I did not realize, until about 8:15 pm, long after doing Bound Lotus, singing mantras, eating and walking in the Park, that today was the 4th of July. Hm. I think of it as a holiday that is an excuse for most people to get drunk and be obnoxious, and the fireworks don't really blow my mind in St. Louis, so I guess it barely registers on my radar.
Today, I began reading a book I purchased on May 15th, 2000, that I attempted several times to read since then, but never did. I remember, once, taking it over to the house of that evil and ugly little German boy I foolishly dated. The one who hid this very book under the bed so he could sleep with someone else while I was at work. I knew the whole time, just like I always know when I am being betrayed. If only I had read this book then. It isn't, on the surface, a monumental piece of work: it looks to be sappy and sickly sweet. And yet it isn't. To read it like a diary...ruminations, documentation of conversations deep within a circle of women who love each other dearly. Women who uplift each other...so unlike the women I have known in the past...or have been myself.
So much love in this book. Kindness. Prescriptions for good eating, traveling, relationships and health. I took 'Isabella's' advice and made toast of some bread, drizzles with olive oil, layered with tomato slices, and sprinkled with salt and pepper. Heaven! I'll take Pearl's advice and go to stay by the edge of the Ocean or Lake Michigan later this year to do some healing. I want to go back to New Mexico and meet a curandera too, but until then, several dozen white candles and a bath filled with sage, Rosemary, fresh cut lemons and limes and peppers will, I am sure, recharge my soul. Healing it from the damage of all the cheating, lying, philandering, gruesome meanness, lecherous and draining behaviour of men from my past.
And then, there will be more room for the lovely masculine souls who are beginning to grace my life as friends. And for the men from my past who have truly changed and grown. More room for my own healing heart as this deeply held bitterness, anger and rage continues to diminish. Forgiveness to myself for not having found the opportunity to be a mom. I so desperately want a child. I had not realized this until the day before White Tantric Yoga began at Summer Solstice...the day I heard Snatam Kaur singing "Poota Maata Ke Asees", without knowing the words meant: "Oh, my child, this is your mother's blessing."
I am really, really tired. I also feel a little disillusioned about Amma. Everyone seems so focused on 'getting' from her, rather than 'doing their own work' like Yogi Bhajan's teachers. After all, YB said he came not to create students, but teachers. Amma, on the other hand, seems to have a lot of students who have gone beyond the stage where they needed her help desperately, and now could do their own work, but aren't.
The guy there who hit on me back in 2008, and then pretended to his friends that I pursued him so he wouldn't get in trouble with his friends was there. He tried to act angry with me, and I told him in front of his friends that he was a schmuck for trying to start something with me when he had a girlfriend. Predictably, he got angry. Has he learned anything from being with Amma? I doubt it.
The lady whose friend and granddaughter wiped me out so much being energy vampires the two times I drove with them, to the point that last year I barely made it in my front door from seeing Amma before I shit all over myself, was there. I was happy to say hello, but she was upset because I hadn't called her back after last July, and the last straw with her, when she was so angry with me because I stood up to a bullying friend of hers. Her anger had been so intense, it made me sick. Why would I want to hang out with these people?
Besides that, many of Amma's workers were rude and unkind. Yelling at everyone, ordering people around without a shred of kindness. Snappy. Irritable. They need to sleep and rest. Her All-Night programs may not exhaust her, but they exhaust her supporters, and make them mean. I decided to google anything about Amma and disillusionment. Surprisingly, I found a lot. A blog where a British man discussed how monumentally unhappy her devotees on the Amritapuri Ashram seem, and how utterly depressing the Ashram seems. This tireless devotion to Amma and her causes is apparently tiresome to many. It seems like all work and no play. Unlike Yogi Bhajan's devotees and his 3HO organization. 3HO stands for: Happy, Healthy, Holy Organization.
Anyway, I also found a post by a former devotee of Amma's on the Amritapuri Ashram, who describes her stay there in such unglowing terms that I wonder about Amma. Apparently she can be very 'catty'. Kind to you as long as she needs you, and then assassinating your character if you try to leave the Ashram. Sounds like 'Hotel California'. I wonder if when The Eagles wrote that song they were talking about an Ashram?
Oh well, I guess that disillusionment with one's guru is part of the journey...part of growing up. Relying on a hug from Amma to get juiced up for the year no longer sounds appropriate now that I am way more healthy. I am strong enough to do my own work, and am doing it with Kundalini Yoga, where I left off in the first place back in 2000, before I ever met Amma. She helped me when I needed it, and she helps others, thousands of others with her donations to things such as the Tsunami Relief...but many of her 'followers' need to get off their duffs and do their own work, and stop vampirizing her and her workers.
Gosh, I hate to say it, but the analogy that A.S. Byatt uses in her novel "Angels & Insects", is appropriate I think. Amma is like a Queen Bee with all these drones, workers around her. She is never alone. She never gets to leave the hive, it seems, and have any time alone. I don't see that as healthy. I don't care if she is a Saint, there is something so unhealthy about all of this...
Let me just get back to processing from Kundalini Yoga Summer Solstice. I think I might be done with going to see Amma for awhile. I no longer want to join an Ashram of any sort. I want to teach yoga. All kinds of yoga. I'm happy teaching. It is what I do best.
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