Reading the book on Jivamukti Yoga: "The root of every asana is the steady connection to the earth. When your connection to the earth is stable, you feel ease in body and mind. How did we become so estranged from our blissful Source...? We practice asana and other yogic techniques to reverse the process of dense, unconscious materialism...the road taken on this journey to cosmic consciousness is 'through' the forms of the material world, not away from the material realm. As yogis we are trying to find our way back to our Source, which is limitless and boundless joy. To liberate ourselves, we must begin by becoming conscious of our material nature and of the nature of the Earth, our world." ~~
~ and the last part of a translated Sanskrit mantra:
"Only through the experiences of life can the soul be perfected. Honor this gift, your life."
~~~ I really cannot think of a better gift to give to the Mother of the universe, than my heart inside the box of my ribcage, wrapped in the ribbon and bow of my arms and legs in Bound Lotus.
And, as I told my chiropractor the other day, I see how ungrounded I am, how my aura is weak because I have refused to go into the lower chakras and lower spinal energy for so long. I see, now, how the psychic pain I am experiencing is necessary, that the only way to get to the other side is 'through'. On my journey to picking up the lost fragments of my soul, like Inanna for her sister Erishkegal in the Sumerian myth, I've wrapped up a present for God. When I wrap up that present every day, it doesn't seem like much; but when I unwrap it at the end of the practice, it has been transformed into more than what I originally gave. In bowing and giving the gift of myself to the Earth and the Heavens I get back much more than I gave. I get my life and my health...from resting in the discomfort that others feel for much longer than my 31 minutes of anxiety. It's like Christmas every day!*
* originally posted on February 9th in the closed Facebook group for those of us who practice Bound Lotus.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
A Woman's Intuition
I think you do know, if you really, really listen to your intuition, when you are being schmoozed. Bamboozled by beautiful words and lilting melodies upon the same refrain: obsession with women's bodies at the peak of their bloom in youth, masquerading as heartfelt knowledge of the difficulties of being a woman or womanchild, but nothing more - truly - than objectification of women. Pure and simple. Beep! Fellow sex addict! Thank you for playing today...next!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
I am REAL.
It's all about becoming REAL, like the Velveteen Rabbit. To be loved so much that you fall apart in your realness, or become the material for a new life or consciousness.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
A Lovesick Butterfly
Boy this sucks. Not so much the crush I have, but the dawning realization of what the real stinkin' problem is... If you have an addict of any sort, and you remove the addictive substance, and that is all you do, then you haven't really healed the addiction.
After completing 120 of Laya Yoga with the Ashtang Mantra on the 24th and finishing my blog about that: aphoenixrisesthroughlayayoga.blogspot.com... and still continuing Bound Lotus, I think the yoga is working! I can't hide from the Truth that glares at me now as I rise late from bed, not doing Sadhana. I know that in less than a week the 40 days of clearing for White Tantric Yoga at Winter Solstice will be finished. My psyche is scrambling like crazy! Trying to make me sick, making me cough and hack only during the day, hoping to make me stop. Stop Bound Lotus and the Fire Kriya, and the 3 meditations for the heart I chose: 11 minutes of So Hung with whistle breath, Sat Kartar for 7 minutes, and the one for a woman's heart arcline for 3 minutes. Instead of pills by my bedside, I have little doses of Kundalini Yoga for what ails me. And last night after Bound, while I laid sleepless in my bed after almost two weeks of obsessing over a man, it hit me. It hit me as I looked at a young woman's blog called: Diary of a Lovesick Butterfly. It hit me while I read Amazon.com excerpts from a book entitled "Lovesick: One Woman's Journey Through Sexual Addiction". It hit me when I got up to quietly listen to Macy Gray and Sophie B. Hawkins~
~~ the real reason I've been celibate (with the occasional at-home-contradiction-alone) since New Year's Day of 2008, is because I am, and have always been addicted to sex. I mean, gosh, when I went to work in the strip clubs in my 20s what was I really doing? Safe titillations for myself...AND the money. What really clues me in to the addiction is the fact that this current obsession of mine is all-consuming. I can't sleep. I lose my appetite for long stretches while the butterflies hover and flurry in my stomach like Monarchs stopping off on their way to Oaxaca.
And no wonder I got my boundaries crossed on New Year's Day this year by a health-care provider. I mean, gosh, yes, he's an addict himself, but, you know, addicts recognize one another. And I have, bottom line, inhibited my sex drive for almost four years! And to quote from an old Aquarian Times magazine:
"Anytime you have some sort of inhibition, anytime you start to repress something, you heighten it, like the tension in a spring."
Of course the repressed desire likely exudes from me, like a heady perfume. I'm like a siren calling out for help to a bunch of sex-addicted sailors...and no wonder they respond. My darker side, which is dark for me because in my mind I have made the desire for sex a darker impulse, is screaming out to be heard and loved. I've got a lot of work to do, and this painful realization sucks. No pun intended.
One last thing: I remember back in 2007, after one other round of almost two years of celibacy while working in a strip club, that one of the DJs congratulated me on keeping that vow. He said, "Wow! That's amazing! You are really working on healing yourself. I remember when you couldn't not have sex for one night!" All proud of myself, I beamed, and didn't really hear what he had just said. He'd called me on my addiction. I didn't know I had one. And then I promptly stopped being celibate just for the year 2007, only to date another sex addict.
Of course, I saw all his flaws and not mine. And when this other jackass tried to seduce me here recently on New Year's Day 2011, I saw his flaws, but not mine. Now that I 'think' I am in love with someone I have a horrible crush on, I see. I may yet love him. I know a little bit about him, and like him alot. BUT. I am also an addict who needs to heal.
Well, I better get cracking at the Yoga. It seems to work better than years of psychotherapy ever did...
After completing 120 of Laya Yoga with the Ashtang Mantra on the 24th and finishing my blog about that: aphoenixrisesthroughlayayoga.blogspot.com... and still continuing Bound Lotus, I think the yoga is working! I can't hide from the Truth that glares at me now as I rise late from bed, not doing Sadhana. I know that in less than a week the 40 days of clearing for White Tantric Yoga at Winter Solstice will be finished. My psyche is scrambling like crazy! Trying to make me sick, making me cough and hack only during the day, hoping to make me stop. Stop Bound Lotus and the Fire Kriya, and the 3 meditations for the heart I chose: 11 minutes of So Hung with whistle breath, Sat Kartar for 7 minutes, and the one for a woman's heart arcline for 3 minutes. Instead of pills by my bedside, I have little doses of Kundalini Yoga for what ails me. And last night after Bound, while I laid sleepless in my bed after almost two weeks of obsessing over a man, it hit me. It hit me as I looked at a young woman's blog called: Diary of a Lovesick Butterfly. It hit me while I read Amazon.com excerpts from a book entitled "Lovesick: One Woman's Journey Through Sexual Addiction". It hit me when I got up to quietly listen to Macy Gray and Sophie B. Hawkins~
~~ the real reason I've been celibate (with the occasional at-home-contradiction-alone) since New Year's Day of 2008, is because I am, and have always been addicted to sex. I mean, gosh, when I went to work in the strip clubs in my 20s what was I really doing? Safe titillations for myself...AND the money. What really clues me in to the addiction is the fact that this current obsession of mine is all-consuming. I can't sleep. I lose my appetite for long stretches while the butterflies hover and flurry in my stomach like Monarchs stopping off on their way to Oaxaca.
And no wonder I got my boundaries crossed on New Year's Day this year by a health-care provider. I mean, gosh, yes, he's an addict himself, but, you know, addicts recognize one another. And I have, bottom line, inhibited my sex drive for almost four years! And to quote from an old Aquarian Times magazine:
"Anytime you have some sort of inhibition, anytime you start to repress something, you heighten it, like the tension in a spring."
Of course the repressed desire likely exudes from me, like a heady perfume. I'm like a siren calling out for help to a bunch of sex-addicted sailors...and no wonder they respond. My darker side, which is dark for me because in my mind I have made the desire for sex a darker impulse, is screaming out to be heard and loved. I've got a lot of work to do, and this painful realization sucks. No pun intended.
One last thing: I remember back in 2007, after one other round of almost two years of celibacy while working in a strip club, that one of the DJs congratulated me on keeping that vow. He said, "Wow! That's amazing! You are really working on healing yourself. I remember when you couldn't not have sex for one night!" All proud of myself, I beamed, and didn't really hear what he had just said. He'd called me on my addiction. I didn't know I had one. And then I promptly stopped being celibate just for the year 2007, only to date another sex addict.
Of course, I saw all his flaws and not mine. And when this other jackass tried to seduce me here recently on New Year's Day 2011, I saw his flaws, but not mine. Now that I 'think' I am in love with someone I have a horrible crush on, I see. I may yet love him. I know a little bit about him, and like him alot. BUT. I am also an addict who needs to heal.
Well, I better get cracking at the Yoga. It seems to work better than years of psychotherapy ever did...
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Bound Lotus in the Fire Tent with Gurunam Singh
Day 229 of Bound Lotus I did in the Fire Tent at Winter Solstice 2010. Having missed a day back in the Spring of this year, I will now actually reach Day 235 on Christmas Day! On that same day I will complete 90 days of Laya Yoga & the Ashtang Mantra. I am tracking that practice on another blog: aphoenixrisesthroughlayayoga.blogspot.com. When I was working on some rough spots I also kept a seperate blog. On Christmas Day I will come back to write on this one regularly, after finishing the Laya Yoga blog.
Doing Bound Lotus AND Laya Yoga (both for 31 minutes a day) has been challenging, to say the least, at Winter Solstice. It is easier to do them both in my tent. Yet, this morning, for the start of Solstice, I actually wanted to go to Sadhana and Gurdwara. I do Sadhana alone, normally, except for when I am at Teacher Training in Kansas City. So really, even though I went to Winter Solstice 2009 and Summer Solstice 2010, I never went to Sadhana there...it was too much. I was sick at both and in a lot of pain, and lucky to even be there, and to keep up with Bound Lotus. So this morning was my first time doing group Sadhana with more than 6 people. I think there were 100?
It was wonderful, though I kept falling asleep sitting up. Gurunam Singh led Sadhana. His voice is so lovely...
In Gurdwara for the first time at Solstice too, I accidentally sat on the men's side. Now I am pretty sure I was a guy in a past life. At any rate, I am back in my tent, with all of the rain and damp, keeping things dry, and planning to continue blogging on the blog for Laya Yoga until Christmas Day. Wahe Guru!
Doing Bound Lotus AND Laya Yoga (both for 31 minutes a day) has been challenging, to say the least, at Winter Solstice. It is easier to do them both in my tent. Yet, this morning, for the start of Solstice, I actually wanted to go to Sadhana and Gurdwara. I do Sadhana alone, normally, except for when I am at Teacher Training in Kansas City. So really, even though I went to Winter Solstice 2009 and Summer Solstice 2010, I never went to Sadhana there...it was too much. I was sick at both and in a lot of pain, and lucky to even be there, and to keep up with Bound Lotus. So this morning was my first time doing group Sadhana with more than 6 people. I think there were 100?
It was wonderful, though I kept falling asleep sitting up. Gurunam Singh led Sadhana. His voice is so lovely...
In Gurdwara for the first time at Solstice too, I accidentally sat on the men's side. Now I am pretty sure I was a guy in a past life. At any rate, I am back in my tent, with all of the rain and damp, keeping things dry, and planning to continue blogging on the blog for Laya Yoga until Christmas Day. Wahe Guru!
Thursday, September 23, 2010
A Phoenix rises from the ashes...
On the other side of my first KRI Teacher Training weekend, with a hellacious moontime for the third time this month, and serious issues with my lower chakras, I have a headache. When I opened up Yogi Bhajan's "Master's Touch" after Sadhana this morning I saw this and it made me smile:
"The purpose of visiting Earth and being a human is to unload your karma here, not to carry it to the next life. That's the purpose. That's why you serve the Master. You don't love the Master, you don't learn from the Master. Learn what you can learn. You have everything in you. Youcan learn from books from the library, but you learn from the Master how to surrender. You do not understand that there is a catch-22. When you surrender, the karma surrenders too. You rise like a phoenix rises from the ashes, and the karma remains behind. Then it's the Master's headache." (p. 168)
That made me laugh!
"The purpose of visiting Earth and being a human is to unload your karma here, not to carry it to the next life. That's the purpose. That's why you serve the Master. You don't love the Master, you don't learn from the Master. Learn what you can learn. You have everything in you. Youcan learn from books from the library, but you learn from the Master how to surrender. You do not understand that there is a catch-22. When you surrender, the karma surrenders too. You rise like a phoenix rises from the ashes, and the karma remains behind. Then it's the Master's headache." (p. 168)
That made me laugh!
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Aadays Tisai Aadays Meditation
This one, from p. 176 of "The Master's Touch", I have been doing as well as Bound Lotus for 1'000 days...I began it later and never missed a day, so I am farther along with it now. Yogi B says this mudra helps to release fear which is the cause of all Emotional Compensation, which he discusses in Class 16. He states:
"Fear is the cause of all emotional compensation ~ which is the cause of many personality imbalances and behavioral problems. A normal person has anywhere from sixteen to twenty split personalities. These are personalities we have created to deal with life. When you are speaking with a person, you don't know just who you are really talking to. This meditation will help to correct this problem.
This mantra is a salutation to the Infinite God. Its meaning is:
Aadays tisai aadays. Aad aneel anaad anaahat jug jug ayko vays. (30th pauree of Japji Sahib)
I salute God again and again. God is primal and pure, with unknown beginning, Who cannot be destroyed, and who remains the same through all the ages.
"With practice, this mantra can give you siddhis, spiritual powers. A secondary effect of this meditation is that by sitting on your heels, you can help to clear away any digestive problems."
Also he says about the whole pauree:
"If you just learn this pauree of japji, make it as a routine, the entire knowledge of the entire universe and beyond the universe will come to you without reading a book. In this sutra is initiation of that knowledge which is in all of you...This meditation gives the siddhis, the occult powers we talk about?"
I'm not sure after what else I've read that I want them, but I like what the meditation does for me otherwise.
"Fear is the cause of all emotional compensation ~ which is the cause of many personality imbalances and behavioral problems. A normal person has anywhere from sixteen to twenty split personalities. These are personalities we have created to deal with life. When you are speaking with a person, you don't know just who you are really talking to. This meditation will help to correct this problem.
This mantra is a salutation to the Infinite God. Its meaning is:
Aadays tisai aadays. Aad aneel anaad anaahat jug jug ayko vays. (30th pauree of Japji Sahib)
I salute God again and again. God is primal and pure, with unknown beginning, Who cannot be destroyed, and who remains the same through all the ages.
"With practice, this mantra can give you siddhis, spiritual powers. A secondary effect of this meditation is that by sitting on your heels, you can help to clear away any digestive problems."
Also he says about the whole pauree:
"If you just learn this pauree of japji, make it as a routine, the entire knowledge of the entire universe and beyond the universe will come to you without reading a book. In this sutra is initiation of that knowledge which is in all of you...This meditation gives the siddhis, the occult powers we talk about?"
I'm not sure after what else I've read that I want them, but I like what the meditation does for me otherwise.
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