Reclaiming my Self...

Two things:

I know why I am so angry about the name, besides the fact that it offends my sense of sound; because I resent immensely ever having to create another name in the first place. The one I picked for myself, Phoenix Amira Lei, I chose because I had to. I can't even spell my birth name here, because then, in like five seconds, my stalker would find me. I don't want that fat bastard reading anything about me, much less having the connection to his purchase and ownership for the last six years of my legal name as a domain name. He owns it through GoDaddy!.com. He tried to feign ownership to everything I wrote on another site, including all of my poetry, short stories, and many essays. He tortured me for years, mentally, emotionally and sexually/physically. I had no friends. My mother had just hung herself when I met him.

He refused to call me by my name. I felt like 'The Boy Called It'. And then he took my name. I took another name, and it felt empowering, but having someone assign me a name I don't like reminds me of all this...

The second thing is that I have Asperger's Syndrome. It has never been officially diagnosed. Doctors thought I was stupid until my I.Q. tested over 150. When I was little no one knew what Asperger's was...they gave me Atavan for the rages and tantrums, which only made it worse. I had very few friends, and always have. It has been very lonely. Painfully, over the years, I have pushed myself to be less shy, and my vast memory has helped me to mimic and mask appropriate social interaction.

I began to teach aerobics purely by accident when my teacher was sick, but for years I could not mirror or face the students. Yes, I teach yoga, but it is a constant fight to look people in the eye. I get overwhelmed by large groups. I gravitate to corners and windows. I want my back protected. If you touch me and I don't know you, it can provoke intense anger, because it disorients me. I have pet topics I find it hard to shut up about. As a child, and still, there are certain textures, sounds, and smells I can't stand. I would spend hours as a little girl folding the seam of my socks in such a way as to avoid having it near my toes. Like Temple Grandin, I want pressure on my feet when I sleep. The idea of footbinding, therefore, sounded fabulous!

I feel more at home with children and animals. I often, still, have no idea what to say in social interactions. Teaching yoga works for me because what I say in a very real sense, is scripted. Once I get to know people, the awkwardness fades a little, but never quite enough for them to stop thinking that I'm either a little odd, crazy, or stupid, not listening, self-absorbed, selfish, wierd, lost in my own world...or I get labeled with socially-crippling psychological diagnoses that are not accurate.

I've often suspected myself of having Asperger's, and reading Temple Grandin's books, watching the movies: "Adam" and "Horse Boy", as well as interacting with a friend's son who is definitively diagnosed with it should have confirmed my suspicions. But I also don't want to believe it. People have always said "You're different," and that makes me lonely. Sometimes I want so badly to be like others, and not get the strange looks I get for talking while being unable to look at some one when the shyness comes up, for having people think I'm self-absorbed because I panic, draw a blank, and have no idea what to say, or ask to be socially appropriate. I don't want to be a dork or a geek, but I am.

I've lost so many chances at friendships, relationships and jobs because I can't always find my bearings. I get overwhelmed very easily. Sensory overload. And some things I detest vehemently. Certain sounds. Certain smells. When traveling, all the old rituals come out to ease my anxiety. I don't want my things touched. I need to follow certain chaining rituals like a cat (OCD is part of Asperger's), or I run the risk of feeling raw and exposed. What comes after that is anger. That is my coping mechanism to stop the sensory overload.

This name offends my senses. It isn't soothing to hear. It has triggered the glaring realization that I am an Aspie, and always have been...

I went looking for a book I wanted to read earlier ( on my meticulously organized bookshelves ), and couldn't find it. Normally this would provoke intense anxiety, but my eyes fell upon Virginia M. Axline's "Dibs In Search of Self", the 1964 classic on play therapy about a little boy at first considered mentally retarded until they found he had an I.Q. of 164. My mother read this book over and over and over when I was a child, trying to understand me and help me. She did a lot of things wrong, such as tying me up when I had rages so I wouldn't hurt myself; but she also loved me dearly, and protected me from people who said I was stupid because I never spoke or interracted with them.

To the man who stalked me, I was stupid too. Too stupid to see what he was doing. He called me dumb, but I could have been a doctor. I was a physical therapy major in a graduating class if 30, until my mother got ill and my safety net crumbled. At times, the whole world socially seems full of sharks, and things that overwhelm me. Sounds. Scents.

And here is Bound Lotus. My own virtual pressure machine like the one Temple Grandin created that she uses daily, I think, actually as a way to ground herself. Names, words, and mantras and songs...poetry I've memorized...these all ground me too. That and organizing my vast collection of crystals in rows, patterns and mandalas. Through it all, in these last 60-some-odd days, Bound Lotus continues to ease my tension and anxiety. How could I ever have thought to stop? The practice of Bound Lotus has brought me to insights such as these, and it heals my soul.

It is like a tourniqet to stem the flow of too many thoughts rushing in and overwhelming me.

I officially HATE my new name!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was having a relatively decent day until I got the e-mail from 3HO that I am now "blessed" to live with the name Santjeet Kaur. I can just count the number of times I'm gonna have to say: "Nooooooo... It's not 'Sanjeet', it's Santjeet. Thoroughly annoyed. Not particularly grateful. I don't like the meaning either: 'Sant' means saint, and I'm definitely not one. The name means saintly Lioness of God who overcomes all obstacles in her path. It also means that since saints supposedly don't ever say anything negative, I won't either...news flash! I HATE MY NEW NAME! So there!!!!

Oh, and wait, I forgot...it is Epiphany. Big wuh...'p' T do.

Screw Bound Lotus too! I hate the damn pose! I'll do it anyway, but I hate this fucking name! It makes me want to cuss like a sailor and develop Touret's Syndrome. I feel like I'm barking when I say it. Like I'm doing rounds of Breath of Fire. Even thinking about starvng children in Somalia who probably hate their names too, but don't have time to worry about it isn't stopping this temper tantrum. I felt funny growing up named after a flower, and I wanted an empowering name like Phoenix, but Santjeet sounds like I'm coughing up pghlem. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it so much with a vehemance and intensity I never thought possible for a name. Why not something like Bibi or Saroj.... ????????? I HATE THIS NAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Putting it in all caps doesn't do justice to how much I hate this name. I want to put it on the wall in big letters and throw darts at it, I hate it so much. Saint-LY my ass. Overcoming obstacles? This name is an obstacle that I want to jump like a hurdle on the way to a different name. I don't like being overly feminine, but this name is so totally unfeminine to me it grates on my nerves to hear it come out of my mouth. I can't wait to sit in Bound and drown out the sound of this stupid name by blowing out my eardrums listening to the "Ray Man"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I refuse to use this name.

I'm sure plenty of Sikhs pick the names for their babies and don't ask anybody online to do it. While I'm at it, so much for picking the name astrologically, they didn't even ask for the 'birth time'. Thanks but no thanks! I pretty much liked my birth name, I just can't use it right now. I've wanted a spiritual name in Hindi or Gurmukhi for years...and something tells me if parents can pick their kids' names with checking in with 3HO...well so can I.

#*!?$@?!!#@!! name.

Takahata's "Grave of Fireflies"

In this haunting but lyrical animation done in stylized watercolors I would love to draw, I realized many things.......

The zinc-plate etchings I did in 1999, each one carefully stored on the shelves of my meditation room closet, are, like many of my other drawngs, more stylized and done in a way that would lend my hand to drawing Japanese anime. I live in the wrong country, and speak the wrong language for this...

Critic Roger Ebert's glowing review on the DVD extra, describes how, in Japanese poetry, there are 'pillow words' that link one image to the next, and as such, there are 'pillow moments' in this film: cutaways to gaze at the sunlight on the corner of a building, to watch a character adjust their clothing after a particularly difficult scene, pauses that do not tend to occur in more fast-paced American films and anime. Moments for contemplation and reflection, digestion and acceptance, or integration, if you will. Necessary moments, as these few weeks have been in my life, to process what has gone before...

The fireflies representing to me the thousands of directions in which my thoughts could go...thousands of directions my life could go...a sad movie, but filled with hope...no figs falling from Sylvia Plath's tree, but fireflies...sparks of inspiration...making chocolate...teaching yoga...drawing and watercoloring...my biggest loves. Expansive moments that come on the heels of the release of great pain. Tempting to do it all on my own like the boy Seita, but knowing I need more than a little help from my friends.

The little bonbon candy tin from Sakura is a unifying element in the thematic development. The original novel only describes it as a container for his sister's ashes, but the candies within were treasured by Japanese children through the war...

Too cold for yoga...

...it seems. St. Louisans seem a bit reluctant to get out in this cold. I don't want to either, but I braved 5 degree weather to teach at 6:15 am, and then ran some errands before going to see "Invictus", then teaching more yoga in the cold, and finally coming home to order a pizza from Papa John's and do Bound Lotus. Yay!

The pizza is my reward to myself for doing Bound Lotus, even today when the anxiety is so torturous. Aching to come out of the pose, I reflect on the days events: The movie "Invictus" based on Nelson Mandela's reliance on the poem as inspiration during 30 years of incarceration, and after...'I am the master of my fate'...each movement, each line from the actor's portrayal of Mandela reminded me of my father and his similar philosophy of life. His gifts to myself, my sister, my mother and the many others whose lives he's touched, are nothing that could ever be repayed, except with love. And as Mandela is described in the movie, so too, my father is not a saint, but a man, with a man's problems...but one of the kindest, most loving men I've ever known. I wish he could live forever...

In class today, toward the end, just before shavasana, I felt again a presence infuse the room, that has done so at each class I've taught since the end of the Kundalini Winter Solstice Festival. I am in awe each time, and wonder how to reconcile these moments with the bouts of intense resistance and anger I experience at other's attempts to shape the way I process all of this. I may be a recluse, but I'm not a Blanche Dubois by any stretch...what a cruel thing to say. If anything, I'm more of a hikikomori. Or have been. But even that has been about survival. No one but me will ever truly no how necessary these years of hibernation have been in order to heal.

Yet, if the hibernation, in Winter mostly, has not done me good, and if it did not serve me this last week while I was so sick, then how would these beautiful moments in my teaching have appeared like gems in the aftermath of the intensity of the White Tantric experience, and 62 days of Bound Lotus?

Wow!

It is pretty cold out there. I had to take a cab to go teach. I don't know if it is just too cold, or if I left the headlights on? Crazy frigid weather for St. Louis, that's for sure. Back home now I just want to sleep all day... From my window it looks deceptively pleasant outside. The cold is ennervating, and Bound Lotus doesn't sound very appetizing right now. Gonna take a nap and set the alarm.

I feel as if I am in a 'dry period' with Bound Lotus, where I am holding back. Part of that begin on the day I did my practice with someone else, who, instead of doing the practice with me, watched me. It kept me from fully loosing myself in the experience. My practice of Bound Lotus was not a performance for him to turn and watch on his mat, nor did my tears of joy and ecstasy that came in the meditative space afterwards require any consolation. On the contrary, he was not sharing the experience, he was intruding upon it.

This dry space I find myself in with Bound feels like a renegotiation with my spirit to honor the sacredness of the practice for me... In four years will I have come no further on my path than he has? That seems quite depressing. I find myself very disillusioned by his inability to find this space for himself after four years of doing Bound. He is mistaking the map for the territory. This is definitely a judgement on my part, but if he 'multitasks' while doing Bound and barely blinks at shavasana, no wonder he has not found the ecstasy within the pose. No wonder he thinks to find that ecstasy within me.

Judgement of him it may be, but a judgement necessary to keep me from falling for yet another guy who seeks to connect to their own Source through me, instead if directly to the Source. I'm nobody's extension cord. My practice of Bound, and my body and my life are not his for the taking... I miss my connection to Source, and I'm not going to get it back by dallying with someone who is obsessed with me. His obsession is draining, pulling me down. I'm going back to my practice, back into my center. He needs to find his own path. His own connection. What is most important is the surrender of the self to something greater than all of us, NOT surrendering that connection to another human being.

6 degrees and frozen birdpoop

It is scathingly cold outside! The Michelin man had nothing on me this morning as I took my frozen ass off to teach a bunch of students as crazy as me for wanting to cavort around in tights, albeit indoors, but in this weather! I say: Why not just live in Toronto? If it is going to be this cold. Certainly the public transport would be better. Better beer...but wait, ah, I don't drink. And I'm a traitor to the Clydesdales. No matter. Auggie has nothing on Belle Guel if I remember the taste correctly. But I digress. A trademark of mine. Digressions.

Here's another one: Those damn birds pooped on my car whilst I nipped in to Einstein's for a bagel. Finger pinchin' bastards. How did that happen in 6 degree weather? They missed Winter's curtain call.

Back to the task at hand. Warm-ups this evening came after a long and tragically delerious nap, with magically delicious Golden Milk après. Oh my God! My smartass self from more than a decade ago, prior to my 'dating Jim Jones phase' is back! All attempts at having a cynically dry sense of humor aside, I thoroughly enjoyed doing my warm-ups to Plant's "Big Log" ( no jokes please), "Ship of Fools", and "In the Mood". I appear to be in my 'Robert Plant period'.

Now for Bound: Today's very special posture is a bit spicy and piquant. Ah! Irreverance and sarcasm are so much more amusing than outright bludgeoning anger. And as a result of the reflection that tends to ensue while I lie practically hog-tied on the floor, a 'very special person' who hasn't gotten the message that I don't want to yak on the phone every single dang day is about to get a tiny taste of some spicy, piquant sarcasm with a dash of hot sauce. Pepe le Peu needs to get a clue. And if he doesn't back off, there might be a whole habanero in that sauciness. Don't twist the Kali devotee's arm. She doesn't like it. And she would be me.

Day 60 and Another 365 Days of Bound Lotus

"The best kirtan, or devotional singers, sing the blues."

Let me say that again: "The best kirtan, or devotional singers, sing the blues. All the great kirtan singers we know have this lamenting quality in their voice. Their voice is deep, dark, heavy. It's a sound characterized bt the tamasic quality if stubborness and the kind of intense attachment that leads to addiction... In the mundane world of ordinary life and romantic love these qualities should be tempered or overcome. But when we move into the elevated world of spirit, these dark qualities take on a celestial sweetness that can result in addiction to God. To be addicted to God is to be possessed by ecstasy and boundless joy... Singer Jai Uttal says, 'When we chant we are tearing open our chests, opening our hearts to reveal our true identity and finding God there.'"

- David Life, "Jivamukti Yoga"

Moroccan leela trance musician Abdenbi Binizi feels there is a connection between American Blues and the music of Ganawi trance:

"One night I was walking down the street in New York just looking at all of the tall buildings everywhere. I had never seen anything like it before in my life. While passing by a nightclub I heard a guitar playing. I stopped for a moment and listened. I started crying because the sound was so beautiful; it touched my heart very much. I found out later the music I was listening to was called the blues. The blues gave me the same feeling inside as when I am playing my music. Blues, like the music of the Ganawa, is from the heart, from the soul."

This quote is taken from the little book I have that goes with a trance CD from 1995, that contains the 'bee zikr' recording of the Naqshbandi Sufis, Healing Trance in Morocco, and a Balinese Temple Festival. I hadn't listened to this since my mother died, but chose to relisten just before going to Winter Solstice. Once in the big tent for White Tantra, the collective voices chanting sounded to me like the Sufi recording. And it was extremely healing. So were the evening Gonging concerts...

But...so is the music I listened to this morning. All of Zeppelin's "In Through the Out Door" (Zeppelin are and were masters of remastering the blues), Maroon Five's "Harder to Breathe", The Cure's "Fascination Street", the soundtrack to "Cool World", DB Boulevard's "Believe", Moony's "Acrobats"....ah! We're acrobats looking for balance..., Plummet's "Damaged", and Chaka Khan, the Cranberries, and Macy Gray's "I've Committed Murder", which I could sing in my now relatively deep voice.

It ALL touches my soul...from Plant singing as if to his dead child Karac on "In the Evening", and Page's heroin addiction-tinged solos in the same piece. "All of My Love" feels like a love song for the universe to me. Maroon Five's song and Macy Gray's were like protests for me, and I listen to techno and dance and float in a netherworld with no need for drugs. I listen to Sada Sat Kaur's "mantra masala", and I love it as much as FSOL's "Papua New Guinea". It is ALL music...to my ears. It ALL moves me.

Why does it have to be patently spiritual? It doesn't. To me Tantra is about learning to love everything about the world, even the pain. I don't want to increase it, but I don't want to run from it either. I want to feel...whatever comes, even if it scares me. Facing my fears until they realize there is no need to chase after me, because I won't run.

Today isn't as easy to whip out Bound Lotus, and I feel a little worse physically than yesterday, but emotionally better. It's just life. The way the cookie crumbles. Some days are better than others...