornado, sucking me to the bottom of our unexplored ocean with all the symbols and blueprints dizzyingly circling my tiny, finite existence.

i am psalm.
i remember this, i have forgotten that.
i have been a good girl and a bad girl.
i have been your mother and i have been your lover.
i make no apologies and i cry from the aching need to be accepted.
i still know to keep my inner experiences close to my chest, close to my heart. writing this book is my way of sharing what is mine and mine alone. and i stand alone, a small woman, facing an endless sky and i say, i will be witnessed. i will not be ashamed.

Unlocking my hair

2010-08-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

"The best is like water.
Water is good; it benefits all things and does not compete with them.
It dwells in lowly places that all disdain.
This is why it is so near to Tao."

Lao Tzu

1.
i think of my new lover and wonder, when will he call me?

in the play of our bodies i can give expression

to my desire and rage

and man like forever, like the inevitability of time

moves inside me

and makes my river run

wild horses in my hair

and serpent becomes my tongue

astride you, i ride you

teeth bite and fingernails scratch and grab fistfulls of uncombed hair
that pulls my scalp and makes my eyes roll back in my head

i bring your fingers to the mouth of my body and then to my tongue to taste myself
i look at you as the sharp taste stings my tongue,

unshriven, unshowered

moist sweat smelling like damp earth
under the overturned rock of my naked self

water always finds a way

because it is unproud and willing to go to the lowly places

i moan,

and through the oscillating window panes of my eyes i am exposed
for a flickering second

before i put up my guard again

"Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?" -neruda

2.
i unlock my hair
i have not combed it for 5 days
i wanted to keep the smell of fuck in it

this morning,
i release all the secrets of the tangles, the conversations, the intimacy
it was turning into a dreaded nest from rolling in the hay
and i kept the heat from our sex locked in my hair
which was beginning to look like medusa
but now
it have combed the locks out
no more wild horse hair running wild in my own romantic imagination
(you did not ask me to spend the night again)
no more serpent tongue and smoke of lust coming out of my eyes

it was a good dance, a good spar
you said you really know someone once you've fought them
or fucked them
or danced with them
ookie (opponent) 1 bows to ookie (opponent) 2

round 1 is complete

i board my plane tonight
begin again

"if i speak in the tongues of men and angels, but i have not love, i have nothing.
if i have the gift of prophecy and can understand all mysteries, but i have not love, i am nothing.
if i give everything i own to the poor and surrender my body to the flames of the martyrs, but i have not love, i gain nothing.

when i was a girl, i spoke as girl. now that i am a woman, i try to speak as a woman and put girlish things behind me. for now, when i look at you i can only see a poor reflection of myself because i am blinded by my own fears, someday we shall see face to face." 1 corinthians 13

3.
(letter to a lover)
so i bring the burning, is it?
well why not since my name itself means a song to god
wailed to the heavens with all the passions and emotions of the human soul

something like joy and beauty must wash over this great emptiness
like a wind sweeping the abalone prairie
stretched open like a mouth waiting to be met by heavens kiss
these vast expansive solitary landscapes inside my self

is it my soul that is calling?
is it my heart that is longing?
who is the one standing and weeping at the wall of my innermost being
for sadness and joy
for the taste of bitter and sweet
the holy books are burning
like the serpent burns in my spine
the holy books are us
learning to love the questions more than the answers

a long time ago
i gave you some piece of myself
and i picture you holding it now
like a knight
like a protector
there is a piece of me that is always safe with you
i know you have seen my sadness
i know you love me still
i know you have seen my great aching
i know you see my wholeness still

what a world
to stay open in the heart
through disappointment, heartache
broken expectations
and to stay in the heart anyways

what else are we going to do with our time here in these bodies?
that seemed magnetized and repelled from each other at the same time
when we seem to be each others medicine and poison at the same time

ah
life

thank you for this
it is nice to have the difficult memories give way to pleasant times

to see the thread that runs through
that coming from so much brokeness in my own family, there is a way to pick up the most important thing, the connection and to have that be sustaining
isn't that the faith?
that it is all to some higher good and purpose?
that we ourselves are in fact, good
and capable of loving
even with all our woundings, defects and sillinesses?

our continued connection gives me faith, hope and love
and the greatest of these is love

Seeds

2010-08-07T08:43:00.000-07:00

morning has broken
the congregation of redwood trees are teaching me again
of the power of silence and turning back into a solitary inward compass to create
they are happy to spend all day just standing in the sun
time to gestate
time to listen and wait and feel the sun coaxing the bud to grow,
the bee to mate the flower
waiting for the seeds to ripen and spill to the open mouth of earth

whether the seeds bear fruit or not they offer themselves in celebration
of rhythms and cycles mysterious to themselves
and spirals and circles
the world a weaving of binary code
of suns and moons, males and females
and the fire of genitals

the grasses grow wild in summertime and the air is thick with flying things
and if you look close enough, by god there is an orgy here!

joy to the flower and to the bee
joy to the ripened, fecund seed and the waiting, dark mouth of earth

Song of Songs

2010-08-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

1.

somewhere in the woods we left a cathedral, an altar
of crushed leaves and bare ass
stained glass windows of your eyes begging me not to look so deeply
inside your self when you come
and i hold your shivering vulnerability between my thighs

2.

we
are
apple
bottom
blossoms
in the glass blowers hands and mouth, melting into vases of spontaneous joy and sorrow,

the furnace of mysterious beauty

we have lost the maps to ourselves
and are reclaiming them now

we are reclaiming them now with mouth, teeth and hands
to taste and touch the glory of spit, juice and fingertips
your body my confusing, joyous, raucous temple
i am turning over the tables and shaming the priest for defiling the sacred profane
as just profane

i circle you 108 times with burning incense and chant your holy names,
baby, fuck, lover
like circling the peak of a consecrated mountain
and bury my sorrow in your sweet skin
this is my song of songs

Why write?

2010-08-06T07:25:00.001-07:00

i was just lent a book yesterday, "writing down the bones"...freeing the writer within

sort a zen manual for losing yourself in your own mind, writing as a spiritual practice, or at the very least, a practice.

the author poses the question, "why do i write?"

hmmm...i woke at 6:30am after being up til 1am and i couldn't wait to write. or, to be more descriptive, my mind started whirring with thoughts, and bleeding them onto the page seemed the most cathartic thing to do, kinda like the medieval doctoring of using leeches to suck out bad blood. i've got so much inside me. and writing terrifies me. the exposure excites and frightens me. i guess i write because i'm an exhibitionist. like a flasher in a trench coat walking down the anonymous streets, waiting to open his coat, to shock, stun, embarrass and maybe turn someone else on. i woke up at 6:30am thinking i needed to delete some of the things i had written yesterday. in what drunken madness did i write those things for other people to see? what if my family saw? i am an embarrassment. a shameless woman. and i secretly smile to myself. yes, so what? do you still love me now?

i write because i grew up without a tv, and there were times books were my only friends. i write because during my parents divorce, i would tune out the yelling and go close the door to my room and travel to faraway lands, to england, to be lizzie in the pride and the predjudice. i write because i love the smell of books and because i have always felt it is the most important thing i could do in my life, the greatest mark of success to be published. to be remembered. to be cherished and held in little rectangular tombs.

i write because it is taboo. there is a scene in a movie where a woman has just cheated on her husband. she is riding the train home from her lovers apartment to make dinner for her family. she goes to the bathroom and locks the door. she looks at herself in the mirror. she smiles to see who she is, who she looks like freshly fucked. and she pulls her panties out of her purse to put them back on. she sees herself in the mirror again. she looks sad. then in the secret of the bathroom she smells her own panties, smelling of her animal scent and desire, of hormones and pheromones. she looks at her reflection again and could eat the the world with the look in her eyes. i write because i am fascinated by how many faces i have. and i read the words i have written again and again, to try to know who i am. to smell my own scent. to see myself in the mirror. it has taken me many years to be this blunt and honest.

i write because i am obsessive compulsive. crazy. crazy? isn't crazy purely subjective? if i manage to wrestle from the dumb, mute clay of my mind onto the page something of lasting beauty, something that touches anothers soul, then it will not be crazy, it will be art.

i push my raft further out to see (sea). i hang my bare ass on the line. i let confusion overtake me. who am i? where am i? i look out the window to get my bearings. yes, there are trees. there is a whole, solid, beautiful world that exists whether i write about it or not. that existed before i lived and will exist after i die. and i tear myself to beautiful little pieces and pick them apart. pull my guts out and wade through them knee-deep, like apocolypse now, not always sure i will make it out alive from this crazy, inbred jungle.

it is easy to get lost. to get stuck in the mud of memory and the sweet siren of depression. i write because i want someone to understand my pain and my glory. in the bright, hot, momentary comet of my life blazing through the eternal sky, i want to be witnessed. i want to be accepted and loved. or at least to be seen. naked and unashamed. do you still love me now?

"i write because to form a word with your lips and tongue or to think a thing and then dare to write it down so you can never take it back is the most powerful thing i know."

i write because i ache, and this aching is so tremendously big it cannot fit all inside my tiny body. this aching is a terrible, crying, thunder love. for my heartbreak, for all i have ever wanted, for the love of my parents i may never feel the way i hope. i write to make sense of my father, i write because i am tired and disappointed with my mother. i write because i am afraid i am a bad mother. i write because despite all this, i find great pleasure in life and in my body. i think life is a confusing miracle and i throw my words out into the unknown universe like confetti. god, do you hear me? do you hear that every word i write is a prayer? do you love me now, god?

recording my life. not only am i writing a book, a documentary is being filmed about my experiences. we went back to the cabin i grew up in, and the director asked me to walk around and show the cabins, the land, to give a tour of the hobbitville i grew up in. and i looked out the window to the porch, to the trees, probably the same trees that were there when i was a little girl, and i am filled with sadness. if the tree is so beautiful, if the sun is shining, how can i be filled with so much sadness? am i broken? is the world broken? how can there be so much pain? and i curled up on the bench below the window and was mute. the director and camera woman were standing waiting for me. and i was curling into a ball, curling into myself. this should be a private moment, but people are watching me. and i don't care. and i start to weep. old, deep, sad tears. each tear cutting into my hot cheek with it's cooling rain. and i feel the back of my heart aching. and i feel the tears sliding down my cheeks. and i am being filmed. and it feels. right. because how can so much feeling, so much pain be inside me, and be only about me? it is bigger than me. my life is bigger than me and i want to share it. there is something satisfying and purposeful in being filmed, in being recorded. i am not alone. this big life moves through me. it is many people's story.

i write because i can't stop myself. i am a clock unwinding my own time.

Matchstick girl

2010-08-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

wednesday, august 4
the lord's land, mendocino, california

back in hobbitville
the first night i arrived at my childhood cabin was like entering the dark night of my soul
physically
i felt afraid and alone in the woods
walking down the steep steps in the dark, alone
the cabin looming ahead of me somewhere in the dark and mists
and everything feeling ominous and gripping my body with terror
as if a man is there inside that door, waiting to hurt me
and i say to myself, psalm, what if there really was a real man there?
you would be able to handle that.
and somehow making it real makes it better
instead of a formless fear that is like a dark spirit and can morph into many forms
and knows the places inside my body so well
to trigger the fear and isolation

funny because
happy playful memories flash through my conscious mind
like polaroid photos of playing in the sun
of swingsets
and taking baths with my friends
and pet rabbits velvet fur
but my body is full of fear and sadness
and i have come to bring the darkness to the light
to see how the formless has formed me
to retrieve my soul

slipping back into the cool stream of childhood memories
memories are like water
and i dive back in
go deep
retrieve those parts of my soul
that were accidentally left behind
or
claimed by others
i am a woman now
and i have come back
to hold the girl
to soothe the wound
to love and heal
to wrestle with understanding
the dark places in the human heart
to make peace with where i came from
to be willing to see how it has shaped me
and to submit to the fire of being reshaped again
sometimes the hardest thing to let go of
is my pain
because who has known me so well,
so intimately as my pain?
how many nights have we spent huddled together
in the thin sham hobo fire of hurt,
warming our hands in the flame of memories like a matchstick girl
waiting for an angel
waiting for relief
even, at the darkest times, welcoming death
but someone had other plans for me

who has known me so well as my pain?
me and my memories
and how many times have we wept together alone in the shower
like a small hurting animal
who curls itself into a ball and protects itself from the world
even if it doesn't know how to heal itself, it knows to close ranks from the world
to spiral like open mouth of shell
back into self
and to listen to the sound of my own breath
like shell listens to the sound of the ocean
trying to crawl back inward to source
begin again
nothing last forever
least of all ourselves

but today the sun broke
and it was a new day
and i sat in the warm lazy light
and looked around, what is the now?
bare feet warm on bricks
gold toe rings shine in sun
violet dress
tan skin
snake tattoo
scar from flesh offering for prayer on left shoulder
wanna lick it
remember the sensuous animal of my body rising back up
the burning bush

violet dress
yellow dandelion
green grasses
wild golden wheat
skinny trees gray and dappled white skin
reach to the sky
aren't we all lost in our own prayers?
i ask for forgiveness to be more real to me
i ask to be less in love with the cross of my wounds
and more in love with the now
i ask for pleasure soon to fill my veins
and to be washed in the glory of love
dear lord, worthy or not i am stumbling home

Going home

2010-07-31T07:08:00.000-07:00

friday, july 30
topanga, ca

up in yurt
reading dharma bums by kerouac

looking out the windows thinking about going home

the yurt is round like a shell
and the wooden beams are the bones holding up the ceiling
it is like being inside a skeleton
the view out the windows is hovering between sunset and dusk
in a way that lasts forever in the summer
many shades of green and
lilac, lavender and gray mountains fading into the distance
like cut-out silhouettes 3rd grade art projects
soft dusty glow on hillsides of setting sun makes golden highlights
on the green and blue iris trees

leaving tomorrow
what is coming
who knows
more open road
and the smell of the ancient trees and my home
which breathes my heart open in a particular way
it is where i began
don't much know if it's where i will end

and i go meet the cabin tucked in the woods that has the smell of all my first memories
it was built from a single log redwood with no power tools or nails
a sculpture
the door hinges are made of straps of leather
the logs are joined with carved wooden notches
built by carpenters and loggers
jesus was a carpenter too

some things never change

outside the cabin
the redwood trees stand in congregations looking solitary into the sky
maybe waiting for the second coming
their bark is rusty red and soft, and when you touch it,
it sends out spores that make the air thick
these are the sentient beings of beginningless time

there is a porch where i can go sit and remember
so many things

feeling tender

i guess that's what happens when you remember

feel a million miles from the avatar on my flyers

just a tenderizing piece of meat

and my heart goes
yes yes yes

i am the tide

Piercing the mysterious heart of forgiveness

2010-07-29T19:34:00.000-07:00

thursday, july 29
topanga, ca

this weekend i go up to mendocino to the commune where i grew up, where my dad was a spiritual elder and sexually abused many girls
i am going to stand there now as a tantrik aghori might stand in a graveyard
to make friends with my own dark night
and to transform the memories of a scared little girl into the body of a strong powerful woman
who can hold the little girl
who does not need to carry the same fears anymore
to pray with my sisters for the sins of my father
to pierce the mysterious heart of forgiveness
to find redemption in human connection
to follow the honey-thick grace that comes when called by deep humility and surrender
it looks to be quite a trip
we are filming it for the documentary

been doing lots of crying, feels cleansing
sometimes there is a great deal of suffering to see and feel
but there is some secret there, that suffering itself is not what it seems

am i a teacher?
am i a boddhisattva?
am i just a woman on a trip?
i guess so

i've heard it said that the only way out is through
the path of fire, fire burns everything
and then from the ashes the glorious half-bird, half-dragon rises again
transforms into a dove
and then becomes a snake who eats its own tail
everything becomes nothing and is just god's story tale

but what about my softest insides?
who will take care of them while the warrior walks the path of courage?
i will bathe her in cool scented waters
sweet as gardenias lily white skins
shhh my child i will whisper
my voice as soft as the evening breeze
that in the time of the dusk and the gloaming
moves through the trees and makes them weep their leaves,
giving their foliage to the brushing of the wind so easily
do not surrender your loneliness so quickly i will say
let it cut you more deeply

let the longing pierce the mysterious heart of forgiveness
for myself
for my father
for everyone on the planet like us
i have come to pray at the church of the human experience
i worship the altar of my own body
i try to put down my minds dogged search for fairness
and just
let it be

before i left the rez i asked the matriarch to pray with me
we sat in her kitchen
with holes in the floor
i held her two hands in my two hands
hers wrinkled and brown
mine will be too someday
and i asked her to pray for the journey i was about to make
she said yes and she said we should also pray for my father because he is just a man
yes, i said crying. and who knows what he may have suffered?
i wept all the way to the airport and missed my flight home
unraveling is not the best way to travel

virgin whore

2010-07-29T17:11:00.000-07:00

i am not a virgin or a whore
the dark night of my sky
contains all the light of the stars and more

if you seek to know the end
first know the beginning
lust, hunger and death
burning, dying and resurrecting out of the Great yoni

this world is full of suffering
and in that suffering there is pleasure also

pleasure is the left hand of pain
both hands teach us the ways of love
they are mated infidels
in the womb of the Mysterious Mother

if i wore a mask
would you still recognize me?
do not fear me
fear the one who stands too far from their own shadow

and i say
three times you will deny me
because of your fear
and still i will welcome you,
my lover,
my child,
my beloved

The Mysterious Mother Manifesto

2010-07-26T09:23:00.000-07:00

The Mysterious Mother Manifesto

Sisters and Brothers
It is time to wake the Mysterious Mother, the latent force sleeping inside us. Why are we afraid of our power? Because we are afraid of our responsibility. If you take your power, you also take your responsibility. This is true for both men and women.

To awaken the feminine, the dark mother, is to call forth from the shadows what we have hidden from ourselves. Our power lies in our personal shadow and the collective shadow. The whole dance of the imbalance of the world and the patriarchy is not imposed on us by physical men, that would be too simple. We collectively, are choosing to project our responsibility and power on the patriarch, so we have something to blame.

In time, all will be revealed. Many live in self-imposed fear of being exposed. This grip of fear limits your holiness, your creativity and exhuberance for your life. This pain is turned onto others in bitterness and blame. Stand for yourself. Be willing to acknowledge your desires. Choosing one thing costs you another. This is the way of things and cannot be avoided. There is a restless part of you that knows this is true.

Prayer and ritual create a bridge to what we have hidden from ourselves and help with the undoing of shame and the cowardice of projection. The reclaiment of our wholeness and perfection. Which is not an idea sold to you in a book about dead gods, but the living force of Spirit animating each of us. The road is strewn with rocks. That is the way of the human life. To play in the world of opposites, formless and form. Learn to love the friction and the contraction and expansion as the dance of the undulating universe. Learn to love the universe.

Don't burn the books and bibles you grew up with. They are the key. Read them with new understanding, separating the wheat from the chaf. Because it is this way with all things. There is an outer form and a hidden understanding. Read from your heart, read in meditation and trance and you will find the meaning for yourself. Reclaim the books of power, reclaim the names of God.

Your body is not your shame. Your body is not your fall from grace. Your body simply is, as this world simply is. Acceptance brings great power. Pleasure brings great power. Pain brings great power. This cannot be explained to the mind, but is felt as the deepest truth in the cells of the body. Trust your body again. It holds the lock and the key to understanding all the Mysteries.

The disciples asked Jesus, what will happen in the end times. Jesus said, do you already know the beginning that you seek to know the end? Know the beginning and you will understand all things.

Be humble. The beginning is the body. The beginning is the breath. The inhale is birth and the exhale is death. The mother is the beginning and the father is the end. The mother is inside the father, and the father is inside the mother. Your birth is inside your death, and your death is inside your birth. These are mystical saying revealed to those with the desire to know. Study your breath and you study all things. None of us are free from the needs of the body, because the body is God.

Who touches my most innermost me? The breath touches my most innermost me. Spirit touches my most innermost me. Through my heart, you can awaken my most innermost me and touch my fragility with the tender fingers of your most innermost being. There is work we can only do alone, and work we can only do together. Both are necessary in remembering who we are.

Will sobriety bring me holiness? Will walking naked through the desert in supplication and self denial bring me holiness? Will indulging the senses bring me holiness? Will losing myself in a thousand nights of pleasure bring me holiness? The way is not this or that, right or left. The way is a personal wakefulness. Train yourself to stay awake.

How many lifetimes have I suffered? In this lifetime I choose not be a martyr or a saint, but to be all of me. I am not a virgin or a whore. I am vast, I hold all the universe and more.

The first time I came with water, this time I come with fire. Both are cleansing. Fire makes you brighter. Give yourself more deeply to the taste of your own tears, give yourself more deeply to your laughter and to the shadows that make your play at night. Know yourself, and you will be known.

Pray with me at the church of the human experience. Be humbled by love and heartbreak. Live the passions with reckless abandon because in truth, you can only be who you are.

Seeking love and enlightenment

2010-07-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

knowing truth. realizing who you are. that's the game we are in right? we can call it enlightenment, seeking, whatever, but we are driven to know, to understand, to find peace. and the process to finding peace may not always be peaceful. there is a restless stirring of the soul that initiates the practices for peacefulness. and this restlessness is a vigilant friend, pushing further into the mystery of our universe and our own selves. this restlessness is full of questioning and doubt.

the most painful doubt is self-doubt. and if you walk the path of inquiry, you will carry the cross of self-doubt. without stumbling and falling, how will you find your own way? you cannot follow someone else's way. if you can, leave the path now. go to an organized religion and say your prayers and follow the commandments. if that satisfies you, then let it satisfy you. but i am speaking to those who are not satisfied. those who have tried to fit in to the organized religions and philosophies, to get it right, but found a gnawing questioning still living in their souls. have you tried to be a good girl? a good boy? have you tried to follow all the rules and still come up empty? because it is not possible to be perfect. not in this world, not in this life. because this life is made of contradiction and friction. without friction there would be nothing created. like your mother and father creating friction to create you. that's how we all got here. and we are ashamed. there is some very deep seed of shame in us, for our spirits to live in these bodies.

confronting fear. to grow, we must confront our fears. this is part of waking up. we must break free of our conditioning. which way to turn? take a left turn. there are two directions, clockwise and counterclockwise. turning clockwise is turning to the right, and activates the left brain. this side of your brain is responsible for logic, reason, survival. the conscious mind. this is the masculine side. turning counterclockwise is turning to the left, and activates the right brain. this side of your brain is responsible for space, emotions. the subconscious mind. this is the feminine side. so to explore more of yourself, you cross over to the unknown, the mysterious right brain. ritual opens that door. testing taboo opens that door. taboos are usually built around survival instincts. to test taboo is to explore the shadow. and what is sleeping in the shadow? sex and death are two of the biggest things we have pushed to the shadow. vama marga tantra has practices, meditations and visualizations that confront and stretch into sex and death.

what does taboo have to do with spiritual awakening? it is a path of un-reason. going the opposite of reason. breaking down fear and investigating the shadow. there are no promises here. you explore because you must. because you are full of questions about yourself, the purpose of yourself, the purpose of life. and to answer these questions you have to un-do yourself. let go of needing a guaranteed outcome. there are no guarantees. only the honest exploration of the questions. learn to love the questions themselves. let them softly undo you, exposed your soft pink underbelly, your heart. to really live the questions, you need to let go of security. because security means you have something to lose. only when you are ready to lose everything are you ready to begin. because the hardest thing to lose is who we think we are. we will fight and kill to protect our identities, our ideas of ourselves. we have spent a lifetime building up a persona that we want other people to see and believe. and then we try to convince ourselves too. and underneath that persona there is a grumbling. you will have to let go of that persona to learn who you really are.

jesus said, "for i have come to set the world on fire, and how i wish it was already burning."

The day will come when you will have to burn down everything you have built
and whether that day is your own death or if you die many times before that, death will come all the same. and with death comes re-birth. the desire to be born again. what is left when you die? when all that is left is darkness and space. what creates the big boom? what creates life again? there is something lurking in the dark mystery of the sky, the womb from which all that we know was birthed and spawned. something wants to begin again. in varanasi, a city in india where hindus believe is the holiest place to die, they carry the corpses through the streets. the dead, stiff body is wrapped in bright silk fabrics and tied to bamboo poles. the people carrying the bodies shout, ram nam satyahey. this means, all that is true is the name of god. when you were alive, all you really owned was your own body and when you die, you don't even own that.

but the hindus have many names for god, and it is interesting that in this chant, the name they use is ram. in the holy trinity of 3 male gods, ram, vishnu and shiva represent the cycle of life. ram is the god of birth, of creation. vishnu is the god of maintaining life. and shiva is the god of destroying life. these three deities represent the cycle of our own lives. birth, growth and death. at the time of death when they carry the corpse through the streets, they chant the name of the god of birth. because what comes after death is re-birth. all that is left is the desire to re-create, to live again. we spend so much of our lives fighting life. because it is not fair, because the world is full of suffering, because we will die someday. and yet, when we die, we will desire to begin again. to watch another sunset, we will ask for another set of eyes. to have another first kiss, we will ask for another set of lips. who knows how long your spirit waited for another body to journey through the confusing joy of love again?

can anyone truly know these answers? and the few that have perhaps pierced the veil and seen the underpinning, the peep show behind the universal curtain of this stage that is life, can they ever bring that back to share with clumsy language for the rest of us? that is why the best way to approach a master is with no questions. the sufis say you can only enter the durga when you have only 1 question left. if you have many questions, your mind will drive you mad and you will run away.

Cowgirl abalone sky

2010-07-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

tuesday, july 13

pine ridge reservation, south dakota

yesterday i rode 8 hours on my yellow horse through the prairie,
like a real cowgirl
my riding companion said i'm not a real cowgirl yet
because i rode a horse but i haven't rode a cowboy
not a real one anyways, he says.

i rode the wild horses on the prairie
i don't ask to be forgiven,
i ask to be free
i won't be broken
i will keep becoming me
i offer you my heart, but no apologies

my love is naked and i will make you see me
no insurance policies
just this (now) beating moment of what is

i won't be caught
i am dancing barefoot in the wild wheat
under the abalone sunset sky
of blues and grays and pink quartz clouds
shimmering magical iridescence like a shell
silver sage of ocean prairie
wild tall grasses magic carpet ride
magic is not reliable
but it's far more magical
mode of transportation through this life

Just because we have to pray

2010-07-08T09:46:00.000-07:00

thursday, july 8

pine ridge reservation, south dakota

i am at sundance
it is intense here
i weep for the human play
the suffering and joy
my brothers pull skulls and hang from trees
they are my brothers, fathers, lovers, teachers, friends

yesterday an older dancer pulled skulls and they didn't break for a long time.
walking behind i just prayed and prayed.
the simple and humble smile after he broke free brought tears to my eyes.
this is not bravado, it is love.

it is reminding me of humility and simplicity
it reminds me of why i walk my path
why i carry my medicine
i come from a lot of pain
i come from love and joy and ecstasy
if i am going to stand to teach tantra
i have to carve out myself
to look closely
to make sacrifices
i've been called a whore, but really i'm a nun for god

i am burning on both ends, the spirit world and the world life,
if i don't melt my physical container
i hope to carry and share this energy at the tantra rituals when i go home

i was told by spirit in sweat lodge to make my next few tantra rituals by donation,
to put myself on the edge of my security fears
to remember i teach tantra for myself and for sharing,
not for the money and to trust in god paying my bills.
this way, it is my gift to spreading the love of the Mother to as many as are interested, regardless of finances. when i look around, i see that churches aren't going out of business, and they work on donation.

this sundance is way out there, no photos, really authentic.
no one is putting on this ceremony for money.
it reminded me how important it is to do things just for love.
just because we have to pray.

what is coming, we cannot know...

2010-07-07T08:43:00.001-07:00

tuesday, july 7
pine ridge reservation, south dakota

greetings from the prairie
pine ridge reservation in south dakota,
the poorest county in the united states
i find myself here again after another year
another sundance
i am here to support the sundancers
and give wopila (thanks) to the spirits for answered prayers
the sundancers fast and pray for four days to purify,
to connect to the spirit world
they give flesh offerings and pierce themselves to the sacred tree

in the ceremony, my mind slows down
and the thoughts almost disappear
this is an ancient way
i feel it in my bones, a blueprint of humanity, of history
the blueprint of the story of christ dying on the cross for our sins

last year i came for the first time with my prayers for my family
looking to set my burden down
to release the pain that has plagued me like a demon
keeping me up at night,
a feeling of peering over an abyss into intense darkness

what plagues the human soul?
what causes us to harm each other?
in my life, there have been hard lessons
and i have spent my life unravelling them
making peace
with the world
with myself
with my relations
i am not completely there, i have more peace to make
but i will tell you
it is much better than before

still, the road is sometimes lonely
and fear gnaws at my heart
a feeling of cold
or a wind blowing down a corridor
emptiness
where perhaps i long for fullness
and so i do what i can in those moments
i learn to love the emptiness
i face myself
my human yearning
i have compassion for myself

yesterday i saw a man hang from a tree
like jesus
for the prayers of his people
here we are in ceremony and it is like living the story of christ i grew up reading in the bible
here are the passions
i cried and then there was peace
and then there was laughter
and then there was life

i swear, he turned his head to the heavens to pray to the creator before he was lifted
just like jesus
who spoke to god his father and asked,
if it is possible, remove this yolk from me
and if not i will accept and serve

jesus also had a moment of passion, where he cried out,
"my god, my god, why have you foresaken me?"

i have cried to the heavens like that before

the medicine man said yesterday,
it takes a long time to know who you are
it made me think
all this enlightenment business,
is also called gnosis by the mystic christians...
gnosis is "to know"
one who knows themselves is liberated

it seems this path of knowing myself
needs the seasonings of human weathering
through the seasons of the heart
the trials of the soul
to bring the breaking of my heart

now that i am standing in ceremony again
i can tell you this friends, we live too far from the earth
we live too far from ceremony
there is a medicine in my heart
for women like me

i do not know the next steps
so much has already slipped out from beneath my feet
i am here to pray for guidance
to surrender, to accept
to have compassion and forgiveness
for the human frailty and weakness
of myself and my relations
take pity on me
creator

teach me to cherish my suffering as i cherish my joy
to accept all as the same, from one source
to put down my fighting for life to be fair
a concept of my mind which does not serve me

here they say

as high as the sunflowers are in summer,
the same will be the height of the snowdrifts that will come with winter
as you cherish your joy, cherish your suffering also
joy and pain are the right and left hands of opening the heart

help me to accept and serve
to see the love and beauty
in everything

amen

nothing breaks you like love

2010-07-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

friday, july 1
venice, california

nothing breaks you like love...and if indeed the heart was made to be broken, what better teacher than the love of a child. a love that from it's beginning is meant to elude and beguile and shape shift into a becoming thing. at times as soft as a lamb and other times as shattering to illusion as a sudden hurricane or shipwreck. the shipwreck of my love, my bones broken, my pride out of joint. and still, how would i have known how deeply i could love and let go if it were not for you, my son who can touch my heart so tenderly and intimately, who grew in my own womb.

i taste my own tears and still i am grateful. and still i rejoice at the shining bright thing of your independance and free will to choose. i would chose many lifetimes again, even frought with suffering and self doubt, to spend another mundane moment basking in the beauty of you. to sit, maybe even just watching reruns on tv, and to feel the life that lives inside your tanned skin and the life that moves like a river between us. a mother and a son. how many times have we told this story?

i remember when you were still small, brown as a chestnut, with golden curls. i was alarmed by how lovely you were. with big black eyes. when you were small enough to cuddle still, you used to curl inside and spoon me and we would lay like two question marks in the bed, lingering somewhere between waking and dreaming.

i remember the morning you woke me up weeping. you were five. you said you were afraid of dying, of being forgotten. and that was the beginning of our separation. i could no longer be the sun for you. i could no longer fix everything for you. this was bigger than a band aid and kiss on a bloody knee. it is a big world and i am only a mere mortal myself. still wrestling with the same question of living and dying and loving. some say we experience immortality through loving, through creating children who carry our lives, memories and proof of existence on after we have died.

what is my legacy to you?

for the god of small things,
for the god of forgiveness,
of families,
of forgetting,
of forgiving
worthy or not
i fumble for your grace

A promise

2010-06-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

wednesday, june 9

north shore kauai, hawaii

driving down the lush green jungle in hawaii, i realize how much of my life i have spent hunting myself. how much of my life has been a struggle. born to ecstatic spiritual practices in a log cabin and then the hypocrisy of sexual and physical abuse in that community, in my family. the light and shadow have been so dramatic my whole life.

here, the air is balmy and warm, and i feel my heart wide, i feel the sensuality of my body, my warm, tan skin. i feel content and beautiful. i have been living in the used ford explorer i rented from "island cars". i love how laid back hawaii is. i just put the seats down in the back to make my bed and park on the beaches at night. i can see the ceiling of dark night sky and stars as my roof. i wake up to roosters crowing. i go naked in the salty ocean for my morning bath/ baptism. on the isolated beach, it feels like it could be the first morning of the world. and i am here to witness it.

there is a mountain here on the north shore who speaks to me. she looks like a cupped hand in the earth, sheltering me. she says, "i will protect you". there is water snaking down the middle of the mountain, it looks outrageously feminine, like a clit. some one told me that at the top of this mountain is a crater, and that crater is the wettest spot on earth. of course. the most feminine spot on earth. i stay mostly in sight of this mountain, of her protection. i have come to heal. i am weary from the years of being a warrior.

i have just finished reading a magazine article with an interview of me. it is called "the creation and growth of a true tantrika". in it i spoke openly about things i have kept secret for so long. i would not have said these things openly for print in the past because i feared for my father and didn't want my son to know these ugly things. but these ways of loyalty, protection, censure, i think they are making the world sick. so i speak to clear, to heal, to release fear. to create the kind of world i want to live in. if i share, will that allow others to share and heal? i hope so.

the lakota medicine man i go see on the pine ridge reservation said to me, "you walk a strong path". here in hawaii, i see the road softening around me in rich, verdant greens. it is time to let life be easier. i feel the beginning of a new cycle.

the land makes me a promise. she says, if you do your work, i will nurture and restore you.

i accept the promise

Tantrika Mercenaries Comic Book Pitch

2010-06-03T02:00:00.000-07:00

Tantrika Mercenaries Comic Book Pitch:

The day will come when the 10 most powerful white men running the patriarchy will have to come beg at the feet of the tantrika mercenaries, who are hidden in their underground volcano lair on a private island near tahiti.

They will respond to the call, emerging from their hideout in amphibious land rovers and p1800 volvos to save the world. They are armed with their patented Love Guns with Wake-up Bullets. They push the button of their astronomical orgasm bombs which explode rainbow pleasure skittle rain on the unsuspecting sleep walkers of earth who have forgotten the divine birthright of pleasure and playfulness to unlock the great cosmic mystery.

Occasionally, the tantrikas take on a male minion to train in the indescribably potent jedi tantrik sex majik techniques. He also helps maintain the p1800 volvo and service under the hoods of the tantrikas to give them tune ups, oil changes and lube jobs to keep their engines purring.

The tantrikas are a mix of Marvel Comic book heroes:
Viking Goddesses
Gypsy Enchantresses
Amozinian Sorceresses

They have 8 arms each
They ride dragons, prehistoric bats, lions and tigers

"She secretly longs to ride the dragon of the wind, squeezing the serpent powers bewteen her thighs. There are snakes in her hair and in her eyes."

No names

2010-05-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

Tonight the moon still sets, women collect their gathering baskets, and somewhere, anywhere, she is still waiting. Waiting for his coat to alight on the back of the soft chair in the parlour, in a house that doesn't exist.

And he is every man. And she is every woman. Each story is the same. She comes to you now, as always, wearing a new masque, a new body, telling a new story. She has a thousand names. She whispers yours. You hold her in the wind and let her go.
...........................................................

at the edge of the village in the dust of the dust, the women collect their gathering baskets. their skin is dark blue as the dark blue corn they grind on the stones speckled grey and white. she is young and learning, her hands still get numb, sore and bruised. still, she is proud to be doing the womens work, the washing, the hanging of the white linens. it will not be long before the newness turns to resentment, not long before the honor becomes a chore.

it will not be long before the days of her life, the honor of duty become a fence that traps her beauty and the color of her dreams begins to bleed into the drab dusty earth of every day living. she searches the distant horizon for the man on the horse, for the messenger from somewhere far away. for the one who might come and take her away. to where she does not know. somewhere far from the names that shackle her.

daughter, sister, mother.

she longs to go where she has no names.

.................................................................

my first tantra teacher was a married man with children. i, too, was a married woman. we met in secret, in the old way, in the forbidden path. he said, leave your shoes outside the door. when you come in, you are only energy. you leave your life behind. when you leave, put back on your shoes. you are a wife and a mother again.

when i went home, i was surprised i could be so many people. i felt immortal. i had done the forbidden, and i was not dead. i felt more alive than ever.

The Perfume of Reckless Abandon

2010-05-24T07:43:00.000-07:00

notes from joshua tree desert where i slept on a buffalo skin, ate the oracle and drank the moonlight:

sunday, may 16
joshua tree national forest, california

the medicine man says that snake medicine is about the sacrifice of shedding skin to transform. the snake must crawl out of it's skin, and there are a few moments where it is raw before a new skin forms and hardens to protect it from the demands of it's environment and during this time it cannot see, it is completely blind to predators, like a newborn baby. but it leaves the safety of it's old shell of skin because it must. because there is a deep natural calling to do so, to be in the rhythms and cycles of nature. it surrenders to risk the unknown because it's instincts say there is something essential on the other side of the safety of the known.

sunday, may 23
los angeles, ca

i ran into an old lover's lover sitting outside dance class in her van
she said, "it's kinda scary how grounded i can feel sitting in a car"
i melted into the feminine space of her presence
she said she talked to "our" lover the other day and he was sad to be leaving
a new lover to travel
she said she'd never heard him so sad about a woman before
well, i guess it wasn't me
breaking his heart
damn

and i shed the skin of another dream
i take my feelings to the dance floor and begin molting
i am molting in the purples, reds and yellows of my emotions bubbling to the surface of my skin and i begin cooking from the inside out
from the canned heat of my unleashed
most innermost me
that has laid coiled and contained
waiting to re-introduce itself
the part i work so hard for nobody to see

the music vibrates my most innermost me
searching like tiny fingers my supple inside moistness
beating and hammering out my supressed s.o.s. with strobe light rhythm and precision
erupting like honeysuckle droplets of sweat
my sweat that rises like little waves cresting on the ocean of my skin
and i remember there is no end and there is no
begin
just nakedly, unashamedly
now

and i see my friend sarah and our playfulness meets in our eyes
we are hooked like fish into a dance
and i pray at the temple behind her left ear
parting the soft curtain of her blonde hair with my
nose
her temple smells of the left over morning bath offerings of raw coconut oil and afternoon female dance sweat
i dance at the temple of she

and i dance at the temple of he with a man
who is pondering whether this constitutes infidelity
this flagrant enjoying of each other bodies, breath and eyes while his wife is at home
we roll on the floor
like puppies wrestling and then
stop
i am hovering above him
we are safe and enclosed in the wandering tent of my dark gypsy hair
we are
invisible
and our eyes meet in a dare and i say to myself...
"many lifetimes"
as i melt into him and we become one
for a moment
if you let this much love in you will feel it's loss

and how many of us are drying and withering up,
buying insurance policies
cages and prisons to guarantee somebody won't leave us
and we think it's because we don't show them all of
who we are
all of our hunger
and desire
to be sweetly fucked by life

and then we resent this person, like the inmate resents the jailer,
but clings to the safety of their cell
we see this person as a sentence that encloses our truthfulness into silence
rather than worship them as a flower unfolding our fullness
a hummingbird teasing our nectar out

i pound my rhythms into the wood floor
worship with the bone-flesh-beat of my feet
and something rises and a scream comes crawling out of my mouth
like a baby testing the bravery of it's lungs
testing the capacity for the snap-shut-jaw,
the keep-your-secrets-to-yourself-jaw to unlatch and birth this sound
the scream neatly ties itself up to end in a ribbon of humming

truth is a sound, not a shared language,
just a vibration
truth is my own pungent sweat dripping onto my own
parched lips
it tastes like...
freedom
it smells like...
reckless abandon-
my favorite perfume

and there is this moment
(do you know what i mean?)
before i put on the skin of another meaning
of another dream
of another illusion
when i stand naked in the now
blind and vulnerable
closer to my soul touching the earth
where i just feel (yes) this is it
it is enough to be breathing
and i am thankful for
Alive
when i have fought Life for so long
is this heaven?

The Jasmine Garden

2010-05-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

los angeles

monday, may 17

On the pedestrian sidewalk of this grey monday morning, i was seduced. i was compelled to stop and lose my senses in the full honeyed jasmine, with their tissue white faces and pink tender stems, petals parting just for my curious nose, petals still heavily dripping the morning dew. i lost myself to somewhere full of light and wonder. i breathed and sucked in the perfume until i was the smell. until i was the precious flower herself.

"I, Lalla, enter the jasmine garden...
where Shiva and Shakti were making love.

I discovered them,
and what is this,
to me, now?...

I seem to be here,

but really I'm walking.
in the jasmine garden."
-Lalla

"is this really real?"
-yoko ono

embracing the energy of destruction and chaos, shit= fertilizer

2010-05-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

this week there were four days of the most tremendous wind
it is springtime and besides just the pretty flowers
it brings destruction in it's awakening
the wind is like a reminder from the heavens and it sits upon me heavily
i try to lay low and hide in my house
i have things i don't want to lose
like my pride

i worry for my son
blood is real
he decided to drop out of high school
well, i did that too
and this week i took him to the exact same building
where me and his father applied for the GED 18 years ago, before i got pregnant
ain't that a kick in the pants
gypsy blood, deeply rebellious
the cycles and patterns repeating

the nature of the wind storm is chaos
it stirs things, uproots things
chaos brings the energy of change
which we so often fear
but also brings new perspective and possibilities

it is not easy to bow to the fire as it burns your house down
and thank the tongues of flame as they devour the lush greeness of the forest
leaving behind only charred stumps of trees,
decapitated blackened trunks and limbs
the ground scattered with brittle burnt offerings that cut the bare feet
where there used to be a lush damp carpet to walk and lay on

and yet this cycle brings new growth
and unexpected shoots of color
this destruction disturbs the patterns like a pebble disturbs the face of placid water
creating new ripples
new prisms of reflections

magic is born of disrupting the surface patterns
stirring the chaos cauldron
to see what emerges in the shuffle
in the spaces vibrating between what we have chosen to collectively see
and accept as the only reality

in india
kali is the mother of destruction
i have not chosen to love her
it is my nature to do so
a special color am i on the universal tapestry
a special note am i in the song of oneness
sometimes dark and sometimes light

in the crippled streets of varanasi, a city so old that it has three names
and they don't bother tearing anything down,
just build new things on top of the decaying masses of buildings
slowly sinking back into the sacred river that eats time
new growth sitting atop decay
unless you were a fish looking up from the water
where your perspective would be
upside down

they carry the corpses wrapped in bright silks tied to bamboo poles, they carry them on their shoulders as they run through the streets
only the untouchables can touch the dead bodies
family members follow behind
the carriers of death walk quickly, adamantly
they know the living will clear the way
the living will shrink themselves into doorways,
make themselves small
to avoid touching death

"ram nam satyahey" they shout
it means only the name of god, ram, remains
when you were living all you truly owned was your body, when you die you don't own even that. all that is left is the name of god, all that is left is the desire to create.
through death we desire to create again
one gaping mouth is eternally birthing and devouring us all

through death i am reborn

through despair i know hope
through self doubt i find self worth
through wounding i taste forgiveness

and then the cycle reverses and the snake moves counterclockwise to eat its own tail

through hope i know despair
through self worth i taste self doubt
through forgiveness i taste wounding

forgive me father, forgive me mother
for i have sinned
for i, like all others, have fallen short of the glory
and am stumbling backwards toward it
begin again

Cowgirl Love Junkie

2010-05-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

i wake the serpent in her hole
poking with a stick, laughing like a lunatic
stirring the shakti pot
the honey
the amrit
comes oozing out of my sacrum in a slow serpentine crawl to my heart
pressing her in all directions so she bruises and cracks
and the honey oozes out
and creeps up the back of my neck to tickle
sweet treacle on my tongue
i remember
love is
everywhere
i can smell and taste it

i put butter on my burnt toast
and cream and sugar in my black coffee
because i like my darkness to taste rich, creamy and sweet

i worship the everyday moments that transcend
the veils are flickering thin
is the homeless woman on the stoop mary the mother of jesus?
is jesus on the cross in agony or ecstasy?
i have seen the same expression on my lovers face as he chokes his seed into an explosive release
and drops sweaty and panting onto my chest
spent
for the moment
until she surges and rises within
again

i am a cowgirl love junkie
riding the train
shooting innocent passengers with my
love gun
wake up bullets

The Hunger, the Holy Grail

2010-05-03T20:44:00.000-07:00

This was an email i received from a student after a retreat, i asked her permission to share the exchange. she shares nakedly about healing an eating disorder and sexuality. she titled her email "inspiration". the work is waking us up, opening us up to crack and spill the secrets and emotions we have nursed in fear and shame for so long. freedom and inspiration from mental and emotional bondage, stripping ourselves of the old clothes of family patterns and global dogma that doesn't fit us any more.

her email:

I hate the way of certain women
You know the ones...they talk of big concepts; Goddesses, union, energy, truth
But they act like the little girls of my elementary school days, giggling about boys (now called 'lovers'), clothing (now for yoga), and the color pink.

I am still an outsider, not quite understanding their language or culture.

We learn to wake up kundalini by having orgasms, but I already know how to have an orgasm. We're supposed to be powerful and wild, but I'm afraid to express myself except in front of my male lover(s)...and then I cry tears of joy and gratitude, I shake the prana out and the salt water roles down my face for he and I to taste.

So, I think I'll just sit here with the boys (men) who now feel awkward and guilty about their penises. Eventually, I will blend into the wall, small enough to slip through the cracks...

I would like to wrap myself in purple. It's really the best color, and that seems to designate me as "woman." I also have breasts, despite trying to starve them smaller. But, I am somehow not of the female species.

It's not that I don't love women...I love their long hair and curved shape.

I once had a female lover. I decided that I belonged with her...but she was only half-human (like my 'half-head' disease that brings such pain)...a mirror, she learned to be me with such skill that I could no longer see who was who, until the day she decided that she finally owned enough of me. By then it was too late...with her went my heart (which began to beat so slowly as it got smaller) my breasts, my hips...and life was slowly sucked out of me until I could not even see myself. I nearly disappeared...and even the bleeding head was not enough.

But, I often curse the God who said "no" when I wanted to return to the ash. I was still too big to fly away. To that I say, "fuck you, God." He is probably laughing now.

I often say to my yogi friends, "I've fasted enough for many lifetimes." I know hunger.

But, what am I hungry for? Certainly not those women. I fear them as much as I fear myself. The men are better...find me one with a heart that has space for me. I'm bigger now though and my size twos are tighter.

As a child I was happy to fold myself into a little ball to escape the monster. Ball Pose...comfortable but not very convenient. I have to make peace with my size, and my power.

One-hundred-twenty is the number they chose for me...and the trick is to not be bigger or smaller than that number. This means I also like 'size two' and the more vague, but important designation of 'XS.' I remember it being far more simple to count the numbers of food; twelve almonds, four raisins, one tablespoon of GrapeNuts. Emergen-C is only twenty, Vitamin Water is one-hundred for two. I recited the numbers over and over again...never having to write them down.

Sometimes I pray for that voice to return...the left brain that tells me what not to put in my body (sugar, salt, oil, grain). That voice knows that avocados are bad news. The voice still speaks to me but I have learned to filter some of it.

Other days I pray for myself to return. The prana in the kiss of the new lover. The ability to drive a car on an open road. The young musician who moves audiences to tears with little old ladies wanting to touch the hands that created that music (was I a saint?). The painter, the writer, the scholar, the yogi, the purple Shakti Queen.

In truth, I long for love. I long to be remembered by those certain women. I don't want the lover(s) to forget my taste. I long to be wild and powerful...and I hope that the world has space...

my reply:

very beautiful
please write more
it is important for yourself and others
yes claim your power
it is the holy grail
it is not always easy
but, like joan of arc
and all the witches, saints, martyrs and mystics before us
it is the road to walk
to meet ourselves
we cannot blame the world
or god
even though sometimes we have to
to get by
to take another breath.

Love gun

2010-05-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

los angeles
sunday may 2

back in los angeles
crash landing back home like a mule kick to the head

i went to an ecstatic dance group this morning and the room full of people made me recoil. i did not want to be so close to so many. i felt like i wanted to cry and so i just laid on the floor and wrapped my scarf around my head to make a tight blindfold. i laid there shutting everything out, with drawing my senses inward. then i felt like a baby laying in a crib. i realized i longed to be touched. i longed to be touched by everyone in the room. i wanted to lay there in my blindfold and have hundreds of fingers trace my body and not to see anyone. just touch for the sake of touch, for comfort and pleasure. the freedom of blindness. i realized i wanted to get off. to release the tidal wave inside me. i took off my blindfold and began a very intimate dance with a man, sniffing each other like two dogs meeting for the first time. the animal body remembers things i have tried to forget. when they come back to life i feel big.

the charge of sexual energy in the group of 16 people i am leading in a tantra circle this month builds as we practice yab yum with a commitment of celibacy.
the surge is intense and i feel so much of everything that it wants to split my skin open
like a ripe fruit offering its seeds to the earth
i want to cry
i want to fuck
i want to eat chocolate
i want to discharge this fullness threatening to devour me

i would weep if weeping could hold me
i would give all my belongings for the certainty of sadness
but it is more than that
it is sadness mingled with joy and pleasure
with anxiety and fear
they are all threatening to burst but remain clouds shifting in my inner sky
it is not one thing
it is everything
i have asked to hold more
and here it is
here are all my emotions and my students emotions
the human stories that are moving through us all like a swift river
the charge of the sexual energy accelerates the flow of current and makes us more aware of our masks

what is tantra?
it is embracing my whole self
the rising of the wildness i have repressed and the balancing of that with the laws of the world
i walk the line
i walk feet naked to my path
i walk the tightrope
and lick the honey from the razors edge
it is not this way or that
one step at a time, i must stay very awake
no one can give me a book with the answers
no religions, dogmas, philosophies
the libraries are burning
the world is morphing

there are volcanoes erupting in iceland
the earth is pushing her fierce emotions upward
splintering the skin of the known landscape with the fires from deep below
just because we cannot see the fires doesn't mean they aren't there
a student said, "i've been on so many trips, but they were all the wrong ones"
i said, "how many trips does it take to get to the center of your tootsie roll pop?"
all those trips were born of longing
it is a mystery when we will reach our destination since it is most likely we are already there but just confused by our surroundings
not matching our preconceived notions
the sacred books are burning
the sacred book is life
the sadhana, the practice, the pilgrimage, the meditation is just living
the shrine is the human being
keeping my eyes open
not slipping into old patterns of coping and surviving that have kept me numb for so long

as i awaken
my skin feels too tight
so i slither out
like a snake
the serpent who rides my spine in waves of contraction and ecstasy
and i journey on
in my shapeshifting skin
to begin again
and to begin again
to burn my last dwelling place because i outgrew it
i step lightly into the plunging skydive of the unknown
this burning pushes me to take the leap like i've got a
love gun pressed to my head
my stomach leaps like an elevator
i look for new ground
i root to expand

some things are so good that they are worth doing twice
i find an old lover and feel the heat move between us
he plays a sad song full of hope on his guitar and i finally cry
tears spilling out of my eyes and sliding like a sweet relief down my burning cheeks
and i worship him
and us
the sacred text is our bodies
and our determined attempts at unconditional love

begin again