Should the rapist be hung?

HANG THE RAPIST
Is violence the answer to sexual violence?
Anger over the brutal Delhi mass-rape has erupted in India and protestors are marching in the streets and demanding the rapists be hung. This is in the country where Gandhi Mahatma  (great soul) tried to advocate non-violent resistance. "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" he had said. Violence breeds violence, we need to heal the underlying issues of sexual repression that lead to rape and incest with education. We need to break the silence about how widespread sexual abuse is so that society is forced to open it's eyes to the truth and begin to heal and make changes. This issue is not just in India, but the world is now watching this case under a magnifying glass.

Most societies turn a blind eye to the shadow of sexuality. When there is an incident of rape to incest that is forced into the public eye, society responds explosively by demanding "justice" for the victim and violent punishment for the perpetrator. This cycle is not new and has not brought lasting change because it is still a process of denial of the underlying root issue of sexual repression that leads to the violence and abuse.

I read a statistic that said 1 in 3 women had sexual violence or abuse. That is a staggering number but I think it is still less than the actual number. From years of teaching yoga and spiritual programs where people come to heal, I would say 2 out of 3 women have experienced sexual violence or abuse. I think the same is true of men, but they have an even greater taboo against speaking out about it since it damages the macho masculine ideal we have created. It is difficult enough for a woman to be vulnerable and break the silence to speak about her sexual abuse, it is much more difficult for men to do the same. If they were molested by another man, they will be labelled "homosexual" for the rest of their lives.

RELIGIOUS SEXUAL HYPOCRISY
It is ironic that in a country like India, where there are images of female Goddesses that are worshipped in the temples and small statues in people's homes, women are treated as second class citizens. The sex double standard affects women of all socio-economic classes. One of my Indian girl friends who drives a Porche told me she she had gotten urinary tract infections growing up because the women in her house were taught they could only use the bathroom early in the morning and late at night after the men had gone to sleep, so the men would not be "offended" by her bodily functions. This while the men relieve themselves by peeing openly in the streets. Holy men walk naked through the streets or with small cloths covering their genitalia while women are wrapped in the long fabric of the sari. Why is the man's body holy when it is naked but the woman's body is not? The shaming of female sexuality and genitalia is pervasive among all classes. Men are allowed to be sexually promiscuous while a woman may ruin her reputation for a lifetime if she dates, had sex or lives with a man out of wedlock.

How can you worship a statue in the Goddess in a temple and allow flesh and blood women to be abused? Sex is one of the biggest taboos in India. It is still one of the biggest religious taboos everywhere in the world. Wherever religions create sexual taboo, there is the hypocrisy of abuse. Think of all the cases of Catholic priests who are supposed to be celibate molesting choir boys?

Why have religions created so much taboo against sexuality when it has been proven again and again to be a breeding ground for rape, incest and molestation? Isn't it time to open our eyes and acknowledge that we need to change the root of the problem and stop the sexual repression?

FOR OUR OWN PROTECTION
I cannot think of one country or religion where men are forced to cover their bodies so that they will not cause women to sin or sexually attack them. Why the double standard? As a woman, I grew up religious and was taught if I dressed in a way that showed my body, it was sexually provocative and if a man sexually attacked or abused me, "I had asked for it". I think men should be offended that we think they are so weak that they cannot control their sexual urges. The sexual repression of the female bodies causes a brain washing of the men too, so that they are so sexually repressed they act out to sexual stimulation in violent ways.

DENIAL OF SEXUAL ABUSE
Things are really changing in India. I was at a friends house watching TV and they had a woman on the news who was telling a terrible story. She said her daughter had been molested by her own father and when the mother brought him to court the judge said, "It is not possible for a father to do such a thing." He then asked the husband what punishment he would want for his lying wife.

Aside from how horrible this kind of suppression is, it was astounding to me that they were talking openly about it on television now. Sex has been a taboo in India for a very long time. Now because of the Delhi rape case, stories like this are exploding and coming to public light.

"There is no stopping the truth now", my friend Vinay who I am watching the TV with says. "Students in Delhi are finally protesting and they are not stopping. The politicians are being forced to have answers. The students are bringing new life to the country."

SEXUAL EDUCATION AND HEALTHY ATTITUDES

I truly believe if there was less suppression of sexulaity and women (and men) were more empowered to understand their sexuality- there would be less sexual violence erupting from the repression. Step 1: EDUCATE! What if we actually educated children about sex instead of hiding it from them. I would like it to be truly an empowerment of understanding the power of sexual energy, not just how to put a condom on. My parents were Christian conservatives who pulled me out of public school the week they had sex ed. At the same time, I lived with a background of sexual abuse. I was too ashamed to speak openly and seek help. Repression does not yield the results we want, it creates a cycle of sexual abuse. We are the generation who can break the chain of repression and abuse for our children and heal for all our relations.

It is time for us as a human race to evolve around sexuality and sexual issues. It begins by breaking the silence around abuse so we can heal the root. The more people who stand up and speak the more we can bring light where there has been shadow. in the past, people have been afraid to speak up because they have been labeled and stigmatized for the rest of their lives. The only way to change this is to shift the perception that only a few have experienced this sexual violence and abuse. It takes a lot of courage, but we can support each other, we are not alone.

On March 16th, Courage to Rise is having a National Day of Action 

Live events in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Kauai, Salt Lake City, DenverWomen+ Sex + Power"I promise you can be more powerful"Stop Sexual Violence and Abuse2013...We RiseConscious Activism and HealingWe will have movie screenings of real women's stories, yoga and circle discussions

Join us!www.couragetorise.org

"is tantra about sex?"

i received an email this morning from a woman who had talked to a tantrik scholar who had dismissed sexual tantra 

tantra is divided into right hand and left hand parctices
the right hand (dakshina marga) does not engage in sexual practices
the left hand (vama marga) does engage in sexual practices for initiation, kundalini awakening and enlightenment

the left hand accepts the right hand, but the right hand usually denounces the left hand tantras, that is why it is called the left hand, because in india the left hand is used to wipe the ass, it is unclean. this is called the "forbidden" path of breaking cultural, moral conditioning of taboos.

Q:
 They say that the intimate partner practices & left-hand pujas were discarded/ censored from strains of traditional Shiva-Shakti tantra (including Sri vidya) some centuries ago, and it's my experience with all my teachers that they are very much alive.

 A:
when did tantra begin and what is tantra? some people say it was a neo-hindu offshoot in reaction to the morality against sexuality in indian culture. i do not agree with this and i think it is a puritanical view point from scholars who do not understand tantra. their own discomfort with this form of sexual spirituality leads them to dismiss the power of the sexual tantrik traditions throughout time. tantra has always existed. the worship of the Mother goddess and sexuality as a sacred staircase to the higher states of evolution has always existed in all cultures and as a mystical hidden teaching of almost all religions and ideologies. look at the drawings in the pyramids in egypt...

the scholars tend to dismiss or denounce the left handed sexual practices. they are not usually practitioners of this form of tantra. depending who you talk to, it is higher or lower form of tantra, initiation and practice. a left hand practitioner will feel it is the true hidden tantra and a right hand practitioner will say it is less.

this stems from our own direct experience and what opens us up truly to the Lord.

we can only follow our gnosis, how the spirit and the Mother has stirred rememberence inside of us. this stirring has happened within my womb and my spiritual experiences have multiplied through my sexuality. they say tantriks are born not made.
the real question is, "what is sexuality"

if i look at a person from outside who is meditating and i do not understand meditation because i have not had the inner experience- then i would describe the outer experience i can perceive, "this person is sitting down not doing anything". if you practice meditation, you know that in your inner experience vast universes are blossoming inside you, you may have sublime visions or terrifying encounters with your own thoughts and fears as well as supernatural energies. the inner experience that can be felt is radically different than the outer experience that can be spoken of.

if i was not a left hand tantrik and i saw 2 tantra practitioners engaged in union, i would only see the outer container, 2 people having sex. of course, their experience is as different from normal definition of sex as the meditator is from just sitting around.

how can people understand what they have not experienced? i have compassion for those who still feel so much shame in their bodies and repression of their natural and spiritual sexual energies. it is unfortunate that in their lack of experience of the tantrik union, they have judged and persecuted tantriks throughout the ages. tantrik women adepts have been called witches and whores, or at the very least not given the same credibility and stature as the scholars. this also is a form of HIMSA (violence).

i think the world needs a tantrik enema....

"What is the role of a woman in tantra?"

TANTRA FAQ: "What is the role of a woman in Tantric meditation?"
I thought I would share a very good question that was emailed to me this morning:

Q:
in one of your talks, you mentioned "playing roles". 
within the context of a tantra partner meditation, is there a role that a woman plays?
or is it a crapshoot of experiences?  or both?

or when a woman softens to the energy of her partner, 
is her experience that of his energy and how that energy flows and what it needs?  
the sit then becomes a cutting through all the external structures to
a deeper understanding of how your energy interacts 
with the energy in front of you.
I woke up today wondering ;)

A:

well...the masculine and feminine dynamics are fluid in both males and females
some sits with a man i find they move more towards the shakti feminine energy expression and i sit in the grounding shiva masculine position
think of the male/female sacred energy dynamic like the positive/ negative ends of a battery
and then think of that range as being fluid, no one is entirely feminine or masculine energy

the "role" of a woman in the sit, i think is to be in self-enquiry of the experience happening inside herself and awareness of the play and exchange of energy with her partner

when i have sat with a very solid "base" male partner, i find that the serpentine energy really begins to flow and move because it is grounded in safety, and i really enjoy this feeling of flow in my body and appreciate being based to have that experience

there is a lot to look at here, when we think of the "role" of a woman both in tantra sitting partner meditation and in how we live in the world...
in relationships, i think that the feminine needs to be able to surrender to the masculine, but that it is difficult as a woman to surrender to men who are not stable or safe
of course we are all evolving, so there is no "perfect partner" who makes us feel perfectly safe
but as i travel the world and see so many communities where the women have become the bread winners and the mothers, and there is a wounding in the masculine causing alcoholism and abuse, i see a deep pain in the soul of the world
a deep pain in the sacred masculine soul and the sacred feminine soul
i hope we are finding ways to mend this deep soul pain mirrored in the masculine and feminine

the "role" of a woman in these tantra practices is not the old idea of woman= passivity
i have been told before that i can be masculine, because i can be very directed and dominant
but look at the tantric goddesses, they are very powerful, so i think there is a place for a very powerful woman to meet with a very powerful man
and both give and take the dominant position in a natural flow
this dynamic calls both partners to be in their power, to face their weak places and to be humbled and grow
but what do i know?

karma kool aid

feb 10

Calcutta, india

Yesterday i was given a tour of the area I would be teaching yoga to the sex workers at in the Sonagachi neighborhood. i walked behind my guide through the crazy, suffocating back alleys where the sex workers live and work. There were children playing soccor in the streets next to piles of rotting food.

Women sat lined up against the brightly painted walls, in equally bright saris, all staring at me with black eyes rimmed in kajol as they wait to be selected by customers to be paid for pleasure or some fascimile of pleasure. their eyes looked back at me like the eyes of time, dark, glassy, unpenetrable. I feel fear and tightness in my lungs walking through the decrepit alleys that twist and turn, the buildings leaning in towards each other so that it stays cool in the brothel neighborhood, but doesn’t let in much light. The air is thick, moist and sweaty, not able to pass to the sky, it is recirculated through the bodies, creating a feeling of gloominess. Like water that becomes brackish when it can’t flow back to rivers and the sea. Water like that you aren’t supposed to drink, they call it “black water”, it doesn’t flow.

Sonagachi is a fully formed little universe, with all the sex workers and all the businesses that serve the sex workers and business of prostitution. There are chai wallahs sitting on stoops pouring the sweet brown liquid into the red clay cups that are a signature of Calcutta. There are carts full of fresh frying samosas and puri. The sticky smells of spices and sweat cling to my skin. Calcutta, city of joy, the laughter of the sex workers children rings through the alleys. Some of the children have just gotten out of school and are wearing their neat uniforms, the girls with their glossy black hair tied in braids and ribbons, they buy snacks at the street stalls. Lakshman says many of the women got here because someone married a poor girl and then sold them to sonagachi, to the madams and pimps who are part of the eco system of prostitution. It would be easy to descend into madness here, except that this is a place just like all other places, and there is a logic to survival. Above all, we find a way to survive.

I feel a strange sense of dread knowing I am coming back to teach yoga in a few days. I cannot explain this feeling, it feels like the sense of dread a warrior would know when battle is approaching. What battle am I fighting? What secrets of my own subconscious are being churned from deep in the sea within me? When I came last march I was alone. This time I am not alone. Lakshman is walking through the alleys ahead of me, as if god perfectly scripted for me to have a bodyguard, a steadying male presence that calms me. He came to teach them kalari, for self defense. And gabe is with me this time, his support means more to me than anything, that he is here seeing the work I have been doing all these years when he was back at home feeling I didn’t love him enough when I would leave for India.

When we emerge from Sonagachi back to the main road, with all the blaring afternoon rush hour traffic, it is as if we have been spat out of the womb, the thick, brackish air of the brothel opening to the grey Calcutta sky. We buy some roasted corn from a street vendors cart and head back to our guest house where gabe is waiting.

what are we here for?
i mean BIG, what are we here for?

we are here to create some joy in this world. because as i watched the children kick the soccor ball, i thought, how strong is the drive to be alive. how strong is the desire to find joy and happiness however fleeting in these streets, in our own hearts. and i say this whole crazy fucked up ball of wax is mothers song to us, a hymn of heartbreak and love and peace when it descends upon us like the grace of a dove.

so raise your voices, make some art of this existence, why not? let's make beauty out of the chaos.

Feb 11
Calcutta, india

The blade falls, and blood pours out over the cement, the priest pulls the goats body away and the legs are still twitching while the heads rolls a few feet away.

we are in the kali ghat temple in Calcutta. The crowd to see the mother and get her blessing is crushing each other. People push and shove, no one is acting “spiritual”. We know a priest who cuts us in line, saving us about an hour of waiting. The woman we get cut in front of starts screaming, “why? Why?”. It is not fair, but today we are the ones cutting in line, tomorrow we may be the ones getting cut in front of. We have to firmly grip each others arms so that we don’t get pushed out of line. It is especially heightened as you get closer to the Mother statue. A fat police man starts grabbing people and throwing them out of the sanctuary. People are yelling, there is so much fighting in the temple. I say my prayers when it is my turn to stand before the statue, a primordial chunk of rock with three bright orange-red eyes staring back at me. Blood red eyes. Kali, the mother of birth and death, liberator. Then I am quickly shoved aside, my turn is over.

On the way out we stop at the sacrifice pit, where they are beating drums, burning incense and sacrificing goats. I stand on the steps and watch.
The blade falls again and again.
two goats
three goats
four goats
five goats
the goats crying stings my ears. Each time they sacrifice a goat I make the sign of the cross over my heart. I was born a Christian not a hindu.
forgive us father, for we know not what we do

after the round of sacrifice ends, I walk to the U-shaped chopping block and put my own neck to the metal where the goats heads were placed. There is still blood on it from the sacrifices.
mother, my life belongs to you
I leave a small rupee coin offering in the dish and we leave the temple.

Feb 13

Calcutta, india

today in the calcutta class for the sex workers i asked, "what is important to you? what are your biggest obstacles? what brings you hope?" my 19-year old son was in the class with me watching. i pointed to him and told them how i had been a teenage mom and had a hard time in society because i was an unmarried single mother, sometimes i would look at my child and not know how i would feed him and that was heartbreaking. one of the women said, "we are the same as you. we are sex workers because we have to be to feed our children. only to feed our children. a woman cannot leave her child. the men have left and now we do what we have to to feed our children. i have no attachment, i do not take the karma, because i am only doing my duty as a mother." i said, "i think there is a great pain in the world that the men are feeling too. how can we change the world? maybe when we raise our children we can change the world with them."

the woman who spoke shook my hand before she left the room. she said, "don't worry, we are with you" i am here to "teach" them, but they see the hunger in me for transformation in a suffering world and they are reassuring me. they are with me, she put her strength in her hand in my hand, she gave me the gift of solidarity. "we fight because we must. life has taught us to fight. everything alive fights to live and we have learned from nature." warriors. mothers. lovers. somehow this has brought me deep peace, a year ago it brought me outrage at the conditions they live in.

feb 17

kerala, India

The air in south India is warm and there is the smell of smoke rising from the little fire of coals in the kitchen where our hosts are preparing chapatis. Birds are calling to each other and the sound of horns in the distance fills the tropical air. We are in kerala where we have come to conyinue studying kalari with lakshman. We arrived on an overnight bus where I had a fitful sleep in a crawl space above the drivers head, my body pressed a few inches from the roof.

gabe called his girlfriend back in the states today and got some very bad news. His best friend, jimmy, the one who stole my car in the fall, was put in jail for hustling drugs.

That could have been my son.

That is not my son.

My son is here with me in India, he has stopped drinking because he grew tired of feeling fucked up all the time. How does Jimmy’s mom feel? According to gabe she is an alcoholic burn out who has a hard time getting her sentences out because of permanent damage. His dad used to be an alcoholic but quit. And jimmy is a short, charming street hustler who plays the guitar well and has good stories to tell but can’t keep himself from stealing from everyone around him. I hope jail changes him. Gabe says jail doesn’t change anybody for the better. “he’ll just get raped in the ass”. I shudder to think.

What happens to men in jail? My old room mate went to jail, I thought he would get eaten alive, a pale grey haired computer programmer with all the hardened gansters and felons. He told me there was a guy who kept picking on him, pushing to get him mad. They were in their cell one night and the other inmate said, “look up at that star in the window, that’s all you’re gonna see when I’m fucking you”. The guards came by and my old room mate got out and told them what happened and they kept him separated after that. My son could have been in jail with his friend. Young men who go to jail tend to spend the rest of their lives going in and out, they get “institutionalized”, so that jail with it’s regular schedule, 3 meals and a hard bed starts to feel more comfortable and safe than trying to make it in the outside world.

I can’t help but remember when I was in India a little over a year ago in varanasi and I called gabe the day before thanksgiving and he said he was smoking tweak and hung up on me. He said, “why are you in India trying to help people when your own son is in so much pain at home?”. I could not explain to him why I had to go, why I could not stay and give up my dreams to be a good minivan driving mother. I had to go to India because it was the fire of passion burning inside me, it is my path to acceptence of my pain with my own parents so I can love my son freely without the same samskaras.

It could have been the same this year. I could have been here in India trying to help the sex workers and gotten the phone call that gabe was in jail with jimmy. I think I would have died. But this time is different, he is with me, all those years of praying and ritual changed things inside me to make a way for us to have a better relationship.

Gabe feels a little guilty that he has left jimmy behind. I tell him no, he did what he had to to escape that fate for himself. I remember that pivotal afternoon in December when we sat in the IHOP eating a burger and fries and I asked him to come to India with me. He told me jimmy had done heroin for the first time. He said he had to get out of his situation before it got much worse. he saw the train wreck coming and got off that train, thank god. We light a candle for jimmy, the jail bird gutter angel tonight. May he see more clearly, may he be free. You never know what it takes for a person to hit rock bottom and change for good.

email home:

how many times when gabe and i were apart have i prayed
at the sundance with the native americans in south dakota
in the dergha with the sufis in istanbul
at the tantrik temple in india

i prayed:
please god protect my son when i cannot

and i was buying time
that i would be stronger through these practices and that nothing terrible,
nothing of permanent damage would happen to him in the meantime
please god, goddess
i asked the universe to have patience with me, with my son, to give us time

and i feel it did happen that way
we are together here now and transformation is possible

some of that really bad shit though, it don't change easy...
the bloodlines of our families and ancestry is carved deep beneath our skin
the patterns and habits that are carried by one generation
and placed on the backs of the next
seem like endless spirals, circles within circles that keep birthing themselves
and yet, the desire in me to transform the pain i carry from my parents,

from the abuses they suffered and then inflicted on me

has been so strong

many times i thought i was losing the battle or fooling myself
i have felt i have been moving blindly,

chopping my way through a chaotic storm for along time,
but i felt some lighthouse in the distance that i could not stop the storm

and i could not turn back
i had to stay on course even when i was blind
but something inside me was not blind, some inner compass was true
is this what we call faith?

all parents and children ache for each other in this way
our blood is our strongest religion

it has been a long 6 weeks in india

i look forward to hugs and sisterhood back in america at the shore of another sea

love
psalm

Tantrik temple ritual

photo by julianne reynolds taken in Jan during the tantrik india pilgrimage

Devipuram Temple, India

KAMAKHYA...temple of the mothers genitals...

there is internal and external puja ritual worship to the Goddess
external temples can be built on the earth, but the internal temple is in the body

we can have bhoga and moksha, pleasure and freedom
the Mother is happy when we work and loves us when we play

a ritual bath is given to awaken kundalini at the root and send the shakti sleeping there to meet her lover shiva at the crown, their twinning opening the mystical central channel shushumna, called "the bridal chamber" by gnostics.

shushumna doesn't open except by love and longing, that's why it is called the bridal chamber, first they must be married two as One, red and white channels of the sun and moon become rose petal pink at the third eye, the pineal gland.

the energy of their maithuna union flows with amrit (nectar of immortality) and overflows, making the thousand petal lotus at the crown of the head blossom, connecting form to formless, two becomes the mystic One, and Sri, grace, rains down to feed the root and begin the never ending cycle again.

Through desire we manifest to experience ourselves as god in form. Through desire we experience ourselves through playfulness. The serpent devours her own tail to begin again.

tantra has a history of secrecy from the uninitiated.
why throw pearls before swine? you will only be ridiculed and punished the saying goes...
those who know do not speak...but if we do not speak how can we share the light we have seen through this path?

love from calcutta

dear crazy strong beautiful humans i love

i am in kolkata this morning

yesterday i walked the the crazy, suffocating back alleys where the sex workers live and work...children playing soccor in the streets next to piles of rotting food,

women sitting lined up against the bright painted walls, all staring at me with black eyes rimmed in kajol as they wait to be selected by customers to be paid for pleasure or some fascimile of pleasure...their eyes looked back at me like the eyes of time....dark, glassy, unpenetrable

what are we here for?
i mean BIG, what are we here for?

to create some joy in this world...because as i watched the children kick the soccor ball, i thought, how strong is the drive to be alive. how strong is the desire to find joy and happiness however fleeting in these streets, in our own hearts. and i say this whole crazy fucked up ball of wax is mothers song to us, a hymn of heartbreak and love and peace when it descends upon us like the grace of a dove.

so i love your art and the raising of your voices, why not? let's make beauty out of the chaos...

today i go on a tantric temple pilgrimage for the mothers blessings
getting ready to go to the kalighat temple
then to a baul (tantric sufis style music of bengal) group tonight
then to tapith, a tantric temple to tara where they worship openly in the cremation grounds
then teaching yoga to the sex workers
then circling back to kamakhya temple to seal the tantric yoni portal

it is most auspicious to go to these 3 temples on pilgrimage: kalighat, tapith and kamakhya, they make a triangle, yoni

full on tantra land here

love
psalm

punk rock yoga

february 6

auroville, india

the graveyard

all he wanted was to get some pot, so he had to go to the graveyard, because that's where you get pot in india, and now he was watching a body burn before his eyes. the skinny, dark, dirty little man who was one of the keepers at the smashan, graveyard, had recognized him from when he came with my group of yoga students to meditate the week before. gabe said the keeper got the pot and put it in the clay chillum pipe and motioned for him to say a prayer and take a hit and then watch the body in flames as the plant hit his brain. he said he saw waves of energy coming off the burning corpse. the arms shot up and had to be pushed back into the fire. where does our spirit live?

"bom bom bole, ah key uh kolay" means "great lord shiva, open my eyes".
the shaivites, worshippers of shiva say this prayer before they take a hit of hash off their chillum pipe. they say life is maya, illusion of shakti, the primal feminine force of creation. the hash is a strong dose of shakti. they smoke the maya to see through the maya.

there is a statue of shiva in the smashan, bright blue with a leopard loincloth, his lips rosebud pink and his dreadlocks piled on top of his head with a crescent moon in his hair. he is painted as bright as a disneyland attraction and when i pointed him out to gabe, he thought it was a woman god at first. trani- shiva. god of the graveyards because he is a corpse himself, he represents awareness watching the dance of his female partner shakti as she dances the lila of maya, weaving the filmy sheets of illusion before our eyes like a great bellydancer, keeping us enticed but never revealing too much at once.

after that day, gabe said everything started moving. when he would sit and stare, energy would start moving off the trees. the southern jungle can swallow you up like a technicolor malaria dream, time slows down until it eats itself and you half expect a dinosaur to come walking through the dusty red earth and green palm trees. i guess if you are used to using drugs to escape the suffering of reality, it is a strange day when they start waking you up to a bigger reality. i was worried he wouldn't like india, but he loves it. he walks around the ashram skipping my yoga classes with the village girls following him around like a movie star. he slept through and missed dinner one night, so the girls brought him dinner to his room the next night. one of them peeled his hard boiled egg once when is was too hot for him to touch, now that's admiration. he hasn't had a haircut since we left america, so his brown hair is puffed up like a pompadour. mostly he has been hanging out, getting stoned and meditating sitting under the trees like a nineteen year old cross between james dean, sid vicious and the buddha.

that's my son, a son of shiva. the god of the low caste, outcast and the original punk rocker. shiva sits in the formless void watching the world dance, the world burn, the world of form shifting forms. through death we are born. the tantriks say "die before you die" to exceed the power of other mortals who fear death and so only half live.

i have missed my son for years. for the six years i have been coming to india, most of my prayers have been for god, for the creator, to watch over him when we have been apart. i came to india the first time right after he moved in with his dad at fourteen, we had always been together before that, like a mama kangaroo with her baby in her pouch. i had been such a young mother, pregnant at seventeen, that i had struggled to survive and to scratch and fight in this world for a place to keep us. i made a lot of mistakes. i had a lot of regrets. there is nothing more painful than being a parent looking at your childs pain that you know comes from your choices. after he moved in with his dad he stopped talking to me for a year. i circled holy temples and mountains repeating my prayers. on the outside i was halfway around the world. on the inside, i was circling the innermost sanctuary of my heart.

god help me to heal the pain i carry from my family. god help me to not cause my son the same pain. sandwiched between fate and free will, the things i can change and the things i cannot. i close the distance between the two with prayer and acceptance. just a little over a month ago i wasn't sure he would come. i picked him up drunk drinking bottles of cheap alcohol with his friends in a bad part of town when a few gang members pulled up. for a minute, it looked like things could have gone horribly wrong. god get us out of here alive, i prayed. and here we are, in india together.

Sticky Sweet Mother

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

How long can i burn?

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?

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.

Doing the devil's work in the bible belt

friday, april 17
cleveland, ohio

love from cleveland, detroit, chicago
corn fields with billboards for churches on one side of the road
and for porn shops on the other
love from another strip mall where i bang out tantric manifestos on my cracked mac
cracked and smeared yellow from tumeric powder in india
exotic lands are far from this daily grind of another court yard marroitt,
another starbucks coffee shop
i eat the road every day like a lustful demoness

i spread the good word of tantra, a sacred road dog for god in the bible belt
doing devi's work, so often called the devil's work
me and my demons we get a kick out of this
as we sit in the back of the classroom giggling and throwing spit wads in the proverbial gears of sanctimonious spirituality
my sufi teacher used to say when someone was full of it
"you make me boring"
yes, self righteousness makes me boring
burn the light that you are

i'm not here to make apologies for the wildness in me
i won't go quietly with the music still in me
i will dance and dance
til my bones shake
til my heart aches and breaks
til i fall down laughing at myself and everyone around me
sucking the marrow out of life
one day at a time

malaria of love

what is this
sometimes,
something,
longing
that pulls me further and further towards the rythmic shores of no where?

sometimes,
somewhere,
i hear my heart calling
like a parched earth cracking open, making room to be filled with
rain

my heart hides the secret
(like shocking pink mouth of the fig)
she is always thirsty

there aren't enough people to satisfy her thirst
for this thunder love
shaking my inner landscape, making trembling,
unlacing my most inside heart

my eyes are always searching
the further horizon
for this
somewhere,
something,
as if they know what
i have long ago forgotten
that in this lifetime i will never be satisfied

i journey on in my shape shifting boat of dreams

glimpses of stupefying beauty fill the horizon
and i rest in each one as if it were an eternity
like the pink sunset sweetly revealing herself for a few moments
as the softly folds of a woman's skin
before swallowing herself into the night
the honey calls to follow the mystery

i do not know what makes my heart so tender and love come on like an exotic sickness
like a malaria of love

still, everywhere i go, i think of you

suicide in the village

a woman's body was found in the river today. she committed suicide after her husband beat her. 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.

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 thats 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 childeren 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.

Animal Sacrifice

i saw a goat sacrificed at the temple yesterday. a baby goat. it was at the kalighat temple in calcutta india. here the image of the divine is just a big oval black shape with three red eyes and a long tongue sticking out. it is confrontational, sensual and blood thirsty all at once. this god is female and she is heat. it feels like her three eyes are watching me, staring back and giving me energy. i am a long way from bible school. but not really.

this is biblical.

i used to read about sacrifices of animals in my cartoon bible. it was so much more interesting to read the old testament, where people were fighting and fornicating and sacrificing and warring and longing and loving. david desired bathsheeba so much he had her husband killed so he could know her carnally. appetites.

who has the largest appetite for blood sacrifice?

everywhere i look in the natural world, life is feeding on itself. i will be food someday. there is no denying that, uncomfortable thought that it is. i will be food someday, but not today. today i stand on the temple steps and look at the pit where they sacrifice the animals. pigeons and goats mostly. sometimes a bull, but that is unusual. the ground is sticky from dirt and what i can only assume is blood from other sacrifices. the altars stand ominous and empty, my mind wanders to thoughts of what execution must look like. the altars are stone blocks with a tall "V" shape to put the animals necks in. there are hundreds of burnt incense sticks on the altars and bright orange marigold flowers. i think of the guillotine and marie antoinette.

they say the blood represents the moontime blood of the mother. well, most of mankind is quesy about that too.

i feel quesy, apprehensive as the sun beats down on me, i am wearing my indian clothes. modest for a woman here means shoulders and ankles are concealed. i am wearing my favorite bright red scarf to cover my contraband shoulders, blood red, kali red.

kali is called the laughing mother. the mothers love is unconditional. like the sun that shines on saint and sinner alike. this is not the love of the father that you earn by keeping commandments or following your cultural ethics and morals. it is everywhere for everyone. it is grace. it is redemption regardless of whether you deserve it. she is called the laughing mother because sometimes it feels she is having a joke on you, a little play with her veil of maya. it is up to you if you can laugh with the cosmic joke or not. or cry with it.

the priest leads in a baby goat, a black one. it looks startled. the priest looks like he does this everyday, which he does. my throat tightens. i want to look away, but i have committed myself to witnessing. why? that is a good question. to accept the suffering that is an intrinsic part of life without flinching or turning away. and for much less of a noble reason, i want to watch. i am intrigued like a scientist is intrigued.

i chant the same mantra i use when i am meditating, driving, having sex, going to the bathroom, bathing...one mantra because it is all one. i would chant the same mantra watching a birth as i now chant watching a death.

the priest picks up the goat by the nape of it's neck. the baby goat cries. it looks frightened, but maybe it is just annoyed at the restriction of it's freedom. i focus on my chanting more. it becomes very intense, my breath very thick. the priest puts the goats neck inside the "V" on the altar. he lifts a curved sword. i want to look away but i keep my eyes open. they burn a little from the concentration.

i remember how my own mother used to kill animals on our farm when i was growing up. i never had the stomach for that. but my mother also used to stay up all night when the goats went into labor, to help the birthing process. i never liked the blood and guts. there were always things about my mother which disturbed me, which i was not able to accept. we have been estranged for many years. and here i have travelled all the way to india, to be a goddess worshipper, of the fiercest goddess, kali. it is always about our parents isn't it?

the priest lifts the blade and swiftly brings it down. the head is severed and rolls away immediately. the body is still twitching. there is blood on the ground. one of the priests put marks on our foreheads, tilaks, of the blood.

that same day the priests pulled me into the inner sanctum where the kali statue is, they put my hands on her and i felt her buzzing under my palms. there were the red eyes. watching.

a day and night in india...

the still of morning

woke up 5am yesterday at the ashram, it was still black out. i like to wake up before the sun, before the day, before everyone else starts stirring. it is like a pregant pause, a secret world for me alone. i dressed quickly and walked into the cool darkness of the earth, the only thing stirring is the powdery dust between my toes. in the dark i have to feel each step, reading the ground like braille with my bare feet. i was excited to sit outside my teachers door. i could hear him awake, but he had not come out yet so i sat and felt our exchange of energy. it is up to me if i want to feel alone. it is a good example here, as i sit outside the door, waiting. an example for everything in my life. i cannot have everything when i want it or how i want it. sometimes i must cultivate the art of waiting, which becomes a sublime partner in itself.
who is with me as i wait alone?
my thoughts are with me.
my heartbeat is with me.
the smell of the morning, carrying the burnt ashes from the fires they use to burn trash, that is also with me.
my body is with me. i listen to my body. she is a little achey. it will be alright.
i send my energy into my teachers room and connect to it, then it is like a wave moving between us. every moment of life is full.

the roosters begin to sound the day. now their is more world awake than me. the cook brings me chai from the little kitchen. they still cook with fire from wood, squatting in front to stir the food. i think it tastes better this way.

i walked up to the rooftop to watch the mists still covering the hills in violets, lavenders and grays. the hills seem to fade off into another world. It seems a land time has forgotten. I expect a dinosaur any moment. The shapes of the hills are like the curves of a woman's body, who has gracefully draped her form here. one looks like a profile of a face with parted lips, another looks like a hip and another pointed like a breast. The hills here are lush and green and the earth is an orange-red color.

only the sound of the crows. I can see the path snaking through the jungle from where i sit up high on the roof. there are a few lonely figures with baskets of coconuts on their heads walking the dusty red road from the local village. beginning the work of the day. earning a living to care for their families. a friend told me once, god moves like a snake, in an unpredictable zig zag movement.

the soul's body

the mother is so present here. she has so many faces. the one that changes in my dreams, stirring up all the undigested bits of my psyche. dreams are so vivid and yet the sleep is so heavy here. i feel her in a heat that feels like physical burning, but which i have come to love as a physical experience of her presence. this morning is her breath. i dream her dreams. my body is her body and my eyes are her eyes.
my sufi teacher in turkey used to ask me,
"who sees through your eyes?'.
the Soul sees through your eyes."
yes, we are the soul and the soul's body made flesh. india is the heart of this body, pumping with blood and life. a land of contrasts. this world, this life is made of contrasts, isn't it?

Nakedness

later, i went to the city, such a change. bustling with dirt, people, a naked boy stands in the street touching himself. his black eyes stare out at the world unapologetically. it feels good to him, he has yet to become aware of shame. of course, i guess it wouldn't do to walk around with my pants down all day!

the forgetfulness of sleep

when i finally fell asleep last night, i truly fell. i was given the key to a devotees apartment in the city, and i let myself and my into the empty place. i went to the bathroom. i believe bathrooms in prisons are nicer. i thought, "dear jesus, i am so tired, is a nice bathroom too much to ask for?" too tired to wash my face, my dusty feet or brush my teeth, i fell asleep in the strange bed drooling. matresses were there, but no sheets. i was too tired to think of the cleanliness of the bed. i took my dress and laid it on the bed for some smell of myself rather than all the strangers who had slept and sweat here before. sleep came heavy and brought forgetfulness. my companion sang over my body, gently stroking my face and hair. i am grateful for love and human kindnesses. it did not matter where i was or the bed. i folded gently into myself, into my mind and dreams.
a contemplative question in the yogi path is:
"who is dreaming when i sleep?"

I am in love with my Guru

Guru-disciple relationship

This is a highly charged topic. Many people believe it is sacriligious or just plain superstitious to have a guru. I think it is an inner experience which is difficult to share let alone justify. there are many moon-eyed guru followers who look to their gurus for salvation instead of being spiritual grown ups. On the other hand, there are many people whose egos are too big to surrender to the intimacy of this kind of relationship and so they cannot understand why others would do it.
I could go into a lot of intellectual explanation about the psycholigical advantages of this relationship built on archetypes, but I don't feel like it. Finding a guru is like falling in love.

Who can explain it? Love is often sillyand blind. Yet it calls us to give more of ourselves, it is a high enticement to stretch ourselves and to grow and change. Love itself is an altered, trance-like state. When someone is first falling in love, they have that secret smile, all knowing and shpinx-like. They are forgetful but they do not care. The are enraptured in their inner experience.

Altered States

Altered states are very useful in healing the psyche from traumas which often limit our development. that is why Frued used hypnosis in psychotherapy. altared states tap into the subconscious and if navigated skillfully, this can bring about awareness and harmony between the conscious and subconscious. It is the separation and lack of syncing between these two consciousnesses that cause a great deal of human psychological suffering. So potentially, the love between a guru and sisya (discipile) can be an incredibly powerful and transcendental tool for self-exploration and spiritual awakening.

Magical thinking

i do not expect my guru to magically fix my suffering and problems and enlighten me. I feel his compassion, his unconditional acceptance of me, and that has created a bridge that allows me to find healing in myself. Traditionally, a guru becomes your mother and father. My own mother and father had their own struggles. There was abuse and this was painful to me. It made me protect myself and be in survival mode. at around 25, i realized i wanted more to my life. i wanted to stop surving and to feel more and grow. Still, i carried the hurts of myself as a child into all my adult relationships, an inherant mistrust and fear of being hurt again. When i met my guru i felt so loved. i felt him as my ideal parent. at first i hid in that comfort, but over time it has forced me to grow. if i had not felt loved, i do not know how i would have begun that process of opening myself, of exposing my shadows.

"How did the rose ever open its heart and give to this world all of its beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light against its being, otherwise we all remain
too frightened."
-Hafiz, sufi poet

Healing the Inner Child

Over the years i have spent with my guru, i have been gently nudged out of my nest and pushed to grow. to take responsability for my choices on my path, to become more aware of myself and my motivations. to see how the places i felt unloved or abused by my parents had driven me to extremities, be it drugs, sex or spiritual practices. and that ultimately the healing and acceptance i seek i will have to find by holding that hurt child myself.

Love Heals
It is often the intimacy with another that spurs our growth, inspires us to risk and grow. There is a love we can only get from God and there is a love we can only get from human relationships. In the past I used my spiritual practice as a way to hide from human intimacy and vulnerability. My burning longing for god was in part because I did not trust the love of other people. I hope my love for God opens me to people and my love for people opens me to God. My love for guru walks both those worlds.

Can a Guru give you samadhi (enlightenment)?

When I arrived in India a week ago, I sat with my teacher. we were in a room full of people laughing and visiting. I sat on the floor as is the custom in india. after a few minutes I felt a waterfall of blissful energy running through my whole body. No, that not quite right. I felt more life running through my body, I felt more ALIVE. If i said i felt bliss it would convey only one emotion. I felt every emotion and yet complete stillness.

Why does my energy activate when i am near my teacher?

There are mystical explanations that would require some faith, like saying that my guru can activate and switch my levels of consciousness through the power of his own awakening and through the connection of our guru-sisya relationship. if that is too far out for you, it seems that we can all agree that we affect each other, that there is a sympathetic response to another person's energy. In the most obvious example of this, if you walk in the room and there is a very sad or very angry person, it immediately affects your own energy even if no words are exchanged. Some kind of emotional osmosis. Perhaps it is because of the nature of our relationship, the closeness, surrender and intimacy that i feel with my teacher that allows the energy to pass or resonate so easily between us.

Personal Practice and Initiation

Of course, there are also the personal practices of yoga, meditation, prayam and bandhas that charge the system and stimulate the brain. i am sure the many years of pranayam have changed the wiring of my brain and the amount of energy i am charged with. from my own experience though, it is invaluable to personal understanding and deepening of yoga to have a close relationship with a living teacher, especially if your practices involve initiation.

Sleepless nights and Spiritual Insomnia

"ïn this state there is no Siva (sun),
nor any holy union..
only a somewhat something moving
dreamlike on a fading road."
-lalla, female kashmiri mystic

and so it is...i woke up this morning early. my two travelling companions still asleep on the matresses that were laid out on the marble floor. it was nice to sleep last night. i hadn't slept for 3 days before that. not because of insomnia...but because when i come to india, it's like sticking my finger in a light socket of electricity...shakti. the land is very strong with this energy, and i feel it running through the soles of my bare feet , up my legs and electrifying my whole system. also, this happens when i am near my teacher. the last 3 nights i have laid down exaughsted from long days and found myself lying in the dark completely alert. i could feel the different energy centers whirring with energy, especially my heart. there was no self-doubt or anxiety that makes sleeplessness painful for the mind. a deep sense of peace, expansion and weightlessness as if i were floating in an ocean. i was aware of thoughts drifting by in the stream of consciousness. there was not much emotional weight connected with the thoughts, and so they floated past me easily. i would use the time to chant my guru mantra, over and over, folding time into circles of syllables like rolling haybales in a great field. even though i was not sleeping, i felt timeless.

No sleep for the saints?
there are many stories of saints and gurus who never sleep, or need very little sleep. a contemporary guru, Amma, performs the super-human feat of staying up for days, without eating or using the bathroom, hugging all the people who come to see her for blessings. my own guruji goes to bed around 10:30pm, gets up at 2am and works on returning emails or writing until around 5am, then lays down again to get up for morning chai between 6-7am. I have heard him snoring, so I do know he sleeps sometimes!

Kundalini affects your sleep
Since I began practicing tantra, which awakens kundalini, I have gone through periods of not sleeping, and being very creative and active. I have also gone through periods of sleeping many hours, the sleep descending on me like a heavy syrup that doesn't allow me to keep my eyes open. I always consider this a "re-booting"of my computer, after installing a new software program.

My body, my slave?

Though my spirits are good my eyes are still burning from no sleep. My poor body! It reminds me of one of my teachers I met on my first trip to India. He was a tiny, very intense swamy who came from the Sivananda and Bihar lineages of yoga. I loved to watch his excitement as he demonstated asanas and bandhas, his small, lithe body like a live wire. He would wrap his orange swamy sheath around and around, tucking it here and there, until he could flip upside down on his shaved head without exposing anything immodest. One day, after demonstrating a particularly difficult asana, he said, "I use my body like a slave", and he grinned from ear to ear. I don't use my body like a slave. I am very grateful for her and I listen attentively to her inner tunings and the ocean of intelligence moving constantly just under my skin.

Kundalini and insomnia:
"It is also likely that the practioner will experience insominia. However, yogis do not call it insomnia. They say, "Why should I sleep?" If you love a person very much and he stays with you and does not allow you to sleep, will you call that insomnia? There are yogis who do not sleep and are happy about it because yogis have an entirely different attitude. They say 1/3 of the life is wasted in sleeping. So when kundalini awakens in a yogi and consciousness is constant and consistent, and there is no waking, sleeping and dreaming, they are happy about it. Therefore, insomnia does not usually bother a person who has awakened kundalini. Just accept your sleeplessness and enjoy it. You can do japa meditation or just do some spiritual reflection. If this is not possible, just lie down and let it happen as it will."
-Kundalini Tantra, Swami satyananda Saraswati

Sex, Spiritual Awakening and Stimulating the Brain

Sexual Energy and Prudishness

in my practice of yoga and tantra, i have especially worked with moolah bandha, the cultivation of sexual energy. the seat of kundalini is said to be in the lower chakras. primarily the root and sex chakra. How can this be! The seat of evolution or untapped creative potential is in the no-no zone of the body?! It always makes me laugh how prudish spiritual seekers become about sexual energy, trying to refine it to more sublime spiritual states. this denial of the body seems a hard way to go, and a mirroring of the basic shame humans seem to have about living in a body. why are we ashamed to live in a body, why are we ashamed of sex? isn't it sex that brought us here, in the orgasmic embrace of our own human mother and father? what a god-like experience in creating a whole new life! But there seems to be an inherant struggle for us to accept or harmonize our spirit with our human side.

Original Sin and Reincarnation

why are we subjected to death and suffering in this life? In christianity this is explained as original sin. in hinduism, the soul is reincarnated succesively until the karma is burned up and the soul can be free of reincarnations. Is it so bad to be alive? The christians become obseesed with going to heaven and the hindus become obsessed with avoiding reincarnation. Why? I think it is because it is so hard to live in a world of opposites. Here, in this human form, it is inevitable that we will experience death as well as birth, that we will experience sorrow as well as joy. Pain is the opposite hand of pleasure, and both hands open the heart. in trying to avoid pain, we often deny the basic pleasure of being human, of enjoying the world life and the body. In tantra we say the body is not just the vehicle to God, the body is itself God. The marvel of the body must be proof of higher intelligence, whether you believe that exists outside in the form of a God or creator, or exists from within as a human attribute doesn't matter as much as learning to marvel at the wonder of your body and present human existence.

Money, Sex and Power, Punk Rock Yoga!

My teacher says shame is debilitating human evoltion and personal healing. if there is a blockage in your heart or mind, he says, the origin of that blockage is coming from the lower 3 chakras or development centers. the lower 3 chakras are Mooladhara (root, survival), Swadhistana (sex organ, creativity) and Manipura (navel, power). Or as I like to call them...Money, Sex and Power! Rock and Roll, this is some serious punk rock shit! Who says spiritual practice is boring?!

Here is some science (or esoteric propaganda if you are more skeptical):

Only using 10% of your brain:

"The awakening of kundalini and its union with Shiva is immediately and intimately connected with the whole brain. to explain it simply, we can say the brain has 10 compartments, and of these 9 are dormant and one is active. whatever you know, whatever you think or do is coming from one-tenth of the brain. the other nine-tenths, which are in the frontal portion of the brain, are known as the inactive or sleeping brain.

why are these compartments inactive? because there is no energy. the active portion of the brain functions on the energies of ida and pingala, but the other nine-tenths have only pingala. pingala is life (energy) and ida is consciousness (awareness). if a person is living but is unable to think, we say he has prana shakti (life force)but no manas shakti (intelligence energy). similarly, the silent parts of the brain have prana, but not consciousness.

therefore, a very difficult question arises, which is how to awaken the sleeping compartments of the brain? In kundalini yoga, it was discovered that the different parts of the brain are connected to the chakras. Certain areas are connected with moolahdara chakra...when you want to turn on an electric lamp, you do not have to touch the lamp itself, you operate it by means of a switch on the wall. Likewise, whem you want to awaken the brain, you cannot deal with it directly, you have to flip the switches which are located in the chakras. Mooladhara is only a manipulating center or switch, like the other chakras, but it happens to be easier to operate this switch."

-Kundalini Tantra, Swami satyananda Saraswati

To scratch or not to scratch?"...

i am convinced there is only 1 mosquito, that appears in many places in multitudinous forms. every time you kill one it is reborn again within 30 seconds.
especially the one who buzzes in your ears at night time when you are trying to sleep.

my feet are on fire from the network of red bites...i try not to scratch the itch.

before i left for india, i was listening to a cd of a a buddhist teacher, pema chodron. she said meditation is like learning not to scratch the itch. we all have thought patterns that are incredibly uncomfortable, fear, anxiety, anger, sadness. we get agitated and want to scratch them, to react. instead, in meditation, we learn to sit still and witness the thought forms, to patiently observe the discomfort.

ah, there it is.
the burning itch of my feet.
hello burning itch.
i see you are there.
i feel you.
i choose not to scratch you because it will only agitate me more.
ah hello again.
more burning itching of my feet.
i see you again.
i feel you again.
i choose not to scratch you again.
and so on...

if meditation has taught me anything, it's that nothing lasts forver.
not the pleasurable nor the painful
they come in waves
these mosquito bites will disappear in a few days.
and even now i forget about them when i eat something delicious or become absorbed in conversation.

the zen of mosquito bites?
the buddha nature of mosquito bites?
to itch or not to itch, that is the question?

freedom, fornication and the bondage of love

i was talking to a woman yesterday, she came to see guruji because she is married and had a lover outside her marriage. life is complicated. who is free of sin? what is sin? a state of mind we are living in or the karmic ripples of our choices? i live in a glass house. i relax my hand and set down my stone. no broken windows today.

I was reminded of a parable from the New Testament Bible:

As Jesus approached the temple, he was met by a group of the hired agents of the Sanhedrin who were dragging a woman along with them. As they came near, the spokesman said: "Master, this woman was taken in adultery -- in the very act. Now, the law of Moses commands that we should stone such a woman. What do you say should be done with her?"
Jesus knew the men who had brought her, they were politicians and he knew it was a trap set for him. He also knew her husband was an unkind man who cheated many people. He took a stick and silently wrote something in the dirt before her husband. He quickly left. He wrote something in the dirt in front of her accusers, and they too left.
Jesus said: "Woman, where are your accusers? did no man remain to stone you?" And the woman, lifting up her eyes, answered, "No man, Lord." And then said Jesus: "I know about you; neither do I condemn you. Go your way in peace."




this woman who came yesterday is a good woman who wanted to taste more in life. this is hard on her husband. I admire them for trying to find a solution beyond name calling. They have two children. It would be an extroardinary relationship that could hold so much.

She had been practicing tantra.
many people say tantra is dangerous because it opens up the shadow of our sexuality.
most of us hide our shadows. what to do when they are loosed, illuminated? most of us keep a tight reign on our desires...many "moral" people satisfy sensual desires through food and drink or other means. what to do when directly confronted by it? what to do when it is not true that you only want to know one person carnally?
what to do when your tantra practice begins to unravel you?
you could hide behind the "spiritual" aspect of your practice to defend yourself. you could say you only did it for spiritual awakening. but is that true? isn't there a human part that was lustful? is it wrong to follow desire and passion? must we always make more light and shadow in our spiritual practices too?
there is a truth of nature that does not take into account man's morals...like a volcano that kills men, woman, children, good and evil alike. the sun shines on saint and sinner equally.
there is a deep, primal desire to rub bodies together to create friction and fire that is in itself a song in worship of life. of course there are consequences...there is pregnancy, disease and there is betrayal in relationships.

do we practice for the sake of practice? or do we practice to change ourselves?
what happens if we begin to change and that threatens to change our whole lives?
we are responsible for our own free will, there is no escaping this.
we must find the balance between freedom and discipline.
they hoped guruji could give them answers. he did not, how could he?
he said that since he married them, they are both his children and he does not want to see his children breaking apart. he told them to find the balance and figure it out. strong medicine.
he told them to focus on their friendship. maybe marriage creates too much rigidity, think of a living friendship that is flexible.
what does it mean to be married? to be a family? can we extend these definitions?
find the balance. no one can give the answers, the answers must be found by living, making mistakes, trying a again. maybe we know ourselves a little better each time we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off.