In 3 more days...the 14th anniversary of my mother's death

I'm exhausted, tired, almost done reading "Orlando". I go to sub a beginner's class. I sit for Bound Lotus. I go to see the movie "Great Directors", and fall in love with Agnés Vardàs speech patterns...David Lynch is so strange...The Rabbits, Inland Empire, Lost Highway, dark, dark, dark...All those nights watching these movies in the past under coercion. With that monster asking me did I know what the word "covet" meant, or "coerced"? Little did I know that he coveted my happiness and was coercing me into giving it to him. The spider~ sucking my insides out.

I'm home. My head feels like a war-zone. When will the bulldozer come? I just want to read about nothing.

My Beloved Mother Was An Alcoholic...

...why will my father not admit it? She always kept a bottle of "cooking Sherry" and Kahlua and a Danish cherry cordial I used to know the name of, and honeymead in the house. The honeymead was always in the living room. The rest she hid under the sink. I caught her many times taking a nip. Her rages when she was drunk (after cooking), were incredible. Yelling, screaming, growling she'd send us to the orphanage all because one of broke some china accidentally, or damaged something in her precious home. No wonder I wanted nothing to do with alcohol, really, until, as a dancer, I needed it to swallow down the 'jagged little pill' of the work. No wonder I am a relationship addict. No wonder I fell in love with a functional alcoholic and drug abuser, and have let him remain a part of my life for almost 10 AFTER we broke up. No wonder: I AM A RELATIONSHIP ADDICT. No wonder I dated a sex addict in more recent years. No wonder, with no true sense of self all those years...I allowed a Solipsistic, Narcissistic Psychopath to almost kill me the year and year after my mother died, from cancer, and with a noose around her neck and a bottle of Dad's Glen Livet.

The only fly in the ointment for healing is that the love of my life came after the Narcissist and stole my heart. How do I get it back?

And for all his drinking, he never rhapsodized about alcohol the way my parent's did...Mom talking about the pleasures of honeymead, her beloved Cherry Kirsch, and Kahlua and Cream...while Dad extolled the virtues of the best scotch: The Glen Livet. The Glen Livet she drank to make it easier to die. I did not fuck myself up alone...MY MOTHER WAS AN ALCOHOLIC. I can say that now. In 42 years, almost 43, no one in our family ever spoke those words.

And I WAS (as I disagree with AA) an alcoholic. Until 2005. I am, though, still a drug addict, in the sense that, if my body would let me, I'd smoke weed again, and a lot. I am a food addict and am addicted to chocolate. It get's better. I'm addicted to reading, to knitting and to yoga. But I am no longer addicted to alcohol. And I am no longer addicted to silence. And I can say these words out loud: My mother was an alcoholic, God bless her heart and soul. And I loved her, Jekyl and Hyde though she was until she mellowed with age like fine wine, and then died literally on the vine at the end of a rope. She was an alcoholic. But I loved her, I love her now, and I miss her.

Wild as the Wind I Go...

Everything is sort of fine until lunch with Dad. Then my grief over Joe comes plunging out. We are eating at Dressel's...dark, wood-paneled bar I hate. Perfect backdrop for strippers. We're in a bar! WTF? Then, as my soul comes spilling out on the table like a gutted fish, entrails hanging everywhere, draping like an octopus over my salad and hummus~ lo and behold: an ex-stripper bitch sits down behind and eavesdrops a little...long enough to see that I am about to cry. Then she laughs at me to her boyfriend. I can imagine all the internal references in her mind to 'Crazy Brianna'. Finally I get up and ask, with eyes flashing, if she remembers me, how she is doing, and if she likes her hummus. Catty bitch. The look of abject fear in her stupid little gossipy eyes is immensely gratifying.

Later, I go home and become crazy like I used to be... I can't stop crying. I want out of this shithole of a city where people are so frequently dull, and hooked on the Busch family beer. I want to leave my giant behind me, stop running into people who formerly bullied me, and just rise above the sun and smile.

For a while I am afraid I won't be able to teach my class. I call Jen and tell her I need a sub. Then I do Bound and change my mind. If I can do Bound, I can teach. I draw inner strength I didn't know I had. I teach my class and it is fine. But I think my boss might think I am little crazy, and I am, but aren't we all? I come home and crash.

Blood and Brown Tires

I finally talk to the owner of the BP station where the gas turned my tires brown. He tells me it is my fault for pumping the gas? I tell him I will report him to the BBB, the IL Dept of Agriculture, and the EPA. He says if they find nothing that he'll sue me for slander. Idiot, I say, you can't. This is not a totalitarian state. Last I checked. Maybe in the Gaza Strip he could. Bastard.

I tell my father and he patronizes me, placates me, which infuriates me. I tell him that he used to do this to mom. Joe did it to me. Brad did it me. None of them can see it. I can walk away from Joe and Brad, but not Dad. Infuriating. Who do these men think they are talking down to the little crazy woman? Just because I'm righteously angry doesn't make me crazy or hysterical. Who do they think they are!!!!????!

I'm bleeding everywhere this month. My period is simply and utterly horrid! Bound Lotus is the last thing I want to do, but I do it anyway. Then I go back to reading.

Snow White/Rose Red

I feel myself drowned in grief.

"In the fairy tales I read as a child, I will tell Bahar on that day, the heroine is always damaged: she has spent two decades asleep under a curse, or locked up in a tower. She has lost her mother and been betrayed by her father, forced to promise her firstborn to a gnome, taken into the woods and left to die. Even after the prince arrives to awaken her from her sleep, or breaks into the tower by using her hair to climb to the top, even after the gnome self-destructs and the witch is boiled in the pot she had prepared for the children, the heroine cannot undo the damage done to her. I know this - that I will always remain damaged - but I do believe that I can be real in spite of the damage, that I can find my way through the dark and thorny woods, climb up the valley of The Tango Dancer's despair, and emerge, if not whole, triumphant nevertheless." - 'Caspian Rain', Gina B. Nahai

"Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose leaves"

When I was young, in my twenties, I saw the movie "The Lover". Then I began to devour Duras. I went to Paul's Books in The Loop and bookshops in New Orleans looking for Duras. I found "Emily L." I found "The Passion" and "Sexing the Cherry" by Jeanette Winterson, who concedes she modeled the latter on "Four Quartets". I did not read Eliot's "Four Quartets" until last year, last April, while poring over "Reading Lolita in Tehran". I stopped reading that 2/3rds through to read "Lolita".

Now that I am back at reading about atrocities to women, i.e., FGM and stoning for adulteresses in Iran, and reading and seeing plays about Palestine, and feeling beleageured by the Middle East...I find myself wanting to write again. I think of my very first short story, more like a part of a larger work, say, in the style of Amos Oz' "The Same Sea", and remember how it was inspired by a love affair going bad, and the ravaging, or ravishing of my soul at 26. I called it: "A Death Not Mourned". Maybe it should be: "The Ravaging of Mary Rose"...to reference my fake album cover, and the sinking of a ship.

It had a lot about roses, dried roses, love never truly experienced. And today, I reopen "Reading Lolita in Tehran", to find words which waft like a musty closet scent from my old manuscript, infused before I even knew it, with words I had not yet read from Eliot's "Four Quartets":

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

My lover and I disturbed the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves....and to what end?

Let my twist my heart while I twist my legs. I do not want to do Bound Lotus today.

I've said goodbye...

...and my heart aches. Even floating for almost a minute in handstand does not ease the grief. Singing the Akal brings it up. Now I know why I began singing it on the 12th. Reading Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" is welcome respite, but even dropping myself into a book has to end. Classes must be taught, Bound Lotus be done, and food chewed and swallowed. On the 19th when my heart sank, I saw a blurb on facebook about making up your fake album cover from random names, quotes and photos. My band name was the Mary Rose ( a ship which sunk fully intact on July 19th -no less- of 1545), the photo of a girl in a flowered dress fallen into a pool as if drowning and fully clothed, and the title: "Thanks for Telling Me". That's how I felt on Monday, like I just drowned. And I wanted to say to Joe:" thanks for telling me." He should have told me before the play...and it took me all day Monday to realize that I was hurt. I was like a ship sinking slowly. I've been letting water come in the hull all week. Now I have to swim out of the sinking ship and get away...

Bhavar tumaaraa ih man hova-o har charnaa hohu ka-ulaa

What I love about being in love with the Divine, is that whenever you go looking, He/She is always there, never sleeping, never far away...I never have to doubt the Truth. And when I posted this yesterday on facebook, two friends from Solstice had already e-mailed and texted me 2 minutes before my post showed up...which means means they were listening to their souls and knew I was in pain. They responded when I first had the thought to write, before I posted it. I didn't see their messages until later...

Doing a New Meditation called "Laya Yoga"!

I started it yesterday...and "It makes you creative and focused on your real priorities and helps you sacrifice what is needed to accomplish them." Also, "Laya Yoga fixes your attention and energy on your essence and higher consciousness without normal distractions and attachments having power over your reactive awareness."

"This mantra (Ek Ong Kaar [uh] Sa Ta Na Ma [uh] Siree Wha [uh] Hay Guru) was guarded like a secret gem. It is the key to the inner doors of naad, the realm of creative sound. If you listen to the sound of the mantra and then concentrate into its subtle sounds, you will become absorbed into the inner domain of your Higher Self."

"...This mantra takes you to the most subtle realm of creativity. It awakens the Kundalini force that energizes the whole Creation. It awakens your awareness and empowers the sense of the Subtle Body of the Aura. The practice of the meditation gives intuition and the ability to heal."

I wondered why I was doing it when I have all these other meditations. And more importantly, I wondered why I was doing it at all...then today I realized, as I spoke with a good girlfriend, that I need to let go of my ex of 10 years ago, who talks to me frequently, and whom I talk to just as frequently. He is draining me intensely. What happened this weekend with him buying tickets for me to see a show, and then letting me know later that the talented young woman in the one-woman monologue was his most recent ex, and not only that, but the woman he loved more than me...was just so many kinds of wrong.

And then making plans to have me come over to wash out my tent, and be halfway present because of constantly needing to look at his phone, the same the next day when I picked it up, and making plans for lunch the following day, only to have him call me an hour later to say he just woke up! We did end up having a bite to eat, and a nice conversation...but WTF!?

This is ExACtly the way he behaved 10 years ago. And it didn't help seeing a woman outside the restaurant who recognized him and then shot me a dirty look. Yet another person he can't introduce me to because he can't remember her name. Schmuck! Need I explain why I think she might have been smug toward him, and toward me? Same old, same old. Nothing has changed.

And so this meditation is to help you be focused on your real priorities and to sacrifice what is needed to accomplish them. I'd say my biggest priority is to stay physically, emotionally and mentally sound. To accomplish this, his friendship needs to be sacrificed. He has pulled me down and drained me too much in the past. I will not allow him to ever make me feel like shit for 5 days, or even one day. Enough!

I can touch my toes!!!!!!

Holy Cow of Govinda! Thank the Baby Jesus! Ram Das Guru! I can touch my toes!!!! I can touch my toes!!! For the first time, on the right side, I can pull right leg up first, then the left, then clasp my elbows, bend forward and touch my forehead to the blessed ground, and THEN touch both of my toes, just barely! I am so EXCITED! This calls for chocolate!

7-Wave Chakra Meditation

I went to Nancy's class today, and we did the 7-Wave Chakra Meditation. It was wonderful! I've seen it in the KRI manual, but never done it. A friend came with me, and she really enjoyed the class. Then I had to endure the snobbery and eliteism of a few students there, one in particular who was gauche enough several months ago to comment on the fact that my teeth are streaked from Tetracycline, and then suggest that I should get them whitened. I try to be nice to her when I see her, but she's such a snob. How does that happen with yoga?

At any rate, I came home and sang the "Akal" for the 6th day in a 17-day practice, looked up the KRI Teacher Training in Chicago, and sat for Bound Lotus, before going to see the movie "MicMacs", which was a hilarious farce and tongue-in-cheek comedy about arms and munitions providers, complete with an inventor, a homemaker in the city dump, and a contortionist. Comic relief that was well needed.

I Feel Yucky But I'm Getting Up Anyway...

I just got up and went to Sat Inder's class, and felt better. Then we went to lunch at Winslow's Place. We talked about taking Sikh Vows, and what it was like for him to take Amrit, and about taking Teacher Training. I feel so much better just being around someone else who reminds me of how much I loved being at Summer Solstice.

I did Bound, and when I went to teach tonight, the class was really beautiful! I feel as if my teaching has expanded to a new level. It's so much richer, and so much more rewarding. If I can just get my energy back on an even keel...it fluctuates so much. I'm supposed to go to Lilith Fair with Jen tomorrow, but I don't know if I'll be able to stay up that late...we'll see...

Destiny Whispers Its Clues To Us...

...about who we are from the day we are born. My parents were always trying to get me to come out of my room, or out of what they called a trance. I simply loved to sit and meditate, basically. My mother kept my sister's hair short, and mine long, and I wanted more than ever to wear it in a bun, not braids. Then when I finally began to wear my hair in a bun, I wore it high, right on the posterior fontanel where American Sikhs who are women wear theirs, so they can attain their destiny and clarity just like men. People made fun of me for wearing my bun so high, but I didn't care...

I saw Lilias Folan doing yoga when I was four, at the President of Berry College's house, and fell in love.

I loved to wear bracelets as a young woman, and now I wear Karas.

I loved to dance, and so I was a dancer for a while...

I love to cook, so maybe I will be a chef?

I love to sing so much, and have sung at Kirtans, played the flute, violin, piano and French horn...and my birth announcement had a long-haired baby playing an electric guitar! So maybe one day I will?

I loved books about magic as a child, and I've weaved magic to undo the magic done on me...and others.

I do Bound Lotus - a modified version - every day, so one day I will be able to do the full pose.

The Maha Shakti Mantra...

...is changing me! Every day I sit to sing it, a tear escapes from my right eye, and I feel tingles of energy! As Yogi Bhajan says: "Woman needs her own power."

Leigh-Ann from class yesterday fell in love with Simrit Kaur's music, as I found myself directing everyone to lie in Shavasana at the beginning of class, and talked about 'death and rebirth' as the 'Akal' mantra played. I found out today that it is sung for 17 days following someone's death to help them expand into the light and a state of deathlessness. Then I played the "Divine Birth" CD by Snatam Kaur, and was delighted when Leigh-Ann asked for the info on both so that she can play them during her birth experience!

At home, today, I began singing the 'Akal' mantra for my mother. Everything exists in a place of timelessness as well as in time, so I can sing it for her now, while I couldn't have when she died...even if I had known it. Then I continued singing the mantras for children and babies, to help them all be born strong.

And, of course, I sat for Bound.

Bound Lotus & The Solar Eclipse/New Moon

Yes, I am still sitting for Bound! And trying not to turn into a pumpkin.

Just resting and still relaxing...

I feel as if someone special, very special died. It is a struggle to just get up and do Bound Lotus. I just keep getting up to do more Kundalini, chant more mantras, and then eat a little and go back to bed. It's like the days I have to work, I muster up all the strength I have, and then I crash when I can. I'm crashing.

I sat and cried today...

...because there was no one at my donation-only Kundalini Class, and I just came back from Kundalini Summer Solstice and have so much to share and no one to share it with. I did my Bound Lotus practice there, and then did the Set I'd planned on teaching for building the aura, which really helped to get me to stop crying enought to drive safely home. I feel like St. Louis is square, so closed off, so not where I want to be at all. I want go back to New Mexico, to Albuquerque, or Santa Fe, or to Portland, Oregon, or San Francisco...even if I have to live in a little box.

Once, years ago, while flying back from Montreal, and stuck on a layover, a kind businessman looked at me with my braids, and hippie clothes, and said, "What is a funky girl like you doing living in St. Louis?" I told him that I didn't know...I just live here. But I don't want to. I want to move. I want to leave. I'm tired of struggling to make a living to teach here, when there are cities like the above-mentioned and even Philadelphia where Justicia is, that I could move to and really thrive! This city...and Granite City, teaching here, especially. I love the students in my class, but too many people at this studio are so closed-minded and so focused on just physical fitness. It is so frustrating to want to show people how to follow the path of yoga back to their souls and centers, and watch them have no interest. St. Louis is such a struggle. It's the tight spot of the U.S. The heartland that won't open.

I need to sleep.

Teaching my 2nd class back...

I did Bound Lotus already, of course, sang, meditated, did laundry, caught up with some bills, but still feel a little dizzy and shaky. When I got to the studio to teach I decided to play Simrit Kaur's and Snatam Kaur's new CDs. As I began the class, I ran into a wall, rather freakishly, and had to teach the first ten minutes of class with an ice pack on my head. My students were chuckling at my clumsiness. I felt, though, like the class was very special, and infused with so much light and love...that it was all pouring into that basement room. I don't think it was my imagination, because the students afterwards were smiling so widely and laughing and talking more vibrantly than usual. I feel like my teaching has expanded to a blessed new level, I've never experienced before. But I still feel dizzy, and actually a little unsafe to drive...just as I have since Coming Down The Mountain...literally.

A Memory of Love and Kindness

At Summer Solstice, one afternoon when I showered to avoid the bracing cold of early morning showers on the mountain, I opened the curtain to the shower to see a beautiful and petite woman with long, blonde hair, seated like a mermaid combing her hair. I was awestruck by how she held my gaze. I turned away, embarrased that I was staring, and she said, in a very soft voice, "You look a bit sunkissed." I looked at her again, speechless. There was a long pause, as I remember it, and then I said meekly, "I guess I am a bit." She said, "Let me put some raw coconut oil on you, it is very healing." I smiled shyly, wondering why, and allowed her to touch me. I watched as she dipped her fingers in the liquid coconut oil, and rubbed it into my back and arms. The way her hands glided over my arms felt so sweet, so full of love. So unassuming. I realized, even at the time, that no one has ever touched me that way. No one. There was no lust. Only love.

And now, I remember her, and her soft hands on my arms, and the woman as well who I was embarrased to see naked at Winter Solstice, and whom I had dreams about. So many women I've seen naked, but those two I wanted to kiss and to touch and to hold. It's sweet, I think, that I was embarrased to see them both naked, knowing without really knowing each time, that I desired them; and knowing that I have the unfair privilege of seeing them naked because we are the same sex.

This is a revealation to me. I used to wish I loved women, so that men could not hurt me by not returning my love. Now I realize that I love men and women both in a sexual way. I think women's bodies are so beautiful, and I am sad that I could not say to either of them how much I wanted find a secluded corner and hold them close and kiss them. I think of the anguish I felt at 23, when watching the movie "The Lover", based on my beloved Marguerite Duras' book, and how my eyes were focused not on Tony Leung, but Jane March. And when I saw "When Night is Falling", I loved the women. I think of Greta Garbo's words: "In America, sex is a scandal, in Europe, it's a fact," and I miss those hands covered in coconut oil.

My first class back...

My students said "Welcome Back!" and told me that they missed me. I felt as if my teaching was much deeper, and coming from a deeply inspired place. I just walked in, feeling a little out of practice, as if months had gone by since I last taught, when it was really only weeks...and I just prayed and asked internally to be told what to do. When the class was over, people were smiling and said that they really enjoyed my class very much, and had missed me, and was glad that I was back. I've never smiled so wide after teaching! Kundalini White Tantric Yoga is changing my life overnight. It is a gift and a very special practice.

As "The Sunday Tertulia" continues...

I love this book. No wonder it has been calling to me since before Solstice. And I want to re-read Amos Oz' "The Same Sea". But first, a few quotes from "The Sunday Tertulia":

"The Sunday Tertulia"

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.

Sleeping at Funk's Grove

...I did Bound this morning at 2:30 am, and then most of the other meditations as well while waiting for Amma's Darshan, since my token was X1.

Driving to Amma's Darshan...

Around 9 am, after Bound Lotus, I checked all my e-mails and had received encouragement to go to Amma's even though I was so tired. I resolved to go, packed a few bags, and left finally at 2:15 pm after going to the bank and getting directions. It was a long drive through work zones in Illinois with a new $375 fine for speeding, on camera. I kept my speed below 55, but people were pushing. I don't understand why they'd want a ticket? I finally arrived at Amma's in Lombard, Illinois at 7:15. I arrived just in time for Puja, received my Holy Water, and cried as I sat for meditation.

Mmm...Spicy Potato and Onion Soup with Bananas!

The benefits of working Kitchen Seva are paying off, in that I know how to make this soup and the wonderful foods from Summer Solstice. After spending my last $70 yesterday on groceries, I set to work making Taboulleh and Potato and Onion Soup. I bought dolmas and hummus flavored with lemon and artichokes and spinach. I am finally hungry again, after not being hungry since Sunday. I was so exhausted and tired these last 3 days...