an open letter to my father on fathers day

fathers day 2012
venice, ca

hey dad
i wish i could honor you but i'm still so angry at you
and that's just the truth
my heart doesn't understand and still beats with love for you
but it's got no where to go, no where to flow
you won't see me face to face
all your shame of the past has you hiding from me

i'm 37 dad...
it's been over ten years
i wonder, do you miss me?
i wouldn't know how to walk away from my son
he's 19, i started young
you know the math
so many girls who have been abused have babies young
i pray everyday to be a good mom to my son
i'm still working out the shit from my own past

all around the world i work with women who are angry from the abuse of men
where can the healing come from?
we are all One

i wish i could see you, i wish we could have a cup of coffee
i wish i was free to pour my heart out to you
so i do it here
in an email
i always hated hallmark cards and holidays that are supposed to hide all the problems we have
happy birthday, merry christmas
and now happy fathers day
i wish i could honour you dad, but i'm still so angry at you
but i'll send this wish
cuz it's all we have
happy fathers day

i miss you
i am waiting for you
don't let it die this way
let's make a new story between a father and a daughter
i am waiting for you

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

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.