What if God was a She?

“Tantra is the Goddess’s path, which means that it is for people who know how to use the physical and imaginal world as doorways into the ultimate, as well as for worldly delight. The Goddess is the mistress of these worlds as she is of the physical world, which is why at the heart Tantric practice there is deep respect for the feminine as spiritual authority.”

– Sally Kempton

This was the question posed to us in the first session of Faces of Power: An Indian Goddess Odyssey. (Which by the way, if you are interested in Indian mythology and wisdom I highly recommend these courses. Presented by Dr Raj Balkaran. I popped a link in below.)

Anyway, I digress (already? right?) So what was the question? Oh yeah. What if God was a She?

So Dr Raj, as we affectionately call him, his little posse of Goddess lovers, posed this question. It seems reasonable given we were about to embark of a study of divine feminine power, AKA the Goddess, but then he started to unpack this question and it kind of blew my mind. He does that. He’s actually very good at it. You think he’s just telling you stories, which he does, and then BOOM! mind blown.

So this idea, of feminine divine power is not new to me, I have been deeply immersed in goddess devotion for many years. What struck me deeply was his assertion that most of us in the West, whether Christian, Judaic or Muslim, have grown up in a culture where God is male. Okay, so far nothing new. But what kind of man is this male God? Well, he’s pretty detached, punitive and he’s of the desert. He doesn’t indulge in the kind of creativity that comes from commingling with bodies, there’s no genitals mentioned. He just summoned forth the world entirely on his own, from the force of his will and the power of his word. And on a deadline, one week to the day. And then he rests, somewhere far away from his creation.

Unlike all of the rest of creation (which is generally assumed to be in his image,) there’s no genitals, no uterus, no feminine contribution at all. This is a creation story entirely devoid of sensuality, of sexuality. It’s as dry as the desert he comes from. Now I do know in most of these traditions there are esoteric teachings that do involve the divine feminine – not to mention the profound feminine influence of Mother Mary and Sophia in these traditions, but what I am referring to here is the kind of God that is deeply ingrained in the psyche of anyone who grew up in an Abrahamic religious culture – the almighty power, the Alpha and Omega – and that God is a man. For many like me, possibly with a booming voice and a long white beard and flowing robes, standing in, yep, you guessed it, a barren desert.

The lone male in the desert is powerful analogy for me, in contrast to this Divine Mother, intricately embedded in the elements, in the land, the waters and in us humans. (Interestingly one of the epithets for Goddess Lakshmi is “moist” – isn’t that a beautifully sensual and evocative word for the divine feminine?)

“Divine Awareness manifests this world as an expression of its own joy. This remains true even when everything seems to be totally screwed up. It is the fundamental paradox of manifestation, at the core of tantra, that both ecstasy and suffering can co-exist within the overarching awareness.”

– Sally Kempton

“Asexual command,” is how Dr Raj describes it. Doesn’t that sound fun? Anyone list that in their Tinder profile? Either consciously or unconsciously, for those of us raised in these cultures, we understand that God is a he, and that male virtues are virtues, while feminine virtues are, well, something else, and are undervalued. It’s embedded in our very culture.

Now right here, I want to be clear that masculine and feminine does not pertain entirely to gender, it may somewhat, but we can all see that all humans have a degree of both. In fact the entire system of Tantrik yoga, which I’ll get to in a minute, if I don’t go off on another tangent, which I probably will, is entirely devoted to the awareness and mastery of the self through the ability to balance and direct these energies effectively.

So taking aside all your gendered stereotypes, just ask yourself, your innermost being, what if the divine was a She? What if the supreme being was feminine? Now obviously a supreme being is totality, so these divisions don’t really apply, but they do exist in our psyche and this plays out in every aspect of our lives and culture and how we are in the world. So ask yourself. What if God were a She?

And not a detached, disembodied woman, but an effulgent, bodacious, omnipresent, omnipotent, fierce, fertile and sensually powerful She.

Not a linear God that creates from nothing into a linear world where we are born, live and die. Our only chance at liberation in the afterlife, if we are lucky enough to graduate there. But a cyclical goddess, where all of life rises and falls as waves from the same cosmic ocean, nothing ever dies, it just plays in the endless cycle of creation, sustenance and dissolution back to the ocean of potentiality. Where liberation is always viable because everything is an aspect, an expression of her divine nature. She never abandons us to our messy lives, as she is in everything.

I truly believe this is what the Tantrik world view has to offer us. This is why so many Western women (and men, but it’s predominantly women) are experiencing deep awakenings through yoga. This is why I wanted to write this blog post because I am so fatigued by people thinking yoga is bending yourself into a pretzel while wearing fancy pants, and Tantra is sex. No! Just no.

Tantra is a school of wisdom teachings (actually many schools, but that’s a blog post in itself) that teaches embodiment. It teaches us how to access the divine through our human bodies. It teaches us that the very energy that courses through our physical being, that Kundalini Shakti is nothing other, nothing less, that this divine feminine energy. It’s God. And God is a She.

Now my dears, I know God is a loaded term, but let’s think of it as our fullest potential, as aligning ourselves with this untapped resource that we can access to become the best possible expression of ourselves. That’s all. The spiritual journey is a path of evolution, to realize all the untapped potential, that 96% of the mind that we don’t use, learning how to harness that.

I create the Father of the universe on the summit of the worlds. My origin is within the cosmic waters, in the universal sea. From there I extend to all the worlds and touch the ridge of Heaven. I blow like the wind, setting in motion all the universe. Far beyond Heaven and beyond this Earth extends my greatness.

– Vak Ambhrini, Rig Veda X. 125. 7-8

Let’s examine this a little. We all came from a woman’s body, yes? We talk of “Mother Nature” not father nature. We see in animals the commingling of the sexes to create new life, yet it is the female who births.

Would it not be intuitive then to see God, the ultimate creative power as feminine? In fact there is much evidence to suggest that our ancient ancestors thought exactly this, that the feminine was the form of divine creativity. That the mother was worshipped as the “Great Mother” the divine creator birthing all of life.

In the Indian tradition the world originates from the Hiraṇyagarbha – the cosmic womb – and all manifest reality is churned from the cosmic ocean of milk, both very feminine images. Yet the Hindu tradition was not immune to this God as male story either. Many of the early texts refer to this cosmic womb as Brahma, the creator God of the Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, creator, sustainer and transmuter.

Yet this ancient understanding of the Divine Mother never died out in India, as it did in so many cultures. The evidence is in art and temples of goddess worship which was most likely practiced as early indigenous shamanic traditions and adopted by early Tantrik practitioners.

Many scholar/practitioners of yoga believe these practices are encoded in the mythic stories of the Hindu tradition, notably the Puranas. A body of writings which spanned for a period of nearly 2000 years, and include a particularly fascinating text called the Devi Mahatmya, or “The Glory of the Goddess.”

The Devi Mahatmya text is a devotional text, and its aim is to praise the Divine Mother, in order to receive her power, her blessings, her protection, her Shakti. The philosophical foundation of the text is of the female as the primordial creator, and as the Tridevi, the secondary creator, the sustainer, and destroyer. She is presented, through a language of praise, as the one who dwells in all creatures, as the soul, as the power to know (jyana shakti), the power to will (iccha shakti) and the power to act (kriya shakti). She is the consciousness of all living beings, she is intelligence, she is matter, and she is all that is form or emotion. In short she is everything from the most absolute and divine (nirguna), to the most mundane and embodied (saguna.)

As well as being a deeply devotional text, it is also embedded (in a similar way to the Bhagavad Gita) with a cogent life philosophy and esoteric teachings.

I’m so grateful to scholar practitioners (someone who both studies and practices yoga) for bringing this text to light. It is equally as amazing as the Bhavagad Gita and yet possibly moreso because it glorifies the divine feminine power.

That’s part of what has propelled me to write. Honestly, I just haven’t felt compelled to write in a very long time, which I find sad as I think of writing as my primary form of creative expression. But recently as I have started to dive deeper into the teachings with my Chakra Sadhana students, I am finding a real hunger for this knowledge. It feels as if this wisdom is deeply embedded in us, and these wisdom teachings and yoga technologies are the key to unlocking them, and the shakti, the power that sustains them as a living, breathing intelligence in our bodies.

When people ask me what kind of yoga I teach, often smirking and enquiring about my body-bending-pretzel capabilities (“you must be very flexible”) what I always want to say is that yes, my body is healthier and more nubile than ever, but it is my mind, my consciousness that is truly wonderful. I want to say that I am a Tantrika, a practitioner of Tantrik yoga but everyone in the West thinks that means sex. It doesn’t. It doesn’t exclude sex either. See that’s what’s so delicious and tantalising about Tantrik yoga. It’s embodied.

“Tantra can perhaps best be defined as an energetic approach to the spiritual path, using various techniques including mantra, ritual, Pranayama, and meditation.”

– David Frawley

Unlike the austere and detached desert father God, the Goddess is both fully transcendent and fully embodied. She is all aspects of being. which is why there are so many “small ‘g’ goddesses” in India.

There’s the goddess of outcasts, of entering the invisible “older woman” years, even of diseases like small pox (some of these are thriving in CoVid times).

The are villages goddesses, “small ‘g’ goddesses” and then the great Goddesses the TriDevi (tri = three Devi = goddess), and in and through and around all of that, emerging from as, an aspect of, is the great Goddess, the Divine Mother, the ultimate power. Like a power source that all these luminous lights are plugged into, they embody and emanate her power. (And so do we)

Yet, she is all of this at once, she operates on all these levels, both as unmanifest and manifest. When we worship one aspect we worship all.

So it’s no wonder really when the notoriously uptight and repressed British arrived in India and saw images on temple walls of voluptuous goddesses and erect phallic symbols that they jumped to the conclusion that the Hindu religion was some kind of sex cult. And no less the hippy trailers who descending on India in the sixties and seventies, running from these repressive cultures, thought they found the Mecca of free love (no they just projected this notion onto the ashram scene with the implications of that still resounding today.)

Tantrik yoga is not about sex, nor is it not about sex, it’s just not obsessed with sex. See this is part of the problem with our male ascetic God, there’s no modelling on what healthy sex might be. On what healthy integration of the masculine and feminine principles might be. In Tantra there is an understanding of the need to balance our energies, including the masculine and feminine, the Shiva and Shakti. And that’s what those sexy temple images are representing. Not, let’s get down on the temple floor, but the divine union of Shiva and Shakti, which is a union of subtle energies, of the prana or life force as it moves up the central channel, uniting at the third eye. The ultimate cosmic consummation.

And of course the masculine is revered here too. In the Tridevi/Trimurti aspect of the divine, the Gods and Goddesses operate in consort with each other: Brahma and Saraswati as the creative consciousness and power, Vishnu and Lakshmi as the sustaining consciousness and power and Shiva and Kali as the destroying or transforming consciousness and power. They operate as a unified energy, like the Taoist image of Yin Yang.

The broad approach of Tantra contains ways to turn all ordinary activities – including breathing, eating, and sleeping – into rituals or sacred actions, but this does not mean Tantra is promoting such activities for ordinary gratification.

-David Frawley

So who cares? Most of us probably don’t associate with a religious world view, well not consciously, who cares what gender or atttributes our culture ascribes to God?

Well, that’s the rub isn’t it, because there’s a good chance that even the most agnostic amongst us is unconsciously embedded with this notion of this male desert God. An omnipotent power force devoid of sensuality or feminine traits, a power that seems detached from our everyday lives. What if that wasn’t the deal at all?

What if God, or Goddess, was so intricately and implicitly embedded in every layer of existence that we miss seeing her. Or only catch a conscious glimpse in times of awe, a sunset, a flower, a newborn baby?

What if every emotion, every flush of delight, of pleasure, of sadness, of joy, was shakti, was this mother divine flushing through you? What is She is inherent in every breath, every cell, every particle of life? Wouldn’t that change how you see life, how you see nature, other beings? How you see yourself.

This to me is yoga. I can’t do a handstand, or stick my head out between my legs, but I can sit and enter a state of conscious communion with this Divine Mother. I can engage in yoga technologies like kriya and pranayama, which activate the Divine Mother energy, the Kundalini Shakti in my body. I have learned how to access Sat Chit Ananda, truth, consciousness and bliss from my very mundane physical state.

The Goddess Speaks: Before the beginning of the universe I alone existed, with nothing other than myself. That Self-nature is called by the names of consciousness, wisdom and the supreme Brahman.

– Devi Gita IV.3

This yoga is body affirming and world affirming, it does not deny the physical world but sees it as a temple from which to embody the divine, to experience the highest expression of this life force.

And beyond the feeling of union and ecstasy of these practices allow me to embody, is a sense that if only more people had access to them and understood what they really do, couldn’t we live in a different world?

Dr Raj talks about the different leadership styles represented by the feminine divine. What does it mean to embody this approach to life?

I had a wonderful coaching session this week with my friend Katie Durgā. Her philosophy is that we have all the wisdom we need, but sometimes we need a bit of guidance in clarifying it. She took me through this session, focusing on current issues as well as a vision for my dream life. From this she helped me find some practical daily actions to work towards my goal of “channeling all of my energies into my dream life”

To me this exemplifies the feminine approach, drawing the wisdom from within rather than looking to external figures of authority to “tell” us what to do. As well as allowing the heart intelligence to guide us, appreciating it as an equally valid source of wisdom as the intellect.

What if God was not only a She, but an infinitely loving and involved Divine Mother, embedded in all things, in everything. Alive and pulsing through our every breath, through every shared word, and every interaction with other living beings. And what if we understood that our every moment, every thought, every action is co-creating the world with the Mother Divine. Would we not choose to live a little more harmoniously, a little more reverently. Would we not be creating a different reality?

Jai Ma!

Christina

ॐ

Christina is a Chakradance facilitator, Sattva yoga teacher, holder of sacred space, and wellbeing writer. She is passionate about wellbeing and brings her extensive knowledge though studies in the chakra system, yoga and shamanism to her practice.

Check out Dr Raj’s amazing wisdom school teachings at rajbalkaran.mykajabi.com

And Katie Durgā Mindfulness for some Goddess focused Yoga and Life Coaching at durgamindfulness.com

And of course, myself Ms Raw Mojo, bringing you Chakra Yoga and Chakradance to awaken your kundalini shakti – the divine within at rawmojo.com.au

The Wisdom of the Body

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Mary Oliver

I love this quote. Reading Mary Oliver feels like lying down on lush, damp grass, taking a deep breath and sinking in. But how often do we take the time to sink in and really inhabit our body?

The modern lifestyle creates a disconnect with the body, we become like a head with hands, thinking, thinking, doing, doing. Unless we habitually stop and practice meditation, dance or yoga, or spend time in nature, we may never really arrive in our body all day.

The wisdom of the body – with its endless and varied cacophony of signals and mechanisms – is our projection of spirit. This is our vehicle for incarnation. And like any vehicle, our body provides a stream of signals to guide and inform us. It provides the physicality, the flesh, the medium though which we interact with our physical, emotional and spiritual world.

From the soft lub-dub of our heart beat, to our churning guts, our racing pulse, our cold feet, the body conveys a series of messages, if we would only listen. 

From the cold knife-to-the-heart sensation of heartbreak and shame, to the butterflies of excitement, the soft animal of our body knows what it loves. It feels our pleasure and our pain.

The body contains truths unique to our being. Just as one person may enjoy eating peanut butter by the spoonful, another may fall into analphylactic shock at the smallest trace of nuts. We are similar, but not the same and neither are our bodies. As you embrace this, you can settle into a beautiful relationship with the unique body, the exquisite system of flesh and senses, that is you.

The yogis have always known this, that the stresses of the body must be smoothed out and soothed with yoga poses before the mind can be still and spirit can be heard. The yoga tradition is all about purifying the vessel to achieve union of body and spirit.

The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, shoulders and all the rest… It could float, of course, but would rather plumb through matter. Airy and shapeless thing, it needs the metaphor of the body… To be understood, to be more than pure light that burns where no one is. Mary Oliver

The first chakra, located at the base of our spine, is called Muladhara in Sanskrit, meaning root support. Like the root system of a tree, our root or base chakra energetically grounds us in the physical world.

Linking the chakras are a series of energy channels that, in their purest and unimpeded form, constantly flow and spiral up and down the spinal column, keeping our energetic system in connectivity to both the earth and ethereal energy above, with the chakras like little hubs in between.

Caroline Myss describes these channels and the chakras as our ‘energy anatomy’ and a ‘blueprint for managing spiritual power’ and that the purpose of most spiritual teachings – though often misunderstood – is to teach us how to manage this system of power.

Anodea Judith calls the chakras the ‘architecture of the soul.’ She says a chakra is a centre of organisation for the reception, the assimilation and the expression of life force energy. The chakras are the portals, the mediators, between the inner world and the outer world. 

Chakras can be described as processing centres of energy and information, as well as gateways for this energy and information to flow into, out of, and through. Note that when I refer to ‘energy’ I use the term to describe the concept used in many esoteric traditions of the vital life force energy, or spiritual energy, also known as prana or qi.

Many of us have sustained emotional and physical traumas in life which may have affected the formation and flow of our chakras. This biography of experience is energetically recorded in our chakra system (as well as the cells in our bodies.) This can cause our chakras to compensate by either restricting energy flow, becoming deficient or under active, or by becoming over active and excessive. Or even a combination of both. 

‘So what?’ You ask, ‘it’s only energy,’ read on, and I’ll tell you why this kind of imbalance can have deep and far reaching effects on your life.

Your biography becomes your biology. Caroline Myss

Linked to physical realities of life – security, shelter, sustenance, family, tribe – Deedre Diemer writes that the first chakra is associated with primordial trust. It is the chakra associated with our basic instincts for food, shelter, sex and survival.

Developmentally this chakra emerges between conception and eighteen months, and is informed by our environment during that time. If we felt safe and nurtured and our needs were taken care of, if we were held lovingly by our mothers, and picked up when we cried, chances are this chakra is embedded with a core sense of security.

However up to 50% of people report that they either suffered birth trauma or there were significant stressors in their family of origin or community – war or poverty, for example – to inhibit this secure bonding from occurring. Not mention subsequent life trauma that can affect our sense of security. As such, we may have an overreactive first chakra, that is out of balance and causes us to compensate in a variety of ways.

If we are imbalanced in this chakra it can manifest as a lack of physicality, being underweight, spacey and anxious. Or it may manifest as an excessive physicality in being overweight and overly attached to the physical by hoarding, over eating and indulgence in pleasure, or over-accumulation of stuff.

I often wondered how I could be both spaced out and have a tendency to over-indulge. Anodea Judith points out that as these extremes are both compensatory behaviours to address an issue in this chakra we may experience symptoms of both.

This very body that we have, that’s sitting here right now… With its aches and pleasures… is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive. Pema Chodron

If you imagine the root chakra like a plant in a pot, it needs a degree of support to keep the soil and moisture in, but too tight a restraint will not allow it to grow.

In the same way a deficient base chakra contracts too tightly into its core, not allowing enough room for energy to come in, to have, to hold, to manifest. In this scenario we are literally strangling our energy flow, the earth energy that needs to flow up and through our base chakra is restricted and bottlenecked, creating blockages that may literally prevent us from manifesting or maintaining physical things, including our own healthy robust body, as there is no room to receive. This kind of person can be literally disembodied, spacey, anxious, ungrounded.

The person who compensates for an unbalanced base chakra though physical over-indulgence, allows excessive earth energy into their system. They may feel heavy, lethargic, they may be overweight, overeat, hoard and covet possessions, money and power. It is as if they use physical things, including their own body weight to compensate for deficiencies in this chakra, perhaps to literally compensate for a lack of maternal holding in their formative years.

Again this results in a blockage. Too much energy, when it is held and hoarded in this way impedes the flow just as much as constricted energy. It’s akin to the Buddhist concept of attachment, it is the attachment to our desires that causes suffering. It causes us to get stuck in a unmanageable mess of our own making.

As Albert Einstein once said, the most fundamental decision we make in life, is whether to see this world as inherently good and beneficent or not. This worldview informs everything we think, feel, and do. How we perceive and thus operate in the world. The base chakra question, is this world safe for me to embody?

Erik Erickson wrote that this first stage of psychosocial development – from birth to eighteen months – is a time when either trust or mistrust of the world around us is established. This informs our behaviour at the most fundamental level. If I can trust the world, I can allow myself to have it. I’m not suspicious. I am accepting.

If something is not safe, we won’t allow ourselves to have it, you wouldn’t drink poison, in the same way if your inherent world view is of an unsafe place, you won’t fully allow yourself to engage in it. You may stay detached, non-committal, risk-avoidant, and fearful.

We either master the fundamentals of survival or we become one of life’s victims. Ambika Wauters

So much of our sense of our body and our self comes from the initial holding experience provided by our parents. Anodea Judith says that this initial holding wires up our brain body interface, it literally teaches us awareness that we have a body, we are in a body. This all comes through touch. Here we get imprinted with a cellular message of safety and security. Our instincts are quietened, not alarmed. This is a good grounding in the first chakra.

But what if you didn’t get this. What if you grew up in fear uncertainty, violence, instability? What did you have to do to yourself in order to survive this fundamental stage? If our needs are not met, our survival instincts start freaking out, our central nervous system is wired in a permanent state of anxiety, our body gets over-amped. We become over-vigilant, fearful, unable to settle, insecure. This kind of person doesn’t know how to calm down.

This may explain why so many people depend on alcohol, drugs, sex, food and shopping to self-soothe. They simply have no mechanism to return to a state of calm without external stimulus. Hence researchers into addiction like Gabor Mate suggest there are significant and demonstrable links between unresolved childhood trauma and addiction.

Nothing records the effect of a sad life as graphically as the human body. Naguib Mahvouz

The lesson of Muladhara chakra is grounding, a full inhabiting of our physical bodies as the embodiment of our connection to the element of earth. To cease existing primarily in our heads and inhabit our bodies. To cease grasping onto people, places and things as the source of our security.

Here we can experience pleasure and pain, connect with our feelings, and release these accumulated emotional energies through our connection with the physical.

Movement through our bodies allows energy to flow, it can trigger blockages to shift and cause accumulated energies to be released or redistributed and balanced.

Movement brings us into our physicality, brings our energy down from our heads into our roots, allowing a real connection with not only our physical selves, but the physicality of the world around us.

For those who, like myself, have a lifetime’s accumulated negative body issues, this takes patience and self-compassion. Making peace with the body I have despised, abandoned and abused for many years is a process that does not come overnight.

After several years of Chakradance practice, alongside many years of yoga and meditation, I have found a degree of peace and comfort in my own skin that I have never before known. At times my body even brings me immeasurable joy. 

Here in this body are the sacred rivers, here are the sun and the moon, as well as all the pilgrimage places. I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body. Saraha Doha 

To encourage our vital energy to flow freely we must let go of our attachments and defences. The chakras can be blocked by our learned defences, either something we want to keep out or something we don’t want to let out. What kinds of things would cause these defences? Toxic energy, fear and violence are all things we may shut down to avoid. Similarly we may repress our own ‘negative’ emotions – anger, sorrow, exuberance – having learned it was unsafe to express these. 

Sometimes the residue from trauma gets stored in our body and our energy system. While traditional psychotherapy may assist at a mental and behavioural level, we also need to release these wounds energetically, in order to release the attachments and defences they cause us to act out – often unconsciously – in our lives.

As in all things balance is the key. An over-amped base chakra may cause us to be frozen in fear or rushing about in a heightened state of anxiety. What we ideally want is movement that is grounded and purposeful. We need to reconnect with the nurturing aspects of Mother Earth.

To ground we invite this energy back down through our body and reconnect ourselves energetically with the earth.

Traditionally humans spent most of their lives in direct contact with the earth, walking, living and sleeping on the ground. In the modern world we are so disconnected from the earth in layers of buildings, shoes, vehicles. 

I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. Mary Oliver

In Chakradance we reconnect our base chakra to the earth by dancing to earthy tribal beats, moving powerfully through our legs and feet. We may visualise ourself as a seed planted in the earth, provided with all the sustenance, support, and security it needs to grow. We see ourselves setting down strong roots as we grow into the world, like a giant majestic tree firmly rooted in the soil, so our branches can safely reach up and out into the sunshine.

Anodea Judith says that the best way to restore balance to the base chakra, is to open the leg channels. The legs connect us to the earth and the energy flows up through our feet and legs and into the base chakra. Our legs are like two prongs of an electric plug – we need to plug in to the earth energy to ground, receive and release.

Grounding exercise by Anodea Judith

This exercise will work whether your base chakra is deficient excessive or both, even if you feel your base chakra is balanced, grounding is always energising and restorative.

1. Stance

Stamp your feet a little to get the energy moving, then stand with your feet shoulder width or even a little further apart.

Make sure your feet are pointing straight or even slightly pigeon-toed, bend your knees slightly so your knee sits directly above your second toe.

Press down and out with your feet, as if you are trying to push apart two floorboards with your feet. So you want your feet firm and active.

2. Exercise

As you inhale gently bend your knees deeper, keeping your upper body upright, shoulders above hips.

As you exhale, slowly push down and out through your feet to straighten your knees, ensuring you do not lock your knees at the top. Do this very slowly.

Remember to keep the tension and engagement, the pushing sensation through your legs and feet.

3. Visualisation

As you exhale and push down, visualise energy from the base chakra in your pelvic floor pushing down through the core of your legs and feet and down into the earth.

(if your legs begin to tremble this is a good sign – you are shifting blockages and allowing energy to flow. If there’s any pain, stop)

If you feel you have deficient energy visualise drawing energy up through your legs and into your base chakra. 

If you feel you have excessive energy, visualise pushing that excess down into the earth.

If you’re not sure, just visualise both. Releasing in the exhale, receiving on the inhale.

4. Affirmation

As you exhale say ‘I am in here’ then ‘I am in here, and this is mine’ – really feeling yourself in your body.

You can do this up to 10 times. Trust your body, stop when you’ve had enough. You will build up your strength over time.

Practise this exercise daily and notice the difference after a week. Ideally this exercise will clear your channels, allow you to ground, release and receive energy through your base chakra.

I am one with the source, in so far as I act as a source, by making everything I have received flow again. Raimon Panikkar

I’m running a 10 day online Base Chakra retreat Reboot Your Base Chakra starting Friday 21 August. Bookings essential. Click here. Limited spaces.

I’d love to meet you there.

Namaste,

Christina

ॐ

Christina is a Chakradance facilitator, Sattva yoga teacher, holder of sacred space, and wellbeing writer. She is passionate about wellbeing and brings her extensive knowledge though studies in the chakra system, yoga and shamanism to her practice.

The resistance is the way

Ask yourself ‘Who am I? Am I just the sum total of my past, my fears, my desires or is there something more? Anand Mehrotra

It feels like there’s a lot of intense energy moving through the world right now. Nature’s intelligence is always ultimately pushing us in the direction of evolution, but it doesn’t necessarily feel like that.

For those in the flow of nature’s intelligence, in their dharma, their purpose, who have cleared out their own emotional baggage and karma, those who are not resisting it, it’s a powerfully fast-moving time of manifestation.

But what about the rest of us poor mortals? Those of us who still experience resistance? Or who are experiencing some really challenging times?

Resistance is painful. We all understand intuitively that whatever it is we want to do, if there are forces pushing us in that direction and we are resisting the push, well, it’s going to get really uncomfortable, really quick.

Resistance is simply any way in which we are not embracing the present moment, exactly the way it is. Resistance can be very obvious or very subtle.

Resistance essentially falls into two broad categories: craving and aversion. Craving is wanting something that isn’t here (“I wish I had more money.”) Aversion is wanting something that is here to not be here (“I wish I didn’t have to get up right now.”)

Learn to playfully engage with the world and to experience it without being enslaved by it. Anand Mehrotra

I experience resistance. People often find that surprising because I do all the “right” stuff, I meditate daily, I have a daily yoga practice, I teach, I study, I write. But I do it all with varying degrees of resistance. Some days I am in the flow, or my morning practice gets me in the flow, and it’s wonderful. But at the moment, the majority of the time there’s resistance.

It varies in degree, and interestingly resistance always seems to intensify when I am about to shift into a higher experience of consciousness.

My teacher Anand Mehrotra speaks to this, and also tells us resistance is natural. As soon as we set an intention for anything, the polarity will show up, the resistance will show up.

If we want to evolve, we will often experience apathy and inertia. If we want to be more loving, all the fearful, hateful stuff inside of us rises up. This is natural and good (it doesn’t feel good, I know, if feels like trudging through waist-high slimy sludge.) But it arises so it can be transcended.

The lizard brain is the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you don’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance. Seth Godin

We cannot be in denial that we contain all these polarities. There’s a lot of conditioning, of shame, of trauma stored in our subconscious, stored in our body. And the ego-mind LOVES to remind us how small and incapable we are. Why?

Because it exists in fear, it thrives in fear, because its job is to control and manage, usually by keeping our lives really small and manageable. If we truly evolve, the ego-mind doesn’t get to be in control. It still helps us drive a car or assemble furniture from IKEA, but beyond this basic nuts and bolts stuff, it doesn’t get to control us.

Ironically whenever we start practices that allow us to evolve, the opposition arises.

At the moment there is challenge the mind’s ‘reasoning’ will appear. Observe this but favour your intention. Act from your intention. Anand Mehrotra

For me, EVERY time I put myself out in the world in an evolutionary way, say for example going to India and dedicating myself to a month of intense yogic training and wisdom teachings with a highly evolved spiritual teacher and lots of amazing people, the resistance arises.

Okay, the resistance doesn’t just “arise” it sends a frickin army!

“You’re not good enough” “Who do you think you are?” “Phoney “ “Bad mother (bad person, generally)” “You don’t belong” “You never stick at anything…” And on. And on…

I think you get the idea. And with these accusations comes a barrage of memories, like supporting evidence to back up these claims. ALL the times I fell short, or gave up, or fudged my way through something I didn’t understand. ALL the times I was even a little bit less than perfect.

The mind is its own prison. It is constantly creating problems and then trying to solve them. This is insanity. Anand Mehrotra

This is how depression works. The mind encounters a challenging situation or emotion, and being essentially a pattern-recognition system, it brings up ALL the other times you experienced this. Now when you are driving a car or assembling furniture from IKEA, this memory is usually helpful, it’s how we learn to do the mechanics of life.

BUT so not helpful when your mind is reminding you of all the other times you felt bad or “failed.”

Because the ego mind is reductionist and fear-based. It will produce memories of all the times you felt less-than or failed at something, but it won’t remind you how in SPITE of this, you persevered and got through that situation. I know you did, because you’re still here.

So, as I said I experience a lot of resistance and usually I just “act better than I feel.” What does that mean? Don’t want to get up early and mediate? Just meditate anyway. Don’t want to do my yoga practice? Just do your yoga practice. Don’t want to go to work, do the work of running a business… You get the idea.

This is okay temporarily, but if the resistance gets really strong and over a period of time, it does wear down my motivation. Just because we all get resistance doesn’t mean we just succumb to it. We have to increase our staying power, our passion towards our practice, towards the right actions in our lives, in order to transcend resistance. The beauty of resistance is that it is showing us what is in our way.

Doing new things invariably means obstacles. A new path is, by definition, uncleared. Only with persistence and time can we remove debris and impediments. Only in struggling with impediments that made others quit can we find ourselves on untrodden territory –only by persisting and resisting can we learn what others were too impatient to be taught. Ryan Holiday

So I was talking to my friend/student the other day about resistance, because she’s feeling it too. Of course, we all do! Remember THAT next time your thoughts tell you everyone else is doing better than you. No, it’s not true! You just can’t see inside their heads.

So we were talking and, as always happens to me, the lightbulb went on. I really do try to learn as much as I can to be helpful for myself and my students, in terms of what practices really work to help us keep evolving, keep moving forward in life. Because I think, whether we call ourselves ‘spiritual’ or not, that’s what we all want.

So what always happens – and I want to pause a moment here and really take this in, because I am always guided, we all are, even when I can’t see it. What ALWAYS happens is that I get the answer, not once, but over and over from several directions at once. It’s like the higher intelligence is shouting “Are you hearing me?”

I make this flow of wisdom possible by reading spiritual texts and subscribing to A LOT of podcasts, blogs and social media pages that discuss the spiritual or evolutionary path, so if you struggle, I really recommend doing this.

Find the people that inspire you, the ones that actually breakthrough your dark cloud (I share about it here in this post) and subscribe to their stuff. Subscribe to a few because when you keep hearing the same message over and over, it starts to sink in. Or sometimes it is the messenger, you can hear it from one source more than another.

So what I heard was three things. (And I added a fourth.)

1. Our difficult or resistant times guide us either away from or in a particular direction AND they build the character and the staying power we need to evolve.

2. Resistance is not IN the way, it IS the way. (See 1)

3. Appreciation shifts resistance.

4. Talk to (helpful) people about it

I like the word ‘appreciation’ rather than gratitude. Because when I feel super-shitty and someone tells me to be grateful, unless I can actually take the action of writing a gratitude list, it often makes me feel worse.

Appreciation has less baggage for me. It doesn’t involve me feeling indebted to the thing or person I’m appreciating. It’s just a noticing.

If your conditioning shows up, come into your heart and activate the feeling of gratefulness. Anand Mehrotra

But it works! So I spend a moment every morning and evening (like two minutes) and even during the day if I’m a little off, or sometimes it just arises quite beautifully, in appreciation.

How do I do this? I close my eyes. I put my hand on my heart. I focus on my breath. I begin to feel appreciation for an aspect of my body, for where I live, for my friends, my work, my spiritual practice, and then I sit for a minute and let all the appreciative thoughts flow in.

This is a technique I learned from Gabrielle Bernstein, who is great for short daily practices that really shift your attitude.

At the moment it’s not hard to appreciate the simple things. As bushfires rage through our beautiful country, the destruction and toll to the lands, animals and people, humbles me. I see people without homes, who have lost everything they owned. I see the suffering so close to home as well as the outpouring of love and support, and my heart is broken open.

It makes me want to do my practice, to offer up every ounce of positive energy towards healing these lands, and to be guided in how to help ease the suffering.

And unsurprisingly after this, I feel less resistance, I do my practice. And then I feel so appreciative and it flows in into my day.

Now this is no magic bullet. You have to be vigilant about your energy environment, so as soon as you feel that resistance come in, do it again. Do it fifty times a day. Do it in your head while you’re at work, with your kids. It will only uplift the energy around you.

One shouldn’t just accept something that is arising in the field of your awareness as they are your habits, your patterns, so one has to be observant. Anand Mehrotra

Another tip is to avoid procrastination like the plague. It is a mental plague. I’m a great procrastinator from way back. However if you really want to shift resistance, don’t let procrastination in.

People often marvel at my ability to get up early and practice. I can only do that when I don’t hit the snooze button and don’t procrastinate. Get up and get straight into your morning practice.

My teacher Anand talks about how meditation gets us before thought, well this does too.

Get into practice before your mind catches up and starts telling you all the things you’d rather be doing (which FYI you can do after your practice and you’ll enjoy them so much more.)

I say talk to ‘helpful’ people. You all know what that means. We can purposely seek out people who will justify our inertia and convince us that we shouldn’t pursue our path.

However finding relevant people to share with really reduces our sense of isolation and aloneness.

The ego mind likes to divide and conquer, so just find someone you feel is trying to practice consistently and tell them what’s happening for you.

During my recent yoga training in India, this time I really kept to myself. Not sure why, it just happened that way. I had one of two people I regularly talked to, but generally I was really quite introverted.

After the training I had dinner with two other students, and I shared very honestly about how challenged I had felt at times, all the murky self-doubt and self-hatred that arose and how alone I had felt in that.

Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition. Zen parable

Not only were they shocked because I looked like I was sailing through the training with not a worry in the world (hello the story of my life, I always LOOK okay even when I’m not) but they had the same kinds of experiences. Even if it was two weeks too late to help my crisis, it was so comforting to hear what they went through and how we all have these resistant thoughts.

Sharing helps other feel less alone too, I forget this sometimes. By making myself open and vulnerable, I often articulate what is arising for another person. It eases their sense of isolation.

When in resistance my mind is constantly brokering deals, trying to shorten the practice, do less time, “I already did japa practice so I don’t need to meditate.” Bargaining with myself. It’s exhausting and it takes all the beauty out of my devotion. There’s a lack of willingness, of love. It feels like I’m up against a brick wall.

Ungratefulness is resistance to life, unkindness to life. Anand Mehrotra

I understand that sometimes I do have to almost drag myself to the practice, that’s what commitment is, and that the truly important thing is to practice no matter what. But I don’t like it. It feels disrespectful to the divine, to the teachings, the wisdom. I feel like a petulant child who is offered the most delicious hand made sweets and sulks asking for McDonalds.

Certainly there’s an element of overwhelm. Returning from six weeks in India, integrating new practices into my routine and my working life. It’s a period of integration.

Today though I finally feel the shift. I feel the devotion is back in my practice and I am so grateful. I truly appreciate it. After weeks of fluctuating, of struggling, it is so beautiful to feel grounded in my practice.

It’s like you try to catch a wave, you get dumped, you try to catch a wave, you get dumped, you try to catch a wave, you ride the wave, and then you have let go of the memory of all the times you got dumped and you go with it. That’s life. 

Sometimes our walls exist just to see who has the strength to knock them down. Darnell Lamont Walker

At the moment it feels as if Mother Nature is pushing back with the unprecedented bushfires sweeping my country, awakening our hearts to the deep love and appreciation and need we have for these lands and animals and fellow people. Rudely awakening us to our resistance to be the caretakers of this precious earth.

Our inner resistance also forces us to step up, to raise more passion, compassion and dedication in ourselves. 

Sometimes transformation involves destruction. The deities of yoga demonstrate that, the endless cycles of generation, organisation and destruction. The universe behaves in this way too. And what are we if not part of these endless cycles?

Sharing practice, through teaching, helps me get out of this negative feedback loop of resistance to practice. When I teach, I bring the best of myself to the practice. I want to inspire my students, I want them to experience the full spectrum of yoga. The shifts it creates at every level of being.

In my personal yoga practice I use kriyas to activate my solar plexus/navel centre, and the energy of will and staying power, and I chant to Hanuman, the archetypal energy of service, strength and devotion.

And not surprisingly, as soon as I shift into an attitude of devotion and service, everything shifts.

So I encourage you to see your own resistance as a boulder in the river, find a way to flow around it, over it, acknowledging that the obstacle, the resistance, is the way, and the only response is to open up and flow.

The most important yoga pose is the pose of the grateful heart – without that there is unnecessary struggle. Anand Mehrotra

Hari Om Tat Sat. Namaste. Blessings.

ॐ

Christina

Art by Elena Ray

If you are interested in learning more about my practice, Sattva Yoga and Chakradance please click the image below 🙏

So what? Now what?

Your battles inspired me – not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead. James Joyce

I have been listening to a lot of podcasts recently. It’s something I do when I’m struggling in life. When my head is messy and I’ve said “Not this” to my thoughts so many times I feel like my brain is wound up like a pretzel.

I find listening to other people talk is a calming distraction from my own thoughts.

Podcasts are amazing, there’s so many on every subject imaginable. I listen to podcasts on Vedic meditation and yoga, but also I just find people who are kindred in their outlook on life, and who are willing to talk authentically about this living condition.

Because that’s how it feels to me. Life is a condition I’m experiencing. I have this body and this nervous system, and through these vehicles I experience life. Through many years of meditation and spiritual experience I have come to understand that I also have a consciousness that is far more subtle and powerful than I may ever truly comprehend.

But when I am afraid, when I am overwhelmed by this physical experience, my consciousness snaps back to fear, and I am left with the monkey mind and a freaked-out nervous system.

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions. Hafez

All of my practice is geared to develop mastery over my self, and meditation is a sweet relief when I feel this way, the problem is my mind distracts me and tells me to do anything else but practice. Yet I persevere, I am nothing if not persistent.

I need to be around people who also experience life this way, who, when faced with struggle or challenge or difficulty, are consumed with a curiousity as to how to master themselves under any conditions.

I tend to listen to podcasts the way I surf the ‘net. I just find one randomly that I like, and then there are a range of similar suggestions, or a guest on a podcast may have their own podcast, and I just let serendipity flow.

So this week, in addition to my regular vedic podcasts, I have listened to actor Dax Shepherd and TV personality Osher Gunsberg, not people I would have normally gravitated towards, but both really interesting, insightful, authentic men.

I have always found Osher Gunsberg really likeable, I had a huge crush on him 20 years ago when he was a long-haired music presenter. What I didn’t know is the depths of his struggles with addiction and mental illness. I won’t tell his story, I’ll pop the links in below and you can listen for yourself, I highly recommend you do. I can’t remember hearing someone share so authentically about mental illness and recovery, alongside such deep intelligence and humour.

Anyway, all this is just a supremely long-winded way to acknowledge that the title of this post and my new favorite soundbite to arrest my stinking thinking “So what? Now what?” is attributed to Osher Gunsberg. I’ll probably quote him some more in the future, he has lots of good stuff to say.

So I mentioned that listening to podcasts helps when I am struggling, what also helps is finding these little soundbites that help me arrest unhelpful thinking. My mentor has gifted me “hands off” (meaning stop trying to control everything) and “not this” (meaning not this line of thinking.)

You yourself are your own obstacle, rise above yourself. Hafez

Osher explained that his mentor (he is also in recovery from addiction) had gifted him “So what? Now what?” Meaning that rather than getting stuck in the story of what is ‘happening’ in my life, accept what is, defuse it with “so what?” and then ask what action I can take “now what?”

Now let me be clear. I do not mean glossing over hard stuff, or being falsely positive and upbeat. What this means to me is the end of ruminating and worry over things that are out of my control. It means a gentle self-enquiry into what I can do right now to move through the conditions I find myself in.

This last few months has been really challenging. I knew it would be. My beautiful, intelligent, sensitive son, who is an amazing human being, who happens to be ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). Who has always experienced high levels of anxiety and emotional distress from this living condition, is doing his Year 12, his final year of High School.

It’s a stressful year, constant assessments, pressure from the school and peers as to scores, and subjects, and what are you going to do with your life? Er, live?

Add to that being a 17 year old with all that goes along with that, I mean I think we can all remember what a confusing and topsy-turvy time that was.

Add to that experimenting with alcohol and drugs, taking the first forays into sexuality…

I mean, shit, could we pile more existential angst on our kids?

And I feel for him, I really do. But living with this rollercoaster of ups and downs and moods and heavy emotional outbursts has been taking a toll on me too.

I think every Mum probably feels the same thing. You go through big chunks of time where you’re just thinking, “This is impossible – oh, this is impossible.” And then you just keep going and keep going, and you sort of do the impossible. Tina Fey

As I have written before, I am a solo parent. My son’s dad is currently moseying around Asia, but as my son said, “What’s the difference when he’s here anyway?” I don’t say that to be harsh, it’s just how it is. How it always has been, I’m the one who’s always here for him.

So, hence the need for podcasts and snappy soundbites to quell the ever-growing tidal wave of freak-out that is brewing in me.

Some of my son’s behaviour scares me. I’m scared for him, but also for me as his ‘meltdowns,’ which freaked me out when he was seven, become really terrifying now he is a six foot, nearly 18 year old young man.

I watch his drug taking with great concern, as someone who wasted (pun totally intended) her teens and twenties getting high, I don’t want that for him.

When he came home the other night, unable to speak, and passed out, I checked on his breathing every hour until 4am. I finally fell asleep only to be woken at 5:30am with him having a freak-out at the end of my bed. Then I meditated, then I went to work, and moved through the day, like so many days right now, like a zombie.

Now don’t get me wrong. I didn’t meditate because I was trying to be a good role model or super-spiritual (I was way too tired for that kind of BS). I meditated like a drowning person grabs for a life-raft. Because I was losing it.

Forever is composed of nows. Emily Dickinson

At least my son can talk to me, and although it’s super uncomfortable at times for me, I’m glad we have that. I can offer support, outside help, but I can’t force solutions. He has to choose his own way.

And I won’t pretend I am handling all this well. It’s really, really, fucking hard. And I am really, really fucking scared.

And I am so full of shame. I don’t want to tell anyone what is going on. I don’t want them to think less of my son, or of me.

That’s why, as I listened to Osher Gunsberg talk so candidly about his mental illness, his psychosis, his alcohol and drug abuse, his suicidal thoughts, and say that he knew he needed to talk about it, because otherwise how will people know? How will people know that when you are at the lowest point, that suicidal thought is not a dark thought, it’s a relief. It seems like the best idea you have ever had.

Yeah. I thought. How will other people know if I just pretend everything is okay.

The biggest mistake I made, other than staying in an abusive relationship so long – it was complicated, it’s always complicated – was keeping it a secret. Secrets keep us stuck and sick and in shame. So I am not doing that anymore. I am just speaking the truth as best I see it of what is happening in my life.

Many people will judge me, I know. They will think I am just not spiritual enough, if I was a better yogini or meditator, a better mother, none of this would be happening. I know because that’s what I tell myself.

But I also know that someone reading this will be crying with identification, because they will be going through this stuff too, and they might be too scared to tell someone, but as they read my words, they will know they are not alone.

I don’t have any answers. I don’t know what’s going to happen. What I do know is that I am responsible for keeping myself as sane and well as I can through this. I do that for me, and I do it so when those around me need me, I have the strength to show up for them.

So today I am not worrying, or sitting in shame. I am telling it how it is, but I won’t keep thinking about it today. Today is a good day. My son is safe, he is happy, we have talked about what we needed to talk about.

Now is the time to know that all that you do is sacred… Now is the time for you to deeply compute the impossibility that there is anything but grace. Hafez

So now what? I ask myself what I would be doing if I only had myself to think about. What am I doing with my life? Well, I would be writing and reading, practicing yoga and meditation, preparing myself physically and financially to go back to India in November and do the next round of my yoga teacher training.

So I do that. And I strip the beds and vacuum the floor and do the laundry and prepare food. I do all the “Now what?’ stuff that needs to be done.

I’m not going pretend it all magically goes away, but I do see how I can carve out some moments of calm and respite for myself. I see how my life can still go on in spite of outside conditions.

And when my son comes home, I’m not stressed or freaked out. I am loving. We have a nice interaction, except for some pretty standard “where’s my shoes?” type stuff. He goes out again.

I know I have choices, I can spend the time he’s out worrying, or I can appreciate the calm. I turn up my music, burn incense and decide to sit for some more meditation. All these things nourish me. That’s what I can do for now.

And if the dreaded “phone-call” comes, the crisis, the drama, I can deal with it then. Hopefully with more ability to respond than react, to act with love and not fear.

Life can be really, really hard, but “So what? Now what?”

Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” Mother Theresa

Hari Om Tat Sat. Namaste. Blessings.

ॐ

Christina

❤️ Podcasts I love

Osher Gunsberg

Osher Gunsberg sharing his story on Seize The Yay

Anand Mehrotra with Rachel Hunter

DAX Sheperd and Elizabeth Gilbert

The Vedic Worldview

Tommy Rosen Recovery 2.0

 

 

Are we there yet? The end of seeking

It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation. Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up – release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature. For some of us, our love of the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened. Joanne Macy

Listening to a podcast recently, the presenter talked about how it is only when we stop being a spiritual seeker, and we become a spiritual student, that the real work begins. For many the distinction may seem moot, but it resonated with me. I have spent years seeking, I think truly, my whole life.

From my childhood star-gazing and pondering the big questions, to my love of psychedelic music as a teenager, to a deep plunge into mind-altering substances as a young adult, The common thread was seeking. Seeking what? Meaning, purpose, the answer to the big “why are we here?” The question that has, in equal parts, fascinated and plagued me since the age of five.

Seeking, and the curiousity that drives it, has probably saved my life too many times to count. That quest for something deeper and more profound, that had driven me into the depths of drug addiction and periods of dark depression, has also pulled me out. It was impossible for me to imagine that the answers to my profound life questions could amount to the sum total of a fifty buck fix. Always I was searching for more.

Waiting is but a thought. It will not lead you anywhere. Anand Mehrotra

The solution I was offered for my addictions was to live “life on life’s terms” with the aid of a “higher power” who would restore me to sanity around my addictive choices and then be my constant guide. It was testament to my desperation that I was even willing to contemplate such a radical turnaround in thinking and living, but I did.

This path led me on a very focused, sometimes fanatical search for this “higher power.” How could I know what was my will and what was this higher power’s will? Would he/she/it speak directly to me? And if so could my drug-adled mind be trusted?

Most spiritual seekers will know that this early phase of seeking is often one of trying different spiritual paths and seeing what fits. For me, initially each path would bring amazing revelations and awakenings to my self and my purpose in life, but in time these peak experiences would settle and I would find my old thinking returning, a sense of “well, is this it, then?” Often followed by a period of depression, until I discovered some new practice and the cycle would begin all over again.

This very blog is testament to my ups and downs with spiritual seeking. Each practice being “the one” answer to all my problems. Followed by a period of intense research and development, by workshops and courses, by rituals and the highs of amazing experiences, and then the inevitable crash.

Let me be at pains to emphasise that the fault did not lie in any of the practices or paths I had pursued, most of which are still in my life today, but in my expectations of what a “spiritual life” looked like.

You see, I was still searching for something outside of myself to fix me, to take care of me. When in fact, I see now that spirituality is really about self-mastery. The spiritual master finds their strength and stability within them.

There is in all things…a hidden wholeness. Thomas Merton

At some point in the last couple of years I kind of experienced “spiritual seeker fatigue.” No longer was there the elation at the prospect of the “next big thing.” When other seekers around me kept saying “the shift” was coming, I kept thinking, when? I had worn myself out getting healings and readings that assured me my breakthrough was coming in the next six to twelve months. Only to return a year later, sad and lost, to be told the same thing.

Now again, this is no criticism of the healers and readers here, it’s just that a healing or a reading can’t do the work for you. I probably could have had a “shift” in six to twelve months if I had actually stuck with anything consistently instead of flitting around and scattering my energy on too many things (as one of the readings actually told me.)

But don’t you know, when the student it ready the teachers appears.  A cliche, yes, but cliches only get to be cliches because they contain some truth.

I’ve written before about the serendipitous events that led me to India, to discover Sattva Yoga and my teacher Anand Mehrotra. And to begin with it was the same old all over again. All the “this is it, I’ve found my guru, all is going to be well now for ever and ever, amen.” I was elated. The Beatles had a guru from Rishikesh. I had always wanted a guru.

Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself. Hermann Hesse

When I started practicing Sattva Yoga with Anand, even online at home via video, I experienced really profound shifts in my body, mind and spirit. And I still believe it is absolutely the path for me, a path that incorporates all the practices that came before that had proved so beneficial to me. It is a full spectrum yoga, with meditation, breathwork, postures, ancient Vedic and Tantric wisdom teachings, shamanic and nature-based ritual, ecstatic dance, chanting, devotion, the chakra system… I mean I could go on, it’s such a rich practice that I have only begun to scratch the surface of, but still… It hasn’t magically fixed me. Nor could it, seeing as I’m not broken. I’m just a human being having a plethora of human experiences. There’s no cure for that.

Which, as embarrassing as it is for a grown woman to admit, is what I have always wanted. Respite from the realities of life. A magic bullet, a total transformation into a mind and body that I feel comfortable in ALL the time. I mean it’s fantasy-land stuff, but it was a deep need in me. That’s why people take drugs, by the way, to feel comfortable, ALL the time. As a buffer from all the slings and arrows of living. And no, it doesn’t work long-term, but just getting clean and sober hadn’t changed that as my modus operandi, now I was using spiritual seeking as a way to feel good. And not just to feel good, but more to the point, to avoid feeling bad. To avoid facing the uncomfortability of life.

Now in fairness, my heart and mind has always been in the right place. I have always been very, very respectful of any path or practice I have followed, I have always conducted myself with as much grace and integrity in my pursuit of spirituality as I could. But my subconscious was still like a frightened child wanting everything safe and fixed for good “Are we there yet? Can I relax now? Am I doing it right? Are we good?”

Self-restraint, self-mastery, common sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility and yet of acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution—these are the qualities which mark a masterful people. Theodore Roosevelt

Anand’s teachings were anything but light and fluffy or comfortable. His focus is on self-mastery. Self-mastery attained through self-discipline and commitment to practice. Pushing through our comfort zone, transcending our fears. I practiced daily, becoming stronger physically and spiritually, and yet that inevitable streak of self-sabotage seeped back in. Or maybe it’s just garden variety laziness. I didn’t want to get up two hours early to practice. I would rather watch Netflix and eat snacks in bed than do my evening practice.

So inevitably, at some point the gloss wore off my daily practice, life got busy, grief hit me hard like a locomotive train – actually three trains, one after another after another – and again I found my practice waning. I was phoning it in, “half-assing” as Anandji would say.

My dad used to say I had no “stickability.” Great starter but no follow through, no commitment. Blunt, yes? But totally on the money.

Cultivate body awareness. A yogi is energy-rich and enhances any environment with aliveness. Anand Mehrotra

When I went back to India to study Sattva Yoga with Anand I asked him what I could do to overcome this inability to stick with the practice. I was waiting with bated breath for his response – finally the answer to all my problems. And look, in fairness, it was. He told me I needed to develop staying power, which could only happen through consistent practice, especially working with my navel centre, my solar plexus chakra, the seat of personal will and power.

And really it is his answer for everything, because it IS the answer for everything, to just stay with the practice. No matter what life dishes up. To paraphrase an old AA saying, “even if your head falls off, pick it up and go do your practice.”

Develop some backbone, stop giving in to comfort and honour your commitment to yourself.

And for the most part I have. I have maintained a twice daily meditation practice and daily Kriya yoga practice, and although at times I will admit to half-assing it, I haven’t given up. And the changes I see are (mostly) less electrifying than at first, but more consistent. Less highs and lows, more generalised focus and calm. An ability to recognise when I am disturbed, when I am out of my integrity and power, and to use the techniques to bring myself back to centre.

Open yourself to discomfort. Meet it with mercy, not fear. Recognize that when our pain most calls for our embrace, we are often the least present. Soften, enter, and explore, and continue softening to make room for your life. Stephen Levine

Anand tells us that consistency takes time, it is normal to fluctuate when our practice is new, we can’t be instant Zen masters. But, the more we can consistently maintain a higher energy vibration through the practice, the more we will begin to embody that in every aspect of our being and every area of our lives.

Anand emphasises the importance of developing a strong navel centre or solar plexus chakra. Sattva Yoga focuses on activating this energy centre, as it is the key to our staying power, our will and our vitality.

He talks about cultivating an “energy-rich environment,” in this high pranic (life force energy) state we are less likely to succumb to old patterns and self-destructive habits.

Enlightenment is not a static, utopic state. It is a consistent journey with greater and greater degrees of awareness. With really no end. For why are we interested in an end? Only when we are in suffering in life, when we are in conflict with ourself, with life, are we looking for an end where ‘this’ doesn’t exist. You are still using life as a waiting room. So the very thing you are looking for is keeping you from that which you are looking for. Anand Mehrotra

Caroline Myss, in Anatomy of the Spirit, describes the solar plexus centre as the centre of our honour code, especially with self. Do we respect ourselves? Do we keep the promises we make to ourselves? Do we honour our commitment to self?

What is a commitment to daily practice if not this kind of personal honour code? As Anandji says no one really cares whether we practice or not, ultimately we do it for our own growth and evolution. And yes, developing self-mastery and discipline, raising our energy, will undoubtedly have flow on effects for our family, our community, our world. But we do it out of a sense of self respect. Out of a sense of acknowledging this great gift that is a human life and desiring to make the very best of this opportunity, this lifetime.

Carolyn Myss goes on to say that it is her belief that the epidemic of depression and anxiety in the modern world is due to a generalised inability to honour ourselves. We make promises to ourselves that we don’t keep. We promise to change our diet, our lifestyle, our job, our relationship but we don’t follow through. As a result we don’t trust ourselves, we lose confidence in our self, just as we would in any person who consistently lets us down.

Anand describes the energy of the yogi in a similar way. There must be a basis of trust and consistency in our self. We must be able to honour ourselves by turning up to our practice without getting flaky or “half-assing” it.

Half measures availed us nothing. Bill Wilson

In the yoga tradition Svādhyāya or self-study is a two fold concept. It invokes a sense of self -inquiry or studying ourselves, our habitual patterns, our mental traps, as well as the self discipline of studying by oneself, the teachings and texts and applying them directly into our lives.

A key part of being a student is that you have a teacher and teachings. There’s a significant distinction in the level of humility required here. My experience of teachers and mentors is that sometimes I don’t like what they have to say. As a spiritual seeker I can go from practice to practice cherrypicking the bits I like and ignoring the rest, flitting off when things gets uncomfortable, but as I student I cannot. And I cannot always be the ultimate authority on what will serve my growth. Sometimes we need people ahead on the path to encourage us not to give up on the practice when it gets hard. To show by their own example that, in fact, the real gold is to be found by plumbing the depths of our discomfort.

The woman who was my greatest mentor and friend, my AA sponsor for nearly 20 years, always said that her role was not to play God but to show me how to have a relationship with a power of my own understanding. To my mind this is what all great teachers do, they offer you a map and a kit of spiritual tools. Whether or not you take them is up to you. As Anand says, nobody really cares if you meditate or not. Carolyn Myss talks about our honour code, it’s between you and God – or you and yourself – what anyone else thinks, what you look like to others, is irrelevant.

Yoga is powerful. Realise yoga is not a path for the weak. It is for you to overcome your self-imposed limitations. Anand Mehrotra

There are times when I feel great resistance towards my teachers, I felt it with my sponsor Jane, I feel it sometimes with Anand. There’s a saying in AA that “if you don’t have a resentment on your sponsor, they’re probably not doing the job properly.” Why? I think because to be a good teacher, you will be a challenge to your student. Growth is uncomfortable, even painful when we are really resistant to it. Nobody likes someone who asks them to be uncomfortable and in pain. But the teacher knows that pain is the touchstone to spiritual growth and a great motivator. It’s unavoidable. Nor should we attempt to avoid or escape it. Because the discomfort is showing us EXACTLY the stuff we need to look at, and transcend, in order to evolve.

For me, right now, it’s my commitment to self and self-discipline. I’m disciplined for three weeks, then I’m flaky for a week or two. And it’s making me really uncomfortable because I can undo three weeks discipline in a few days. Well, not really but it feels like that. I feel as if I could be ‘miles in front’ – there’s that striving again – if I could only be consistent, well, more consistently. My mind tells me to just give up, that it’s hopeless, that I’m just chasing my tail. But Anand’s words ring in my ears. It’s normal to fluctuate at first, be patient with yourself. Keep coming back to the practice…

There are certain powers that go with an internal honour code. One is integrity. The capacity to give your word and keep it. The other is the power to endure. In order for our spirit to thrive, we have to develop integrity and endurance. Carolyn Myss

These mental fluctuations are part of the path. Either we can avoid them, or we can pick them up, examine them and see what’s really going on. Carolyn Myss believes that our inability to stay with spiritual discipline is a deep-seated fear of our own power and potential. We play small because it feels safe. But in the process we sacrifice our integrity, our honour code, our inherent and deep-seated commitment to our evolution.

At some point we have to just be with life as it is, and just live it enthusiastically, no holding back, fully present and committed. I think I have spent my whole life waiting to be somewhere else, someone else. But life is always lived here, it’s always lived through me, and it’s always lived now.

This was the greatest of lessons my mentor and friend gave me, and all who knew her, to “just be.” Stop striving and grasping and waiting for a moment and just take a breath. This breath is the miracle. Being alive is pretty special, and totally beyond our control, and yet most of us fritter that gift away with self-doubt, worry and fear. Always seeking more, or trying to hang on to an ever changing reality.

Your purpose here is to evolve, to transform, to experience your radical aliveness, to awaken to your true nature. You are the path. The path is you. The time is now. Anand Mehrotra

Instead of self-flagellation, I try to practice self-acceptance. So maybe a week per month I get a bit flaky. That’s better than four weeks a month. Sometimes I just turn up on the mat with zero motivation. As long as I turn up. Progress is the goal, not perfection.

And this is where I see the growth. I’m not looking around for something else, something new. I’m not distracting myself with new people and shiny new things. It’s very uncomfortable at times but I am staying with the discomfort, trying to develop some curiosity about it. Because I know consistency of practice is the answer and any resistance is fear. Even though it seems crazy and counter-intuitive, often when we are in bucketloads of pain, we resist the very thing that is the solution to our pain. I know I do.

Hence the shift from spiritual seeker to spiritual student. At some point the time comes where we must stop distracting ourselves by looking outside for answers and learn to sit quietly and make peace with what’s within. To make a commitment to self that we keep, even when no one else is looking. Even when there’s no trip to Bali or India attached. Even when it’s just sitting wrapped in blankets, meditating at a cold dawn in our own apartment.

Since it’s so counter-intuitive to touch unpleasantness, it’s a gradual process of getting used to, of becoming familiar with, opening to whatever arises. And it’s the unpleasant part, the painful part, the insecurity part, the uncertainty, the really distasteful part that we are not accustomed to being open to. But these three qualities, openness, open-awareness and warmth, living in a way to uncover these, they provide the support, or the container, or the atmosphere, that allows us to become more and more fearless and embracing all of our experience. But it really takes time. And I think all these teachings, you could take them and brand them, and make a lot of money with workshops where you did, A, B, C and you got results… fast. But it isn’t like that. Trungpa Rinpoche used to say that it was like walking from San Francisco to New York rather than flying in an aeroplane. It took a long time but you really knew the territory well. Pema Chodron

Pema Chodron talks about “discomfort resilience” I think meditation does this. We keep bringing our attention back from thoughts, from distractions. We develop the capacity for our nervous system to get used to discomfort. Over time, we are developing new habits, new neural pathways, new cellular memory, that allows us to stay in some degree of calm and presence even when facing challenging emotions and experiences. We get to know ourselves, our little cognitive blips and cheats, the ‘terrain’ really well.

Meditation teaches us to be present with what is. To just breathe. Not react. Not grasp or panic. That’s a valuable skill in life. In the end that’s what life teaches us, if we are willing to learn, to be open and available to every moment. To be curious. To be a ready student.

Being a student and developing self-mastery may sound like contradictory concepts. But I don’t think so. I think it is arrogant to assume we have all the answers or even the sophistication of consciousness to intuit all the answers on our own. We need teachings, practices, guidance, support and community to evolve.

A commitment to study is a commitment to do the work, to go deep into our selves and to not run away or seek distraction from what we find there when it is displeasing or uncomfortable.

As we so often hear, to the point I think we often ignore it, life is a journey, not a destination. There is no place to rush to, to strive for. That doesn’t mean we don’t have things we would like to do or places we would like to go. But none of that will fulfil us if we haven’t learned to “just be” with what is.

Without the ability, the discipline, the practice to be here now, we just keep missing it, missing life and the experiences we have often yearned so long for, caught in a perpetual trap of “when I get/have/do this, then I’ll be able to stop and enjoy life.”

The most important practice is the one you do in your aloneness. As you go into your own sadhana, the world starts to fade, and what starts to happen in you is the celestial glow of self starts to get established. And it is of paramount importance that we really cultivate this self-practice. Anand Mehrotra

In yoga tonight the teacher talked about a mindset called ‘Be. Do. Have” Loving the synchronicity with what I had been writing moments before, I listened as she described it.

Most of us think we need to “have” a certain thing or set of things (more money, love, time, experience, etc.), so that we can finally “do” something important (pursue our passion, start a business, go on vacation, create a relationship, buy a home, etc.), which will then allow us to “be” what we truly want in life (peaceful, fulfilled, inspired, generous, in love, etc.). In actuality, it works the other way around.

First we “be” what we want (peaceful, loving, inspired, abundant, successful, or whatever), then we start “doing” things from this state of being – and soon we discover that what we’re doing winds up bringing us the things we’ve always wanted to “have.”

It’s a mindset used by self-help guru Tony Robbins, among others, but it’s been around for a lot longer than that. In fact, like so much self-help practice, I’m sure it has its roots in Indian Vedic teachings.

It acknowledges that we still want to ‘do’ and ‘have’ but instead of putting that first, we focus on the ‘be’ and act from there.

I love the simplicity – and the synchronicity. Be. Do. Have. For me it starts with my values. What kind of person do I want to be, rather than what do I want. It makes us question why we think we want what we want. What is it we think it will do for us? For me, fundamentally, I want to be present and loving and kind. I want to be the best expression of myself I can be. I want to thrive and enjoy my life whilst inspiring joy and value in others.

If on the day I die I can say, ‘To the best of my ability—cutting myself some slack for my human flaws and fallibilities—I was faithful to my gifts, to the world’s needs as I saw them,’ then I can take my final breath with a feeling of satisfaction that I showed up on earth with what I had and offered it up to the world. Parker Palmer

These are exactly the qualities that attracted me to Jane and Anand. They live that way.

When I search and push and strive in life I am not really here, not present. I’m trying to get ‘there,’ which is never here. The greatest masters, in my honest opinion, teach the same thing. Be here now. That’s it. So what if your practice is less perfect than yesterday, if you were up all night with a sick child and slept through morning practice time. It’s okay. Just stay with it.

In fact see THIS – whatever’s happening right now, as your practice. The sick kid, the rushed days that skimp on formal practice, as your practice. Can I be okay with imperfection, upheaval, discomfort? In short, can I be okay with this human gig?

Isn’t that why we seek? To find purpose and meaning for this life. Isn’t that the purpose of our practice, to learn to be in full expression of this life? In all it’s nuance, its shadows and light.

The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. Bill Wilson

Many years ago I learned this. We have to live our practice. In every area of our lives.

Carolyn Myss regards our integrity of practice as including, not only our actions, but even our thoughts. She sees every challenge, every seemingly external situation or relationship, that comes our way as an opportunity to test our integrity and endurance. To test the commitment we made to ourselves. The commitment for spiritual evolution. Will we honour ourselves even when no one is watching? It’s a tough call.

I understand that a seeker and a student can be complimentary archetypes. A seeker has an openness and sense of wonder that is also beneficial to the student. Maintaining a beginners mind, as the Buddhists say, is the essential starting point for learning.

For me, the subtle distinction, the shift, is that as a student I have made a commitment to a teacher and a tradition of teachings – not even to the exclusion or what came before or what is to come, but most certainly as my first priority for my time and attention. For me, this has stabilised my energy from the more scattergun and less focused, ‘tasting from the smorgasbord’ approach that came before.

There’s also the sangha – the community of Anandji’s students who keep each other on track, who inspire, guide and support one another. These commitments, to a teacher and a community, help me stick with the practice when I find myself waning.

On a good day, I am inspired by my new ‘stickability’ and the shifts I see in my physical, mental and spiritual being. On a bad day, I just stay with the practice and let it carry me through. Knowing that really there are no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ days, these are just stories, positionalities created by the mind.

Life moves in cycles and I’m sure there may come a time when I become a seeker again. But for now, I find great solace in sitting still, at the feet of my teacher (literally or figuratively) and immersing myself in these teachings, knowing that their depth and weight would be enough to sustain me for a thousand lifetimes, if I let it.

Having loved enough and lost enough, I’m no longer searching just opening, no longer trying to make sense of pain but trying to be a soft and sturdy home in which real things can land. Mark Nepo

Hari Om Tat Sat. Namaste. Blessings.

ॐ

Christina

For you

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make sense. Rumi

This is not a regular blog post.

This is for my friend, my love who passed away this week.

Why am I posting it here? I suppose because this blog has always been the way I process things in my life.

I was writing another post, but it felt wrong somehow to just slide this in there, amongst all my navel gazing. So this is just for him.

We met when I was 18, we were both 18, and lived together for four years. Even amongst all the craziness of those years, he was the sweetest man I have even been with.

I hadn’t seen him for a very long time, but I guess I always just thought I would again, sometime. Like so many people from that time of my life, they hold such a special place in my heart that even after years of not seeing them, the connection is still so strong.

That said, nothing could have prepared me for how devastated I feel. Both sadness and probably a sense of guilt that I could have done more somehow.

But that’s life, it rolls on and we move with it, just always thinking there’s more time. But I like to think somewhere in a parallel universe that he got clean and moved to the country and had his own studio and maybe a family and was as happy as such a sweet soul deserved to be.

******

How I wish I could crawl back into bed with you, in 1992. Just for a little while. Knowing what I know now.

No one has ever loved me like you did. Made me feel so safe and held. You fixed everything for me. Remember that time my knee got caught in the doona and dislocated and you just popped it back in, like it was nothing. It still aches sometimes, reminds me of you.

You always held my hand, but never held me back. You had my back.

We were young and silly then. We took too many drugs and drank too much. We got in trouble. We thought life was long.

And yet. With many years experience and hindsight, I realise you and I were like an old couple. We loved sitting up in bed, talking, laughing, it used to drive our housemates bonkers. How well we got along. We were friends above all. Companions. How I long for that comfortability with someone now.

We enjoyed the comfortable silences, you drawing, me writing. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t very silent, you’d draw and listen to me prattle on. I have often thought you were a natural yogi, so calm, so gentle, so present with people.

Remember the night we met? At the Duke of Windsor. The pub shut early because it was Anzac Day, so we all went back to my place. As you leant over to kiss me, a stereo speaker fell off the bookshelf and hit your head. We often joked that it was not that you’d fallen for me as much as had the sense knocked out of you. 

I hadn’t seen you for the longest time. I guess like many people from that time of my life I just assumed the revolving door would swing around and one day you’d be there again. And although I knew you had a special place in my heart, I didn’t know how very large it was until I got that call, and our friend told me I’d better sit down.

It was like a trapdoor opened up inside me and all those years came pouring out. The most beautiful memories. That smile. The way you looked at me like I was the best thing you’d ever seen in your life. The way I had to stand on tippy-toes to kiss you. The way your long arms almost wrapped around me twice.

The most banal memories.

Like how I would spend two hours spiking your hair and mohawk, and your friend’s mohawks… And then after five minutes of me getting ready you’d all be hassling me to hurry up, like “C’mon, Nini (my pet name) we’ll miss the gig…”

I hope there is a photo somewhere of your hair in all its glory. At one stage you had a mohawk and spiky cones along each side. You were about seven foot tall with your hair up.  Spikes in your hair and spikes on your jacket but always so cuddly with me, I was forever being spiked.

Do you remember how we made you write a ‘poo chart’ on the toilet wall? So that, if any of us were actually interested (we weren’t), we could read about your bowel movements, instead of the daily recount that turned our hungover stomachs inside out.

Geez. You loved a good bowel movement.

You weren’t a musician, although your friends tried to force you to drum in their band, you always looked like you would rather be standing in the crowd, with your arms around me.

You were an artist though. So prolific. You drew all the time, it was your meditation, your passion. That’s how I remember you, cross-legged on the floor hunched over a drawing pad, bleached hair flopping over your eyes. I wish I had something of yours.

I don’t even have the photos. I left them behind with everything else as I ran for my life from that sweet-talker I left you for…

And here it really hurts. Because there’s been so many times over the years where I wanted to tell you how I know what an fucking idiot I was. And how selfish, and how could I have hurt you like that?

I don’t think I was running away from you so much as the whole scene at Baker St and the grief.

People who came and stayed often thought Baker St was a squat. It wasn’t, but it was an easy mistake to make. There were five of us who paid rent on the sprawling Richmond house. You and I shared a room, and then there were three other guys who lived there. It was a house with lots of nooks and crannies and a giant living room.

On any given night, or day for that matter as time is pretty relative in the punk-rock lifestyle, there were bodies curled up everywhere. I would have to tip-toe my way through overlapping limbs to get to the kitchen. After a while I didn’t bother. The kitchen and bathroom were both feral. If you have ever seen the Australian movie Dogs in Space, you get a pretty close idea.

It was fun at first, always something happening, plenty going around to imbibe. But it was unsustainable for me. I needed space and quiet. And there was none to be had.

I have only recently fully understood that you can’t fix your messy insides with a new relationship or by moving somewhere else. Back then I sought any escape from pain.

Mother I feel you under my feet.

Father I hear your heartbeat within me.

My spirit flies free.

Carry me home. Akaal.

I wrote you a letter once, after I got clean. I don’t know if you ever read it, I never heard from you again. I think I thought staying away was a safe way to not cause you any more pain. And in the early days I was protecting my fragile new life. I regret that decision now.

I am sad. And I am ashamed of the silly girl I was, and how carelessly I threw away your love.

I just always thought I would see you again. You would be a greying artist, living in a simple shack in the country, you never needed much. Just a studio and your animals, or maybe you had a family. Either way you were content.

We would sit on your verandah with a cup of tea. You, being you, would see in my eyes that I was still torturing myself for all the things I had, and had not, done. All the things you had long forgiven and forgotten. You would look at me with those kind grey-green eyes and say “It’s okay Nini, let it go. It’s ancient history.”

And just like that we’d be friends again. As if we ever weren’t.

But you’re gone. So that’s never going to happen now. So I have to tell you all the things I am sorry for and you’ll just have to roll your eyes at me from heaven. Because that’s where you’re going, no matter what you think, because there has never been a sweeter soul than you.

I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate you more. I was young and full of delusional romantic fantasies about Heathcliff and Darcy. It’s that sad old story, you were too kind and good to me, at a time in my life when I didn’t value that. I wanted high drama and angst, and boy did I get it. I appreciate you now, you were everything I would wish for in a partner.

I am sorry that after we saw our friend die I didn’t know how to be there for you. I was so used to you being there for me, being stoic and solid, I didn’t know what to do when you fell apart. I know now we were traumatised, and all needed serious help, the type that is not found at the end of a bottle or needle or bong. But you do what you know.

I’m sorry that in the last few weeks, when you were so on my mind, I didn’t try to find you. I’m not saying I could have changed anything, I am not that arrogant, but I am sorry I didn’t listen to that intuitive knock on the door of my consciousness.

One of my dear friends told me that he is sure that I still held a special place in your heart. I hope so, and I hope that you remembered me fondly and laughed at my silliness, because hell knows there was plenty of it, and that you smiled as you reflected on the good times we had. And I don’t mean the slam-dance parties and gigs, and the stupid pranks, I mean the Sunday mornings spread out on the floor, or in the garden at Stradbroke Avenue, talking, drawing, reading, writing, laughing, and of course, kissing.

I have to trust how things are. Maybe you just couldn’t dig yourself out of that hole, and you’re at peace now. So many people are seeing you in light. I know that’s where you’re going, and I know she’s come to take you there, so you won’t feel alone.

Goodbye Lachy my love, Godspeed x

Karma karma karma chameleon

Life has its own essential nature outside of your own preferences. Anand Mehrotra

I often look at people I know on social media, people I have met at various spiritual courses, who live these seemingly charmed lives flitting from one exotic locale to another, islands off Thailand and Indonesia, ashrams in India, mountain villages in Peru… And I wonder how I ended up with my life.

When I first started seriously meditating, committing to a daily practice, it was because I had read Buddhism for Mothers, by Sarah Napthali, and I wanted to be a more serene, mindful mum, with three young boys, *snort* yeah right.

My morning ‘silent’ meditation would begin with me seated peacefully on my beautiful meditation cushion, all quiet in the house and slowly, one by one, I would have a toddler climbing all over me, then a seven and eight year old giving each other shoulder punches and fighting over the TV remote.

The author of the book suggested making all this part of my mindfulness practice, letting the sounds (read noise and fighting) be part of my practice. Just keep breathing, keep still, which is possible up to a point, usually the point where the 14 month-old is trying to ride his trike head-first off the coffee table.

Flash forward fifteen years and I am still working, parenting, juggling commitments and responsibilities, and still trying to make a place in my life for my yoga and meditation practice. In the last few years, I have been blessed with two lots of three week stints in Bali and India, where I have been able to live that exotic life I see on social media, if only temporarily.

In the tantric system they feel, they believe, the mind is not something against which you should start a war. It is in this context that tantra developed a system by which you didn’t have to worry much about the fluctuating tendencies of the mind. You just went on with your tantric or yogic practices and found that, through certain techniques, the mind became quieter and exhausted all its potentialities. This set of methods is known as kriya yoga, the basis of which is tantra. Swami Satyananda Saraswati

Part of me has always thought that my ‘real’ yogic life would start once I was free of these responsibilities, free to run off to an ashram in India and immerse myself 24/7. So I have been really interested to discover that the yogic Tantra path, was originally called ‘The Householder’s Path.’ The whole point of it being that you didn’t need to renounce the world and meditate 12 hours a day to be a yogi. You could have a life and a spiritual practice. In fact, for most people, given the relative importance of the continuation of the species, mixing work, family and yoga was a valid option.

And it occurred to me that while my life is not as glamorous as the jet setting yogis I see, it may be more helpful as a power of example. I mean most people are not in a position to live a gypsy existence, they have jobs and families and by the time they wake up to the feeling that some crucial part of themselves has been neglected, and they start looking for way to enliven their spirit again, well it is just not feasible to run off to India for a year, much as they might wish to.

So as I come to the end of another year, a time of reflection and planning for the year to come, as I embark on more yogic studies, I find myself asking, to what end? I know I have a burning desire for the kind of self-mastery and freedom from the bondage of the monkey-mind that these practices bring me, but do I have anything to offer others?

It is not our natural state to be constantly focused on our own thought-stream, and obsessed with our own story, and our achievements. Rather our natural state is to be open, expanded and aware of the full beauty of life unfolding moment by moment. Where your own personal biography is just a thread in an incredible tapestry of awareness. To open up to the whole of our experience and to sense the sacredness that is present all the time, everywhere just waiting to be sensed. Christopher Hareesh Wallis

And I realise that yes, what I have is my experience. Which is how to incorporate these hugely effective spiritual practices into our lives, while still living in the real world. Jobs, families, financial responsibilities, these are things that most of us must live with. But that doesn’t exclude us from a spiritual life.

A spiritual life is an ‘inside job,’ it doesn’t require a certain locale. Just a commitment. There are ways to develop self-mastery while changing nappies, paying a mortgage, and meeting deadlines at work. So I got to thinking, this is what I can do, offer these amazing techniques to people so they can fit them into their lives, not have disrupt their lives or wait until they get a decent stretch of ‘me-time.’

When the yoga Tantra tradition was emerging, it came from a backlash to traditional Brahmanism, where only a certain caste of holy men, Brahmins, could engage in spiritual practices. Other people could worship but to access the tools of meditation and deeper practices, one had to be a renunciate. Tantra brought practices to the people, so that anyone with a desire for self-mastery and enough intelligence and self-discipline to apply themselves to the teachings could participate.

Another difference between Tantra and classical yoga is Tantra’s body-positive view. Since the body exists in the material world, the classical viewpoint was that it is inferior to the transcendental Self or spirit. Tantra views the body as a manifestation of spirit. By purifying and strengthening the body through asana and by balancing and uniting the universe of opposites within our body, it becomes our vehicle for ending suffering and attaining liberation.

This means we can practise anywhere that our body is present. Like the author of Buddhism for Mothers was trying to tell me all those years ago, our spiritual practice begins where we are. The only equpiment we need is our own body, our breath, our awareness.

The most important practice us the one you do in your aloneness. As you go into your own sadhana, the world starts to fade, and what starts to happen in you is the celestial glow of self starts to get established. And it is of paramount importance that we really cultivate this self-practice. Anand Mehrotra

Why did Tantra come about in the first place?

Yoga scholars believe it was a response to a period of spiritual decline, also known as Kali Yuga, or the Dark Age, a period governed by greed, dishonesty, physical and emotional illness, attachment to worldly things, and complacency.

Tantra’s comprehensive array of practices, which include asana (poses) and pranayama (controlled breathing) as well as mantra (chanting), pujas (deity worship), kriyas (cleansing practices), mudras (seals), and mandalas and yantras (circular or geometric patterns used to develop concentration), provides the powerful measures needed to counteract the many obstacles to spiritual liberation in the modern age.

Yoga is powerful. Realise yoga is not a path for the weak. It is for you to overcome your self-imposed limitations. Anand Mehrotra

I want spiritual liberation. Who wouldn’t? I have had profound mystical experiences but they have not been lasting. What I have wanted is not an experience but a total transformation, an inner rearrangement that weaves through my life. So there is no boundary between the me that is meditating and doing yoga and the me that is driving, working, parenting.

For me I want to be free of the tyranny of my thinking. Obsessive thoughts about my love. Where is he? Who is he with? Does he think of me? Obsessive fears for my son. Worrying about his future, worrying I havent parented him well. Obsessive negativity about myself, my body, my life, aging, what am I meant to be doing? It just goes on and on, round and around like a broken record. It wears me out and gets me nowhere.

This is karma. Being trapped in a loop of self-obsessive, fearful thinking. Thinking based on the past. Thinking that can only produce more of the same. All that can ever arise from this state is more of the same conditions. As Einstein said, we can’t solve the problem with the thinking that created it. We can’t think ourself into right thinking, action has to proceed thought, that’s what yoga, true yoga not just the bendy poses, is for.

Enlightenment is not a static, utopic state. It is a consistent journey with greater and greater degrees of awareness. With really no end. For why are we interested in an end? Only when we are in suffering in life, when we are in conflict with ourself, with life, are we looking for an end where ‘this’ doesn’t exist. You are still using life as a waiting room. So the very thing you are looking for is keeping you from that which you are looking for. Anand Mehrotra

In my recent yogic studies with Anand Mehrotra, I was reintroduced to the concept of karma, I say re-introduced because it was apparent that I had previously misunderstood the term.

The concept of karma has long been misunderstood in the West as a kind of universal law of returns, the golden rule in reverse. What you do, comes back to you. I really like how my teacher Anand Mehrotra frames karma and dharma.

Karma is both a state of will from which we act, the actions we take from this state of ego, and the results of those actions. So when we are stuck in our ego mind, our so-called rational mind, we must draw upon memory, upon past experiences to make choices on how to act or react to life.

Karma is an identity based on conditioned memory, the cause of our state of consciousness is based on the actions of the past and the effect is how we perceive ourself now. Karma is a state of consciousness from which any action is karmic in nature, that is producing actions that are more of the same. Giving birth to further karma. In this limited awareness we experience life as a conflict, trapped in a mental narrative of separation and suffering.

It is said that humans have around 80,000 thoughts a day, and most of those thoughts are the same ones we had yesterday and will have again tomorrow. So it’s a very limited field of intelligence we are working with here. Yes, we can read books and learn, but we are always seeing life through this filter of the small ‘me’ with our various experiences and prejudices.

Reality validates the nervous system from which it is observing this reality. Reality will manifest only as consciousness, as our nervous system, as our sensory awareness will allow. Because reality is infinite it can show up in the perception of the experiencer. Anand Mehrotra

The role of yoga, and in particular kriyas – powerful cleansing practices – is to break out of this limitations of the small self and to begin to access the infinite intelligence of the creative life force that flows through all life. When we think, feel and act from this intelligence we can live in dharma, the path of our highest self, the path that the ever-intelligent nature of life intends for us.

This is our natural state of being, not to be trapped in a limited sense of self separated from the nature of reality, but to be aware of our self as an integral part of nature, of the totality of existence.

To move from karma to dharma, our higher purpose, we must use a technique to break through karma. This is the purpose of yoga. Yoga practice allows us to move towards a more unified consciousness, an expanded sense of self. Where our experience of life profoundly shifts, as we become more aligned to the state of nature.

Anand Mehrotra describes kriya as “an action that is helping you evolve and transcend. Focusing your attention on certain centres along your spine and moving your energy to help you get to a meditative state.”

Dharma is really not about what to do, what is the ‘right’ action, what will make me feel good, or what is my ‘purpose.’

When we seek that out from a desire for security and self-esteem, we are still in karma, no matter how good our intentions may be.

Through yoga and meditation practice, our nervous system and our mind settle into a less excited state. We settle into the field of eternal silence, which is wordless and concept-less. Here we transcend our false identity, into a state of consciousness not dominated by ego or victim consciousness, to a state where life is happening for us and though us, this is dharma. Actions arising out of dharma will be effortlessly aligned with the greater evolutionary flow of life.

When you are in karma, your identity is isolated, locked in, separate from the whole. Dominated by ego, still experiencing life as happening to you, experiencing a sense of victimhood, limited by every experience you have. Or even the desire for experiences you want to have, they all function in limiting your sense of self and creating a sense of isolation. That is why when you look at humans beings, whatever it is they get, somehow they find a way to suffer with it. Anand Mehrotra

For much of my life I have been a chameleon of sorts. Searching desperately for the ‘real’ me, I tried on continuous parade of personas.

In my teenage years I was a hippie 60s fanatic, then a goth, a punk, and a weird hybrid of them all. As a young mother, I softened my look to blend with the other mothers. I never felt truly comfortable in any of these guises.

In my mid-late twenties my search went within, experimenting with wicca, and New Age Spirituality. I became a fairly regular meditator. After my divorce I discovered yoga, druidry, shamanism and Chakradance.

While all of these practices have revealed aspects of me to me, there always came a point where I felt like an imposter or a failure. I wasn’t serene enough, or bendy enough, or New Agey enough.

Each time I found a new practice I thought I had found the key to unlocking this neverending sense of longing and searching. At some point I would be confronted with the reality that I was still me. Still flawed, essentially unchanged.

Attachment and detachment, nervous welfare, nervous imbalance, nervous breakdown, everything is subject to the state of human consciousness. The moment you change your consciousness, everything is gone. All of these things are experiences, they are not permanent realities. Swami Satyananda Saraswati

All these years, each time I thought I had found my dharma, my true path, I had just found a new guise for my karma chameleon. Not because of any flaw in those practices, on the contrary they have all brought me to this point, but rather because of my expectations of them. Of what they would do for me. Because I was still trying to find myself, find some self-image, something about myself I could love.

In some way, I was still that young girl trying to abandon and escape from myself. Yoga and meditation, dance and energy work have always brought me home to myself through my body. Yet, there was the split between the ‘spiritual me’ practicing yoga or Chakradance, and the ‘real me’ out in the world, getting pent up and frustrated, trying to control everything.

I have been a karma chameleon, I have tried on many skins in an attempt to transform myself. But lasting change has to be more than skin deep.

Much of my karmic patterns seem to revolve around looking externally for validation, especially from other people. What I keep being brought back to, through Chakradance and through yoga, is how essential it is to be self-sufficient. To be able to get everything we need from our own vital energy and connection to the greater flow of energy, the divine source. Anand says those who cannot generate their vital energy are weak. My weakness has always been this tendency to look without instead of within for my source of strength, power and love.

Yoga has always been a great training for my mind, but the yoga Anand teaches transcends all thought and goes straight to the innate inner intelligence that is bound to all intelligence, to all life. The practices are instantly revolutionary, they bring immediate effect on the energy body and over time, transform consciousness in a way that would not be achievable in a lifetime by many other means.

The spine and the brain are the altars of God. That’s where the electricity of God flows down into the nervous system into the world. The searchlights of your senses are turned outward. But when you will reverse the searchlights through kriya yoga and be concentrated in the spine you will… charge the body with the life current from universe. Paramahansa Yogananda

Anand’s practice, called Sattva yoga seems to be helping me see the difference between my unhealthy desires, my attempts to control and manipulate people, places and things to suit my needs. While I have seen this before, I never had a solution that seemed to work at this level of my inner programming.

I find these practices really exciting because they utilise the chakras. This means Sattva yoga is an complimentary extension of my Chakradance practice, and my other subtle energy work. I am also seeing very profound before and after effects of doing the kriyas. From feeling anxious depressed and lethargic to a total flush-out of energy – being filled up with fresh prana, or life-force, feeling switched on, optimistic, calm and energised.

Pranayama, life-force control via our breathing, essentially brings us back to the emptiness from which all beingness arises. When we hold our breath, we play with that nexus between being alive in a body, and alive in spirit. Holding our breath pushes our ego self to it’s limits, what could be more challenging to the ego than the hint of non-survival that cessation of breath suggests?

The Kriya technique emphasizes the relationship between breath and mind. Breath influences the mind and vice versa. This reciprocal relationship reveals the secret of controlling the mind. Breath control is self  control. Breath mastery is self-mastery. Sally Kempton

The renunciates, and the spiritual gypsies, who take these practices across the world have an important dharma. But so do those of us trudging the householder path. It doesn’t matter what our dharma is, only that we find a way to live it.

Acting from karma produces a Groundhog Day existence, where every day is more of the same. Where our actions, based on our limited awareness and obsession with our own desires, bring unhappiness to ourselves and those in relationship to us.

Disciplined action is required to break through karma, through a commitment to awaken our vital life force, to be free of attachment to selfish desires, we can move into a life where we live in alignment with the source of life, where we live from our true heart’s desires, in union with life and manifesting our dharma into the world.

I have been trying so hard to get somewhere, to be someone, to have someone, to find my purpose. To look a certain way, to feel a certain way. This year my intention is to let that shit go. It’s exhausting!

Instead to just be disciplined in my practice, but to then let life unfold. To just live. To enjoy the ride. See what happens. How free would that be?

Action sets us on the right trajectory but then we have to be open to what life is bringing us, open to pure receiving. Yoga literally means to “yoke” ourselves to what is, the is-ness of is-ness as the gurus say. This requires an enormous surrender and allowing everything to be just as it is. Letting go of our agendas, our attachments and softening our edges. No longer wasting our precious life force trying to bend life to our petty plans and designs.

All action that arises from a divine state of consciousness is dharma… You have no purpose. Just be quiet for a while. Anand Mehrotra

Blessings of the New Year to you all!

Hari Om Tat Sat. Namaste. Blessings.

ॐ

Christina

Art by karmym.deviantart.com/art/

Sattva Yoga www.sattvayoga.com

The grit that makes the pearl

Maybe enlightenment was just the booby prize. The thing you went after when what you really wanted didn’t work out. Anne Cushman

Why is life hard? Why don’t we get want we want? And when we do get what we want why does it so quickly become unsatisfactory and we start wanting something else?

I guess that’s the quandary for anyone who has ever investigated the spiritual side of life or ever asked themselves the ‘big questions’ or contemplated life to any degree.

Because, in my experience, we often ask those questions when the going gets tough. Curled up in foetal position. Wailing, “Whhhhyyyyyy?” Or even if you haven’t gone to that extreme. (Me neither, I was only asking for a friend…)

If we are these spiritual beings, made manifest in physical form, why is life so fucking hard sometimes? Why not make it easy? Why not just be these floaty, peaceful people, you know, being at one with everything? Wearing fabulous boho-chic clothes. Meditating and doing yoga, radiating peace and swapping organic vegetables. Raising our children with perfect patience and grace. If that’s our true nature, why do we struggle so?

I’m not going to answer that question, one, because it’s silly, two, because I’m not an enlightened one – and there are many beautiful texts written on the matter which would do far greater justice to it than I ever could. (I mean in regards to the meaning of life, not the boho-chic, floaty people.) And mostly because I don’t know.

I guess the thing is, even those great spiritual texts don’t have all the answers. Not one everyone can agree to anyway…

But what they all tend to point to, is that there is something in the nature of this physical reality, this physical incarnation, that is in itself part of the spiritual evolution of a human being.

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials. Seneca

I was reading about pearls, because the idea just kept popping up, and the analogy of how a pearl is formed seemed particularly apt for me.

A pearl is formed as a reaction to the irritation caused by grit, like a piece of sand getting into the oyster’s shell, and in order to stop the rubbing, the irritation of this grit, the oyster starts to deposit this pearl substance, as a buffer around the source of irritation, and this creates a pearl.

A pearl is one of the most beautiful and highly prized jewels of nature, but it comes from agitation. From the agitation of the grit, that gets into the oyster, and irritates it enough to deposit pearl stuff around it in a ball.

In a similar way,  many cultures use the analogy of the lotus, the lotus that grows out of the mud. It grows its way up through the mud, through the water, through the murky depths, to become this exquisite flower, that is magnificent once it blooms.

In this analogy, as human beings we are in the mud. Right? We are incarnated into these dense, heavy three dimensional forms, and yet, there is something inherent in us that wants to get in touch with another aspect of our being. You can call that what you like spirit, the soul, the essence, self-realisation, whatever it might be. But it’s not a physical thing, it’s not a tangible thing.

A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle. Malcolm Gladwell

Often what pushes people into wanting this relationship with the intangible thing, and what deepens this relationship once they are in it, is this sense of irritation or agitation, so the grit that makes the pearl.

There seems to be a belief in many New Age Spirituality circles, that we are all born with spiritual gifts that our modern life has blocked us off from, and if we just do some yoga or breathing or bang a drum or take some weekend courses, we can tap into this inner bliss and live in ecstasy, like, always and forever.

Now, while this idea is extremely appealing, and I like many, have fallen under its spell at times. It seems to me that whatever spiritual path we choose, the only lasting results – that will actually bring about the kind of inner transformation that won’t collapse under the pressures in day to day life, once we return from the bliss of our retreat in Bali – come from commitment, discipline and years of practice. The degree of self-mastery required is a lot of work.

I know, it’s not the best marketing pitch. You can see why “Seven Days to Complete Transformation” sells better.

We can embody the essential teachings of yoga and have a life that is full of divinity. The yogic path is to help us explore and embody that divine nature. But we can only experience this dependent on our own capacity. Have we corrected our intellect? Have we refined our understanding of life? And are we in tune with the value of truth? Only the one who has mastered themself can live a life truly worth living. Otherwise it is a struggle. Anand Mehotra

Recently I disovered an Italian writer called Julius Evola, who wrote very well and extensively about Eastern esoteric paths and all kinds of spiritual practices. He is very much out of favour because of his political beliefs, but he was an amazing scholar.

There’s a wonderful story about why he wrote about Buddhism in the first place. He believed that a Buddhist text that he came across after World War I, when he was suicidal, had saved his life. And to repay this debt, in gratitude, he used this text to write his book about Buddhism, The Doctrine of Awakening.

The text Julius read was a translation of the Theravadan (Tibetan Buddhist) text Majjhima Nikaya. Reading this inspired a deepening interest in Eastern spirituality, especially in techniques that strengthen the will, foster the power of concentration, and promote mastery over thoughts.

Evola believed that the translation of ‘dukkha’ as suffering, one of the most pivotal concepts in Buddhism, is a bit of a mistranslation. To his mind, a closer translation would be ‘agitation.’ It’s not suffering per se, in the sense of a great pain we must bear, although it can be for some. For many of us though, is the relentless monotony of desire and disappointment, the myriad of small and sometimes petty ways that life does not go the way we want it to. It is the agitation of rubbing up against the unsatisfactory nature of life that propels us into action.

We suffer because we cannot accept the true nature of life, of being. And this is the source of our irritation and agitation. We suffer because we are attached to the outcomes of our desires, which inevitably fail to satisfy, even when we get what we think we want.

The grit that makes the pearl.

Life isn’t easy-going. There’s sand in the sea, and it’s going to get into the oyster shell and be an irritation. Physical life, the body with all its groans and complaints, the mind and all its dissatisfactions, these are the grit of life. There’s no bypassing it, So where are our pearl-making abilities?

We look at it as something complex, as something far-fetched, to live a life of enlightenment, a life of brilliance. It’s not for us, it’s for somebody else. But at the core of our being we are looking for this, we are looking to have the most expansive experience of life. Anand Mehotra

I think I am still looking for the great insight, the one that changes everything. A magic bullet. Consciously I know that is silly and it doesn’t work like that, but subconsciously? Yeah. I still want quick and easy. I see how this belief sets me up for disappointment.

For the last six months, I have had a daily yoga (asana) practice. Before that I was practising probably five or six times a week, but there is a shift that happens when we commit to doing something every day, no matter what. It’s the discipline of practising regardless of how we feel about it.

Some days we battle against it, some days it is effortless. But if we do the practice regardless, we see that over time how we felt about it on any given day is actually irrelevant. It is the fact that we did the practice that counts. For me, this daily discipline saw me through a particularly lengthy and dark depression that lingered for months. I was proud of myself that I stuck with it.

And it was a reprieve. Anyone who has practised yoga over a long period of time will understand the psychological respite that we can feel even by rolling out and lying down on our mat. It’s that knowing that for the next hour or so there is no need for thought beyond this little space: the mat, the body, the breath.

During this dark phase, I found myself feeling very disengaged from my practices. There were many tearful moments where I literally begged for the will to go on. It all sounds rather melodramatic, but let’s face it, depression is an absolute fucker. It saps all your energy, any enthusiasm, any desire for connection or engagement. And when it just goes on and on like that… I was seriously struggling.

Into this gloom came an email from my dear friend Tanya Allison, who I met in India last year. Tanya was on her way to honour the Hindu goddess Durga at an ashram in India during Navaratri. Navaratri is the nine day festival that honours the various forms of Durga, the fierce mother goddess of the Hindu pantheon. Tanya was offering a daily online sadhana (practice) for the festival. The first three days honouring Kali, the next three Lakshmi and the final three Saraswati.

Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that. Joko Beck

So I devoted my altar to Durga, Kali, Lakshmi, and Sarawati and began a daily practice of mantra, offerings and prayers to the goddess. A few days in, when we had moved onto Lakshmi, I took a long walk by the river.

During bouts of depression I often find myself unable to sit and read or do any of the things I normally enjoy, walking is a way I can get out of the house and it seems to settle me. Being in nature, particularly water, is always soothing to me.

I found myself missing India at this time, longing to be there. I have written before about the deep sense of connection I felt in Rishikesh, being beside the river Ganga. Especially the experience I had of being in her waters.

The power of this experience was not so much what Ganga Ma (the Ganges river as shakti or goddess) gave me or even took away, though both were palpable. It was the sense of being held in her unconditional, maternal love. I was seen completely, nothing was hidden, and yet everything was perfect.

I know what you are thinking. This is a river we are talking about, yes? For now, let’s just say you had to be there… (I wrote about the experience in this post…)

How could it be? Whatever power flowed through her, flowed through everything. I felt deeply, completely, unconditionally held and nourished in her grace. Loved and supported to a degree I had never known possible before.

I had glimpses of this all-encompassing divine love before, but this experience was overwhelming, it washed over and through me as her waters held me. In that moment, I came home to myself. I felt at home, fully embodied in my body, in the world. Like for the first time I actually belonged in the scheme of life. I wasn’t a phoney or an imposter or a failure. I wasn’t even trying to be anything, I just was a part of everything. I know it sounds wild, but that’s exactly how it was.

Everywhere one goes in India, one finds a living landscape in which mountains, rivers, forests and villages are elaborately linked to the stories of the gods and heroes. The land bears the traces of the gods and the footprints of the heroes. Diane L Eck

Now as I gazed at the Yarra River, feeling so very far from that state of grace, I played a video of the view from my room in Rishikesh, the 13-storey Tryambakeshwar Temple overlooking the Ganges, the chanting from the temple audible. In this way I could tap into that experience.

I sat by the river chanting the Gayatri mantra. I had a sense that I was simultaneously meditating by the Yarra river, but tuned in to the Ganga, into that divine maternal energy.

Maybe it was a trick of the light, my mind misfiring, I don’t know, so I will just describe the experience as it came to me.

As I played videos of the Ganges at Rishikesh, with the chanting from Tryambakeshwar temple in the background. I felt into that first experience of great Mother shakti love, of Ganga Ma. My heart expressed a longing to feel that grace and love again.

The sun was shining a great orb on the river’s surface. And there she was, all light and golden grace. Shri Lakshmi.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. John Steinbeck

So before we all get too carried away that Goddess Lakshmi herself appeared to me, hovering over the Yarra River. I would like to add that what I saw was an orb of light, what I felt was a presence of power.

In the Tantric tradition shakti (or feminine power) is the force that creates and animates all life. There’s shakti in you, in me, in the sky, in the river.

I felt it inside of me and I experienced it outside of me. So what I experienced, to my mind was a connection with shakti. Because it was such a lovely, beautiful, uplifting golden energy, because I had been honouring Lakshmi in daily practice, I am happy to call this shakti shri.

Lakshmi, or shri in her ancient name, is the truly delicious aspect of shakti. She has 108 names which all mean beauty, wealth, abundance and worth. Lakshmi is said to be one of the most accessible deities, as connected as she is to worldly desires.

According to legend, Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and Vishnu’s wife, or shakti energy, visits her devotees and bestows gifts and blessings upon each of them.

Lakshmi is depicted as a beautiful woman with four hands, sitting or standing on a full-bloomed lotus and holding a lotus bud, which stands for beauty, purity and fertility. Her four hands represent the four ends of human life: “dharma” or righteousness, “kama” or desires, “artha” or wealth, and “moksha” or liberation from the cycle of birth and death.

She is often represented as sitting on a lotus flower. The lotus’ unfolding petals suggest the expansion of the soul. The growth of its pure beauty from the mud of its origin holds a benign spiritual promise. Particularly Brahma and Lakshmi, the divinities of potency and wealth, have the lotus symbol associated with them.

Of course as the intensity of this experience faded, I fell back into my dark mood, but there was a spark of something. I had connected with shakti, that power, and so I committed to 21 days of Lakshmi Pūjā, a daily practice of chanting, burning incense and candles and offering flowers and food to the goddess. 21 days has just become every day now.

It is from the intention of self-mastery that yoga arised. It was the desire to find a meaning for life. The base of the yogic teachings is the exploration of the meaning of life. Through exploration the early yogis realised that this is only possible through a level of self-mastery. Otherwise we are like a weak twig in the storm of life trying to hold on for dear life. We fight the very process of life. Anand Mehotra

Over this time of daily yoga, pūjā, chanting and prayers to the Hindu goddesses, my depression has shifted, my voracious appetite for reading has returned and I am devouring books on Tantra and Yoga.

There is copious evidence of the use of mantras and chanting to relieve depression, anxiety and to focus the mind. So much evidence I will need to devote an entire blog post to it.

What has become apparent is that whether you engage in these practices in a devotional way, as I tend to do, or in a very practical way, they are a system of self-mastery.

The word pūjā comes from Sanskrit, and means reverence, honour, homage, adoration, and worship.

This can be simple, a candle, a flower, some chanting of divine mantras. For me, creating a dedicated altar is important. It is both an act of devotion and a visual doorway to connection with the divine.

I feel the inner shift when I kneel before my altar, light the candle and ring the bell. My altar is also a reminder.  Have I prayed today?

Chameli Ardagh, who runs online Sadhanas (practice) to honour various goddesses puts it beautifully.

First create your altar. On the days you feel inspired, you will infuse the altar with your willingness and attention. On the days you feel resistant, busy, or disconnected from your practice, the altar can be your anchor to a deeper truth. It will remind you why you embarked on this journey. It will root you in your commitment to embodied awakening. Chameli Ardagh

Tanya’s emails provided a sadhana to connect me with intention of Navaratri, a daily practice of connecting with goddess or shakti. Tanya who I met in India. Who shared a blessed moment with me in the waters of Ganga Ma.

And I feel all this is connected. That intention I cast, like a red thread that brought me to India, to Diwali, the festival of Lakshmi worship, to these women. That thread continues to guide me.

I am guided, yet so blind and stubborn that I suffer too much to see. And still in the darkness, grace found me.

We don’t know what we do, the light we carry to others. We just seek connection to our divinity, and when we find it share it with others so they can find it too. We don’t know if they do or how profound a simple email or message can be.

So I had my breakthrough, I had another experience that at some deep level I am of value. I have worth. I am surrounded by grace. But what’s the real rub?

Sometimes, in fact much of the time, I won’t feel it. I won’t be walking around in a constant bliss state, overflowing with shakti. The world and all its agitations will continue to deplete me, to rub away at my skin. But I can make my pearl.

How do we make the pearl? Do the practice. Be disciplined. The temple, the shakti is in you. It is you. And in everything. But you just get to deal with this little package of everything called you.

So this is what I tell myself. Get up and meditate – practise the yogic techniques that strengthen and energise my body and mind, foster my power of concentration, and provide mastery over my thoughts.

I don’t need to live in an ashram. I have been in an ashram, I know what they do. I just need to bring those practices in my daily life. Make my real life an ashram. Bring my practice into my world instead of escaping from the world.

Moving my body into different shapes [through yoga], I became a different person. Creating more space in my joints, I made more space in my mind as well. Twisting and bending and arching my body, I broke up the ice floes of self-judgment that had frozen in my muscles. I squeezed out the anxiety knotted between my shoulder blades. I melted the anger in the pit of my stomach into tears. Anne Cushman

I realise this all sounds very far-fetched and magical, so let’s break it down.

Finding myself bogged down in the mud of depression, I committed to a daily discipline of practice. The yoga asanas are only a small part of the yogic path. Meditation, prayer, chanting, pranayama (breathing practices) and lifestyle are also vital. I am only just starting to understand the full scope and power of these yogic practices, when used correctly.

The yogic path that I follow is essentially about clearing the vessel (the body, mind, emotional state) in order to allow the shakti, the life force to flow. To be able to embody this force, this power in every aspect of living.

In the tantric tradition, this shakti is represented as goddesses. Each goddess bring an aspect of wisdom and divinity which is transmitted through dedicated practice.

I believe no prayer goes unanswered. A prayer is a devoted intention. A year ago I made a pilgrimage to Rishikesh, the birthplace of yoga. I wanted to find a teacher.

When I arrived In Rishikesh – the most magical place on Earth. I stood on my balcony overlooking the Ganga (a life-long dream to be near her) and looked at the Tryambakeshwar Temple. I had the intention to find a place to practise yoga and as my eyes scanned the buildings opposite I saw the sign Sattva Yoga. I walked over the bridge and met Amy Love – a recent graduate from the Sattva Yoga Academy – and began practising daily with her.

She showed me a photo of Anand Mehotra, her teacher, who seemed absolutely luminous, and told me all about her wonderful experience learning yoga with him.

After coming through this latest depression, having attributed this to the yogic practices I had been so diligent in during that time, I felt a renewed passion to continue my yogic studies. But which teacher?

Nobody out there can do it for you. No teacher, no leader. It is only through self that the self can become realised. We have the radical responsibility for our own life. It is nobody’s fault. We have to realise for ourselves the great magnificence of this life. We have to embody the essential teachings of yoga so it is not just on the conceptual or emotional level. Anand Mehotra

I watched a fantastic series on the Yogic Paths on Gaia, which featured Anand Mehotra as one of the teachers. I found his words and his presence captivating, so I signed up to his newsletter and then two days later I was thrilled when the opportunity arose to study online with him.

Coincidence? Maybe. Synchronicity? Definitely.

Anand teaches that the yogic path is about exploring reality to see that we are an expression of nature, we are as much an expression of the divine and creative forces, the shiva and shakti, as the trees, as the rivers.

As this is the ever-creative, ever-expanding, ever-changing force of life we can either embody it, harness it, or face the struggle of trying to fight against it.

When we can master our mental chatter and allow this life force to animate us, we cease to suffer. Life will challenge us, yes, but we can meet those challenges as beings embodied with a creative and evolutionary force.

We can meet those challenges, not with disappointment and petulance, but as the grit that makes the pearl. Then we can grow, then we can master our limiting thoughts and behavioural patterns, to continually evolve as a human being. And surely that’s what life is all about.

I guess for me the real challenge is to let go of how it all looks. To put my faith in the practice, to develop the discipline to carry me through the dark times, the lonely times, the truly gritty times when I want to scream “Fuck this! It’s not working!”

It’s unlikely I will ever master the ‘floaty, serene yogini’ thing, so I will have to just accept the ‘gritty, imperfect and agitated but keeps practising anyway, and has a moment or two of spine-tingling grace every now and then’ thing.

Having loved enough and lost enough, I’m no longer searching just opening, no longer trying to make sense of pain but trying to be a soft and sturdy home in which real things can land. These are the irritations that rub into a pearl. So we can talk for a while but then we must listen, the way rocks listen to the sea. and we can churn at all that goes wrong but then we must lay all distractions down and water every living seed. And yes, on nights like tonight I too feel alone. but seldom do I face it squarely enough to see that it’s a door into the endless breath that has no breather, into the surf that human shells call god. Mark Nepo

Hari om tat sat. Namaste. Blessings.

ॐ
Artwork by Elena Ray https://elenaray.photoshelter.com/index

Tanya Allison http://www.tanyaallison.com

Amy Love Yoga https://www.facebook.com/amyloveyoga/

Anand Mehotra/Sattva Yoga http://mysattva.com/

Letting go… and go… and go…

Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it. David Foster Wallace

Some days my life is measured in numbers. At work I negotiate in library card numbers, the Dewey decimal system, due dates, how much is it for 23 photocopies? The currency of the material world is numbers.

My mind is a whirring calculator “dit, dit, dit…” Not an efficient one, it has to be said, maths was never my strongpoint, I am more a word girl. Word Woman? Sounds like my kind of superhero.

At lunchtime I shop for groceries and keep a mental tally, budgeting as I go, trying to remember PIN numbers and log ins. The self checkout machines echo the inner workings of my brain, “Dit, dit, dit…”

At home I constantly conjure like a magician, trying to bend the numbers this way and that, to etch out an existence for my son and I, juggling bills and payments and expenses.

Not surprisingly at the end of most days my mind is a frazzled, whirring machine, and my body is a long forgotten appendage, dragging around after it.

It wears me down, this mental maelstrom. The attempt to control and manage all the minutiae of life. Life measured in dates, times, dollars, scores.

I have written many times about trying to make peace with myself, my sensitivity, my over-amped mind, my anxiety and depression. It’s not an easy thing to do when it is so obvious that life would run so much smoother without those aspects.

The last few months have had me on a pendulum swinging wildly between heart-clenching anxiety and depressive lethargy. It really feels like each day is a marathon, yet when I get to the end of the day, I haven’t really achieved much except lurching from one thing to the next.

So I try to find the points in these extremes where they are assets and not liabilities. Anxiety at its mildest gets me up and moving, propels me into action. The lethargy is a much needed reprieve from all the mental chatter. It forces me to rest.

I try to smile from the inside, a Balinese practice. To imagine all my organs smiling. Something about this very simple practice seems to centre me. And to be perfectly honest, simple is about all I can manage right now.

Yet it’s only a temporary reprieve, and rather like my experience when diving without enough weight, I feel groundless and tossed about by the elements around me. I can’t keep my equilibrium.

Let go or be dragged. Zen proverb

At the moment I don’t feel in integrity. I feel ungrounded, unhinged, as if I am being blown around in life’s storms.

I have, surprisingly for me, not written much about my fears surrounding my son’s imminent school trip to America. He leaves tomorrow, and although I am attempting to stay calm, circumstances seem to be conspiring against me.

There are of course, the usual fears a parent has letting their child go off in the world without them. I have had some preparation for this, as my son has travelled overseas with his dad several times since our divorce.

But letting your child go off with a loving parent who cares as much about their wellbeing as you do, and sending them off with a bunch of, albeit responsible, hopefully caring, near strangers is quite another.

Then hurricane season hit. As anyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock would know, the US and surrounds have been hit by some horrific hurricanes. Are being hit, I mean it’s happening as I write.

And the two worst hit areas, Houston and Florida, just happen to be my son’s destinations. So yep.

Did I mention I was already anxious? Did I mention I can whip up a worry fest over nothing? And now this, mass destruction, natural disaster, thousand-year monster storms. Hells bells.

So I just need to send my kid, my life, the person I love more than life, into that? Is this some kind of test? King Solomon you can quit hiding now…

As if my own fear wasn’t enough, my ex, my son’s father, has become a tabloid news junkie, sending me – and I’m not exaggerating here – hour-by-hour updates on the worst horrors of these cataclysmic events.

So that’s easy right, you just pull the pin on the trip?

But no. After ringing the school, the travel company and then the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade – who only have an emergency line with a very sweet young man who took pity on my stuttering “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m supposed to call this number but can you help me find out some information because I’m totally freaking out here…”

That was before Irma hit… And Maria…

So at this stage, the trip is going ahead. The travel team are very experienced, constantly monitoring the situation and ready to amend the travel plans as necessary. I know you don’t need to know this, it’s myself I’m reassuring.

Oh, and did I mention how excited my son is? He helped pay for the trip with his part time job and has saved a thousand dollars spending money.

And the whole reason I talked his dad into agreeing to this trip – and that took a lot of talking, it is very expensive – was that 18 months ago my son was depressed and struggling. Really badly struggling. I mean, that was scary.

And when this trip came up, to NASA and the Kennedy Space Center and Disneyland. I thought “Hello Carrot!” I mean if Disneyland can’t coax a teenager out of their doldrums, I don’t know what can.

You are given life and it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight. Elizabeth Gilbert

And it has been. A carrot, I mean. This trip gave him a goal and a purpose, he got his first job and I have watched him butterfly right out of that adolescent gloom into a bright and confident young man.

I think I have alluded before to the feeling that I have been parenting solo for many years. My son’s father has his own issues, which have no place here, but I feel I have had to hold the lion’s share of providing emotional support and guidance for my son.

I find it exhausting to hold a safe and loving space for my son, whilst holding space for my own fears and struggles, and detaching from all the missives from his father. It’s managing this on my own that makes me feel most lonely and despite wonderful friends, mostly unsupported.

Last week the school contacted me to say we had been nominated for a scholarship. It’s a hardship scholarship aimed at keeping kids in school to complete their VCE.

While on the one hand I felt grateful that the school has obviously seen how hard it is to do this solo parenting, there was a fair amount of shame at being singled out as needing help. I’m proud like that. I struggle, but I don’t want it to show.

I often wonder how my son will look back on this time. Will he see me as failing to provide a family and financial affluence for him? Or will he remember the love and that I was always here for him. That I tried to provide the best life experiences I could for him. I hope the latter.

Having a child has been an exercise in letting go from the start. From the moment the doctor told me I was pregnant, once the room stopped spinning, that is – I thought I had the stomach flu!

I worried about protecting my child. I gave up smoking, I fussed over food, I poured over baby development books, hoping and praying that all the myriad of organs and parts were forming correctly. I worried about labour, with good reason, labour was hard, hence the name I guess.

When he was finally born I worried he would stop breathing at any moment – the baby of a family friend had died in her sleep and it had affected me greatly.

Then comes the time when you actually LEAVE YOUR CHILD WITH SOMEONE ELSE. I imagine this is what is feels like to have a limb amputated. I read once that having a child was like giving birth to your own heart and then forever having it walk around without you. I used to peer through the fence at daycare (and then school – it’s a wonder I was never ever arrested.)

Then comes the hard bits, when a doctor tells you there is something wrong with your child and you think “I knew it, I knew I would stuff this up. How could I have dreamed I could be a proper parent? Me? World’s greatest screw-up?”

There’s the sleepless nights where you worry, will they be okay? Will they go to a normal school, get a job, have friends, find love, have their own family? Tossing and turning even though he is only three and just wants to play Thomas the Tank Engine.

During the years you monitor their moods, is it normal, is it depression? WHAT AM I MEANT TO DO?

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you. Kahlil Gibran

I often wished life came with a user’s manual. And the closest I have ever come is reading other people’s spiritual biographies. My favourites are The Wishing Year (by Noelle Oxenhandler, which inspired this blog.) And, don’t judge, don’t judge, DON’T JUDGE… Eat, Pray, Love. I know you are judging me!

I must have read Eat, Pray, Love at least ten times. I often think what I love about it is not the same as what a lot of people love about it. Yes, it’s romantic and she gets the guy in the end, with a Balinese backdrop and all, and yes, I am a hopeless romantic. But that was never it for me.

The first time I read that book I was trapped in a miserable and destructive marriage. I understood the three am anxiety wake up calls, the crying to God for help, the begging for the courage to leave, and for leaving to not be a total nuclear disaster.

After I left my marriage I read it again, and related to that all consuming depression, where it felt that all the passion for life had been sucked right out of me. The feeling that I had self-imploded my life and hurt people and things would never be okay again.

I read it again after meeting my soul mate, and every few years after our relationship soared and then imploded like a painfully recurring reenactment of the Challenger space launch.

The gods envy us. They envy us because we are mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again. Homer (The Iliad)

There’s a line from the book where she’s at the ashram in India, crying to Richard from Texas about how she can’t get over her ex. “But I miss him.” She says. “So miss him.” Replies Richard. “But I love him.” She says. “So love him.” He says.

There’s something so profound in this. That sometimes that’s all we can do is feel it. It can’t be changed or fixed. We cant go back in time for a do-over. But something may shift in us by just feeling what we feel.

As a side note when I spent a few days at an ashram in India I met a guy who I dubbed ‘Richard from Texas.’

I never found out his true name because we were in silence the whole time, but through a combination of charades-style signalling and gestures he helped me through the unspoken, but very strict, etiquette of meal times. Sit there, not there, take this, wash that. He was very kind to me and I giggled to myself that he was my Richard from Texas. Even though we didn’t get a chance for more profound communications, he stays in my mind as a friend.

Anyway, I digress. What the book always gave me was an understanding that my suffering was a rite of passage, a portal to some part of me I had been to afraid to embody. A part of me that could only emerge after all the other stuck-on parts I thought were me had been stripped away.

And that meant pain. Lots and lots of pain, and fear and anxiety, and guilt and shame. And then repeat…

Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape — all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain. It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately trying to fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness. Pema Chodron

This sense that pain was a portal to my deeper self, and not just a pointless suffering, was the same reason I was so attracted to my shamanic teacher, Sandra Ingerman. She talks openly about her battle with depression and how finding shamanic journeying helped her through that.

In the same way, my spiritual practices have given me a spaciousness around my depression. It’s not that I don’t feel it, I think it’s an integral part of my personality, but I don’t suffer so much with it. Well, mostly. Except when I can’t motivate myself to even do my spiritual practices.

Today I awoke with that heavy feeling. Of course my first thought was “Oh fuck, not this.” Nobody welcomes depression. I mean, if you’re feeling welcoming at all, it’s probably not depression.

But then I just went okay. I’m feeling depressed. What now? I need exercise, sunshine, good food and to throw away my to-do list for the day. But first some social media, because seeing other people’s fabulous lives is so helpful when you feel like a loser…

In my email account up popped a blog post with a link to this video. It’s about a woman and her journey with depression and how it led her to believe that depression is a portal to spiritual awakening.

Lisa Miller is a psychologist so she studied the brains of people who had overcome depression. She found that precisely the same areas that atrophied and withered in people with chronic depression were the same regions that thickened, the cortex strengthened like the trunk of a tree, in people who had sought a spiritual solution to their depression.

Lisa found when she looked at the brain scans of women who, through suffering, had come to a spiritual path, they had this thickened brain cortex, and they also had another quality. The back of their head gave off a certain wavelength of energy, that we call alpha, and it’s also found on the back of the head of a meditating monk. Alpha, has another name, it’s Schumann’s constant, it’s the wavelength of the Earths crust.

Her research caused her to conclude that depression can be core to our development. It is a rite of passage at pivotal stages in our lives.

Depression often occurs at times of transition, both natural like puberty, after childbirth, menopause and old age. As well as other transitions divorce, retrenchment, loss. She believes depression is a reaction to a call to become something. The problem is our culture has dismantled all the rituals of passage that might help us navigate these transitions with more support and less suffering.

I knew this journey was more than a disease. This depression was opening a path, a path of becoming. A spiritual path. Lisa Miller

Whenever I have been truly lost, truly without faith or hope, in retrospect I see it is right there that I have been standing at an unseen threshold into some deeper understanding.

This happened before I found God in AA, before I found Chakradance, before I found shamanism and druidry. Before I went to India.

All I can hope and pray is that this same process of emptying out everything I think I know is happening now, to make way for something greater or deeper or more substantial.

I don’t know, that’s the thing, I don’t know what’s coming – breakdown or breakthough? It feels awful, like a psycho-spiritual curette. I am being scraped clean of everything that I hold onto. David Foster Wallace wrote that everything he eventually let go of had claw marks in it. I mean I am a Taurus, for crying out loud, our motto is “I hang on.”

That’s me always hanging on, because I’m scared yes, but also because I don’t actually know what letting go looks like.

Is it the grand gesture? Quit my job, leave my kid, move to an ashram in India? If so which lineage because after four years of investigating I’m still no clearer on that.  Every time I find a guru whose teachings I like I discover they are under a cloud of sex charges.

Is it what I am doing? Staying here in this discomfort, with this crisis of faith and trusting that I will be guided to the next step when the time is right?

And I know this is the time when I should be embracing all my practices meditation, yoga, Chakradance, journeying but everything feels so empty and I feel so unmotivated. The best I can do is get my arse to yoga every day and run my classes. And I do get that temporary relief, that sense of calm. But then it just pours out of me like a sieve full of water.

I guess this is exactly where integrity comes in. Like the integrity of a building, can I hold myself without constantly being at the mercy of life’s storms? Can I provide a strong centre that is my anchor during shifting tides?

In savassana today – where all my truly sane thoughts arise, I realise I am in another rite of passage, as is my son. He’s becoming a man. He doesn’t need to be mummied so much any more.

And I wonder if, moreso than the hurricanes and my concerns over his recent problematic behaviours continuing while he’s away, if this is the deep root of my anxiety. I’ve defined myself in a large way as a mother for many years, and without that, who am I now?

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. Kahlil Gibran

I need to let go and he needs me to let him go out into the world without me fussing over him.

Parenting is a fine balance of holding and letting go. And I think mothers err to the former. So if you happen to hear of a hysterical woman who had to be carried out of Melbourne Airport tomorrow, just know that was me doing my best to let go.

I jest. I was the epitome of grace and dignity – well on the outside at least and right up until I waved him goodbye through the security gates, starting to cry as I ran into the arms of my friend who happened to be standing there, en route to Bali.

In the words of my beloved Beatles, I just have to let it be.

To let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own. Jack Kornfield

I like that, what Jack says, letting be rather than letting go. Sounds less like losing something. While I can to some degree manage the numbers of life, people are another thing entirely. And who am I to deprive anyone of their journey, their portals, and rites of passage?

Not to mention the adventures on what my dear friend used to call this ‘exquisite journey’ of life.

If I can let go of trying to control all that, all these people, places and things – and just let it all be – maybe I’ll  see what is trying to emerge in me.

I think that what I have been truly searching for as a person… A sense of liberty, the liberty that comes not only from self-awareness but also from letting go of many things. Many things that weigh us down. Jhumpa Lahiri

Hari om tat sat. Namaste. Blessings.

ॐ

 

Reboot your body + recharge your life

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Mary Oliver

I love this quote. Reading Mary Oliver feels like lying down on lush, damp grass, taking a deep breath and sinking in. But how often do we take the time to sink in and really inhabit our body?

Our modern lifestyle creates a disconnect with the body, we become like a head with hands, always thinking and doing, but rarely fully being in our body.

Unless we habitually stop and practice meditation, dance or yoga, or spend time in nature, we may never really arrive in our body all day.

The body is our vehicle for living. And like any vehicle, our body provides a stream of signs to guide and inform us. It provides the physicality, the flesh, the medium though which we interact with our physical, emotional and spiritual world.

From the soft lub-dub of our heart beat, to our churning guts, our racing pulse, our cold feet, the body conveys a series of messages, if we would only listen.

The soft animal of our body knows what it loves. It feels our pleasure and our pain.

The body contains truths unique to our being. We are similar, but not the same and neither are our bodies. As you embrace this, you can settle into a beautiful relationship with the unique body, the exquisite system of flesh and senses, that is you.

Your biography becomes your biology. Caroline Myss

In the Vedanta – the ancient Indian wisdom writings – it says that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Our body is what allows us to have this experience.

The yogis have always known this, that the stresses of the body must be smoothed out and soothed with yoga poses before the mind can be still and spirit can be heard. The yoga tradition is all about purifying the vehicle to achieve union of body and spirit.

The first chakra, located at the base of our spine, is called Muladhara in Sanskrit, meaning root support. Like the root system of a tree, our root or base chakra energetically grounds us in the physical world. This chakra balances our physicality, sense of security and stability in our body and in the world.

Linking the chakras are a series of energy channels that, in their purest and unimpeded form, constantly flow and spiral up and down the spinal column, keeping our energetic system in connectivity to both the earth and ethereal energy above, with the chakras like little hubs in between.

Anodea Judith calls the chakras the ‘architecture of the soul.’ She says a chakra is a centre of organisation for the reception, the assimilation and the expression of life force energy. The chakras are the portals, the mediators, between the inner world and the outer world.

Chakras can be described as processing centres of energy and information, as well as gateways for this energy and information to flow into, out of, and through. Note that when I refer to ‘energy’ I use the term to describe the concept used in many esoteric traditions of the vital life force energy, or spiritual energy, also known as prana or qi.

Many of us have sustained emotional and physical traumas in life which may have affected the formation and flow of our chakras. This biography of experience is energetically recorded in our chakra system (as well as the cells in our bodies.) This can cause our chakras to compensate by either restricting energy flow, becoming deficient or under active, or by becoming over active and excessive. Or even a combination of both.

‘So what?’ You ask, ‘it’s only energy,’ read on, and I’ll tell you why this kind of imbalance can have deep and far reaching effects on your life.

The land is my backbone. Galarrwuy Yunipingu

Linked to physical realities of life – security, shelter, sustenance, family, tribe – Deedre Diemer writes that the first chakra is associated with primordial trust. It is the chakra associated with our basic instincts for food, shelter, sex and survival.

If we have ever experienced a lack in these needs being met, we may have an overreactive first chakra, that is out of balance and causes us to compensate in a variety of ways.

Natalie Southgate writes that when your base chakra is balanced, you feel connectedness with the world and those around you, in a state of safety and stability. The balanced base chakra gives you a focused sense of your place in the world. As it is your root chakra, it is vital to allow your other chakras to be in balance.

Like the foundations of a house, or the roots of the tree, the base is essential to the stability of the whole structure.

If we are imbalanced in this chakra it can manifest as a lack of physicality, being underweight, spacey and anxious. Or it may manifest as an excessive physicality in being overweight and overly attached to the physical by hoarding, over eating and indulgence in pleasure, or over-accumulation of stuff.

To lose our connection with the body is to become spiritually homeless. Without an anchor we float aimlessly, battered by the winds and waves of life. Anodea Judith

I often wondered how I could be both spaced out and have a tendency to over-indulge. Anodea Judith points out that as these extremes are both compensatory behaviours to address an issue in this chakra we may experience symptoms of both.

If you imagine the root chakra like a plant in a pot, it needs a degree of support to keep the soil and moisture in, but too tight a restraint will not allow it to grow.

In the same way a deficient base chakra contracts too tightly into its core, not allowing enough room for energy to come in, to have, to hold, to manifest. In this scenario we are literally strangling our energy flow, the earth energy that needs to flow up and through our base chakra is restricted and bottlenecked, creating blockages that may literally prevent us from manifesting or maintaining physical things, including our own healthy robust body, as there is no room to receive. This kind of person can be literally disembodied, spacey, anxious, ungrounded.

The person who compensates for an unbalanced base chakra though physical over-indulgence, allows excessive earth energy into their system. They may feel heavy, lethargic, they may be overweight, overeat, hoard and covet possessions, money and power. It is as if they use physical things, including their own body weight to compensate for deficiencies in this chakra, perhaps to literally compensate for a lack of maternal holding in their formative years.

Again this results in a blockage. Too much energy, when it is held and hoarded in this way impedes the flow just as much as constricted energy. It’s akin to the Buddhist concept of attachment, it is the attachment to our desires that causes suffering. It causes us to get stuck in a unmanageable mess of our own making.

Looking back you realize that a very special person passed briefly through your life and that person was you. It is not too late to become that person again. Robert Brault

The base chakra is very much about grounding, stability, and security, and I have learned the only lasting stability and security available is that which I provide to myself, through being present in the body, in the now. My intention now is for balance and health. I no longer want to shield myself in weight, nor do I want to starve, or define myself by some ideal so manipulated that not even today’s models actually achieve it. My intention is to love myself, to protect myself without needing layers of flesh to do so. To be whatever size and shape my true being is, healthy, comfortable, happy. My intention is to rediscover joy in my body, my life.

The lesson of Muladhara chakra is grounding, a full inhabiting of our physical bodies as the embodiment of our connection to the element of earth. To cease existing primarily in our heads and inhabit our bodies. To cease grasping onto people, places and things as the source of our security.

Here we can experience pleasure and pain, connect with our feelings, and release these accumulated emotional energies through our connection with the physical.

Movement through our bodies allows energy to flow, it can trigger blockages to shift and cause accumulated energies to be released or redistributed and balanced.

Movement brings us into our physicality, brings our energy down from our heads into our roots, allowing a real connection with not only our physical selves, but the physicality of the world around us.

Here in this body are the sacred rivers, here are the sun and the moon, as well as all the pilgrimage places. I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body. Saraha Doha

To encourage our vital energy to flow freely we must let go of our attachments and defences. The chakras can be blocked by our learned defences, either something we want to keep out or something we don’t want to let out. What kinds of things would cause these defences? Toxic energy, fear and violence are all things we may shut down to avoid. Similarly we may repress our own ‘negative’ emotions – anger, sorrow, exuberance – having learned it was unsafe to express these.

Sometimes the residue from trauma gets stored in our body and our energy system. While traditional psychotherapy may assist at a mental and behavioural level, we also need to release these wounds energetically, in order to release the attachments and defences they cause us to act out – often unconsciously – in our lives.

As in all things balance is the key. An over-amped base chakra may cause us to be frozen in fear or rushing about in a heightened state of anxiety. What we ideally want is movement that is grounded and purposeful. We need to reconnect with the nurturing aspects of Mother Earth.

I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. Mary Oliver

To ground we invite this energy back down through our body and reconnect ourselves energetically with the earth.

Traditionally humans spent most of their lives in direct contact with the earth, walking, living and sleeping on the ground. In the modern world we are so disconnected from the earth in layers of buildings, shoes, vehicles.

Anodea Judith says that the best way to restore balance to the base chakra, is to open the leg channels. The legs connect us to the earth and the energy flows up through our feet and legs and into the base chakra. Our legs are like two prongs of an electric plug – we need to plug in to the earth energy to ground.

In Chakradance we reconnect our base chakra to the earth by dancing to earthy tribal beats, moving powerfully through our legs and feet. We may visualise ourself as a seed planted in the earth, provided with all the sustenance, support, and security it needs to grow. We see ourselves setting down strong roots as we grow into the world, like a giant majestic tree firmly rooted in the soil, so our branches can safely reach up and out into the sunshine.

Plenty of earthing, feet in the earth, sitting crouched on the earth, visualising mother earth’s energy cleansing, grounding, and balancing me. All very tribal, this earth-based, primal dance of the base chakra, and so liberating for a cerebral girl like me.

Join me on my next retreat (see below) if you feel inspired to reboot your base chakra.

Hari om tat sat. Namaste. Blessings.

ॐ

Upcoming events at Raw Mojo Chakradance

Base Chakra Journeying

Reboot Your Base Chakra Retreat

Chakradance – Rhythm for your soul

All Artwork by Melina Del Mar – all rights reserved