First of all, I’m an ethical vegetarian and it would be absolutely hypocritical for me personally to accept this vaccine or any vaccine into my body. All vaccines are based on the use of cells from aborted fetuses, that’s an historical fact. Not only that but there are animal ingredient in vaccines like monkey brain cells and cow cells. Lots of spooky things when you start looking into it instead of just accepting the party line.
The second reason is that I have done alot of work on my health for a long time and pharmeceuticals were one of the things that I had to weed out of my life for the sake of my health, I never responded to any of the well, so why would i now go running toward some vaccine that I know will not agree with my body and could potentially harm irreparably or kill my body.
I will not jeopardize all the work I have done for my body and it’s health during the course of my lifetime, most especially during the last 25 years of my adulthood. During these last two decades I have taken my health firmly and I mean firmly into my own hands. I don’t get pap smears, mammograms, or check ups from any medical doctor. When I go into atrial fibrillation I convert it myself as I have talked about in other videos. It goes without saying that pharmeceutical companies are not trustworthy. I don't get doctors check ups.
So it sort of goes without saying that my third reason is that my check up is my intuition, my ability to listen and pay attention to sublties. Our bodies are constantly communicating with us in obvious and subtle ways. I check up on my body by listening to it and giving it what it needs and when it needs something special it is my responsibility to figure out what that is.
There is so much work that has already been done in the field of natural healthcare, we have such an easy job of things now. I also practice some very serious natural health care practices and techniqes, some things that might really surprise you, things I may talk about in future videos.
I am not about to jeopardize the temple I have built. Nature gave me this body and it is MY responsibility to take care of it. To learn about it and to learn what medicines nature has provided for us. Had nature not provided the things we need to survive, there would be no human race. After all these millennia, we are still here, this delicacy of nature, this useless, destructive pinnicle, the human being, of nature’s creative process, and we are here because nature has provided us with all that we need.
We survived without pharmaceuticals are we know them today, these destructive, corporate, killer drugs for all of time. And now here we are, we live in a word where now we are under the domain of the medical industrial complex and the walls are closing in with this new illness and it’s conveniently corresponding vaccine.
No thanks. Big pharma has done nothing but make me sick in the past with the abusive use of antibiotics. Taking away the power of the woman, the herb and medicinal plant collector and treatment procurer. Now big pharma expects to be our mother. But what a toxic, deranged mother she turned out to be.
I chose to turn, always, toward my real mother, the owner of my body and to whom I am accountable to for the use of this body named Erinn Earth.
I won’t take this Vax because it has nothing to do with me and my health care.
I manage my healthcare, not big pharma and not the government and most certainly not the two of them combined! Which is what we are looking at right now.
I won’t take this vaxx because I believe it is dangerous and has nothing to do with anything they say it has to do with. It is meant to control you. I feel sorry for anyone who has any faith in it.
I also must say too that as a yogini, I am not prone to being so dangerously attached to my body that I will make crazy decisions about putting my health into the hands of satanic, freemasonic pharmeceutical organizations or any government.
I'd rather say goodbye in my own way to Ms. Erinn Earth and move to the next stage of my existence, than to contaminate my subtle body, the body I have to transmigrate through creation in, with some frankenstein geonocide conncotion put in my body. It's not just your physical body it will effect, it is your astral body too. Don't forget that.
As most of us did, I grew up in a meat eating house, not consciously questioning what I was fed. I was never one to look forward to the meat dish most of the time, but did often look forward to the vegetable side dishes. They always seemed more tasty to me and certainly easier to chew.
A lot of times growing up, chewing meat would literally fatigue my jaws. I’d have to take short chewing breaks and then resume chewing the meat down enough to feel comfortable swallowing it. I didn’t know until later in life that this is because modern human consume mostly the muscle meat of the animal, which is chewy and nutrient deficient. Rather than eating what top predators thrive on which is the soft organs of the animal.
Until the age of 22 I had never even met a vegetarian. When I did finally meet one, this person told me that she simply chose not to eat meat, not for any moral reason but just because she didn’t like it.
In that moment it suddenly dawned on me that I myself could also make this choice.
That I too could possibly be a non-meat eater, also known as a vegetarian.
This new awareness felt very comfortable and natural for my personality and biology.
This person quickly told me that she did not do it for ethical reasons. I thought that was an odd thing to point out, but kept listening. She said she just did it because she didn’t like meat.
It flashed into my own mind, in that moment what my own reasons for not eating meat would be.
The first thing was a very basic realization that I would not be eating animals anymore, that I would be free of this custom, this habit of humans. I love animals and don't and didn't want to be involved in their suffering through killing and consuming.
Animals have been my weakness, a devastating concern of mine, since my earliest memories of lying awake on winter nights worrying about farm animals, pets, wild animals, squirrels, rabbits, stray animals, how they could stand the brutal winters and lack of food they faced in their every day lives. How dogs that are left outside and lonely cope with their traumas. Their traumas were not absent from my child mind and are not absent from my adult mind. I can't comprehend how so many of us humans can numb ourselves to the pain of our fellow earthling, no matter their species, we all have nervous systems, our suffering is the same.
The second instant reason I was relieved to no longer eat meat was for my health. I knew meat was not doing anything for my health and body internally rejoiced at the thought of no longer struggling to digest animal fleshes.
Third, I sensed this decision had everything to do with my budding spiritual practice. I sensed that spiritual work and diet went hand and hand and that this was the first thing that had to go.
I was newly married and had a toddler son at the time. We had certain meals we had always enjoyed. Foods I would no longer be eating. Even though we still shared meal time and I enjoyed the side dishes as always. My husband at the time was not thrilled with my decision but not mad either.
I first cut out totally beef and pork, my least favorite meats and the meats we ate least of.
Over the next weeks and months I cut out fish and chicken and that was the end of my days eating meat. I was very ready to get this new diet of mine started and get this show on the road.
I read some books on vegetarianism and learned that most meat consuming human being die with approximately seven pounds of undigested meat in their intestines. Meat trapped in their sometimes for months and years. Old meat. Meat stuck in the folds of the human intestines. Folds not present in the intestines of predatory species like lions, tigers, birds and such.
I continued to cook it for my husband and son. After the marriage ended, I continued cooking it for my son as he grew up. It was only 3 years ago when my son moved out of my home into his own place that finally, officially and irreversibly my kitchen became a vegetarian kitchen.
I had both support and a lack of along the way. An uncle of mine, my mom’s brother, told my mom, my vegetarianism was ‘just a phase’. I admired and loved him dearly but never got over the fact that he would make this remark, so lacking in insight. Had he really known me, known my heart, acknowledged my heart and mind, he would have understood what a natural progression this was for someone like me.
My parents were supportive. My mom learned to cook all kinds of different vegetarian dishes.
The society at large is both supportive and hostile. Modern awareness of the horrors of factory farming are hard for people to ignore and deny for the sake of their continued cognitive diss
Some questions:
Why had it not occurred to me until this moment that I could make the choice to not eat meat?
Conditioning. We are conditioned to think we need three meals a day and most of those meals include meat of some form.
Under the influence of family/social conditioning we literally forget to think for ourselves.
Why does the holocaust of animals, every single day, day in and day out, take place on this Earth, in front of our faces and we, collectively, don’t care. The majority of us don’t care about factory farming of animals, mass slaughter, animal rape and artificial insemination, trauma and suffering because why?
Because to most people, they are just animals.
To me, they are a species of people. With the same right to live and die, in their god given habitat.
Why do people continue to not just eat meat, but SO MUCH meat when even the medical industrial complex admits that meat causes cancer and heart disease?
Addiction.
I see the same atma staring back at me no matter what animal I am looking at. The same atma, or spiritual entity is being subjected to the nature matrix that surrounds and controls us all. I feel sorry, pity for every one of my fellow beings trapped in this seemingly god forsaken realm we all find ourselves at the mercy of.
That’s why I am a vegetarian. Because we are all suffering a similar sentence and I feel no need to eat any of you. You are a spirit in a meat body and I try through my own push for evolutionary growth to not sink downwards into the hells of flesh consumption and continued reincarnation into a realm that supports trauma such as the one we are in now. You are so much more than your Earth body, I have no desire to eat you. And I won't pretend to in order to fit into a flesh consuming matrix.
To begin, in my opinion, it’s not governments and it's not secret societies like the Illuminati. Those things are just developments, or growths, out of an underlying source code.
The standard definition of the word "matrix" is : an environment or material in which something develops; a surrounding medium or structure.
So let’s think of the creation we live in as being a container of some sort. Within the container are entities, boundries and laws. Through some elaborate seemingly magical hidden intelligence program what we see and experience as the energetic world around us, operates, in that container.
What is it? Where did it come from? How did we get here? Is there a way out? And to what?
What else is there in creation? Anything?
Hindu texts claim that the creation is made of disc like planes, stacked above and below each other. Each disc, or lokah, is unique and operates in certain modes, vibrations and laws, developing forward in time. Time, a substance, and element, not an illusion - but a real part of our world. Just as there is up and down, there is forward and backward in terms of the trajectory of our lives. Past, present and future are part of the creation we find ourselves in.
Another definition for matrix is a collection of numbers arranged into a fixed number of rows and columns. As many of us remember, when Neo, the main character in the movie the MATRIX, when, through transcendental vision, he saw the material creation surrounding him as rows of numbers changing and morphing in real time. This arrangement of numbers was the subtle composition of the world surrounding him.
Not the government, shadow government, nor any secret Illuminati society are the real Matrix.
The real Matrix is mother nature. Nature itself. The real matrix is what the Hiundus call, “Prakriti”. The atomic particle material, the micro building elements of the world we live in.
Yet the government and illuminati are manifestations of a similar program though. As above so below. These secret society’s mimic the tendencies of nature.
Nature hides from the observing entity the reality of itself.
(Just as we observe in the particle throwing doulble split experiment.)
Secret society’s subconsciously mimic this behavior and build themselves into an organization of hidden mechanics and agendas.
We have to look deeper.
The illuminati isn’t our real problem.
Nature herself is the illuminati. The secret society.
The real question is not, can we make this world better? Kinder? Less violent?
Because the answer to that question is unfortunately, no.
Entities are been trying since the beginning, yet corruption prevails.
The real question is, can we get out of this location and go to another?
Can we go to a better Matrix?
Are the Hindus correct in sacred scriptural documents like the Srimad Bhagavatam about there being matrix’s above us that we can aspire to incarnate into based on our eligibility?
Eligiblility they claim is determined by one’s higher or lower vibrations.
Meaning that if one heightens ones vibration through austerity, vegetarianism, yogic exercise and detoxifying breathing techniques and right living, one may ascend to a higher, less traumatic, less dense disc and live a more peaceful existence?
Or, on the other hand, one may decrease in vibration through wrong living, unhealthy habits and unkind attitudes, lowering the quality of our living place? Possibly pushing us down further in existence to an even more hellish plane than this one?
So the point is, sure we live in a world where people are conniving and secretive and evil. It’s true. But they aren’t the real Matrix. They are products of the Matrix. The Matrix is the very elements that comprise your body, your mind but not your soul.
Your soul is the only separate thing, the only salvageable thing, ultimately.
We can’t let nature off the hook for what she produces and the corruption she supports here.
We are not doing it, she is. We are not the matrix, something else is and it's not you as a spiritual being.
Still, as I always try and remind you souls,
you are the atma, the soul, the eternal unit of existence.
This article is a reflection on American history and asks the question, What IS America? The answer is given by me, an American white woman, looking behind me, into history, to find out what is great about this place we call, America.
Let me begin here:
America was founded by white men for white men. Bringing their version of weapons of mass destruction, (guns and turns out, disease) round after round of white men stormed this land murdering most of its indigenous peoples; a romanticized time in history for some. White women were essentially owned by fathers or husbands as white men grew and grew in ways of unjust privilege and power on this new land. When it came to white dominance in this new country, few white women were included.
Naturally, white men wanted white women around for the bare essentials; cooking, cleaning, sexing, child rearing - but women’s rights as humans or citizens were certainly not recognized. I’m not saying some men didn’t love their women, but we would have to concede that it was a different kind of love. Besides, white male scientists of the day convinced much of society that women weren’t intelligent enough to be independent beings - having brains too small to make decisions.
White women have and still do fight tooth and nail for the civil rights we have – rights attempted to be kept from us by white men. Great white Christian America didn’t just give rights to us when we asked! Shoot, we were being burned at the stake, declared witches by white men for hundreds of years for daring to think for ourselves. Nine million women worldwide were murdered for being suspected independent thinkers.
9,000,000 (See the documentary "The Burning Times")
Think of it, white women have only been able to VOTE in this great America for 100 years. This country started becoming inhabited by whites in the 1400’s with a declaration of independence signed in the late 1700’s. And then we are talking another 220 years before getting anywhere.
It was only recently in 1920 when white women finally got to vote! In America! We were far behind other countries who had already submitted.
To review the history of the suffragettes is to know America. Their tenacity and self awareness of the extraordinary and god given female contribution to this creation is deeply moving.
Today’s America
So what IS America TODAY? One place to look is your refrigerator, food cabinets and supply shelves to know ‘what’ America is today. The corporate labels you see on your food and other items are integral to what America is - a corporate enterprise with established big wigs at the top - bought and paid for by corporations.
The meat in your fridge likely came from a corporate factory farm where our fellow animals are imprisoned and denied their natural lifestyle on Earth. As goes for any country, What is America can be found in the quality of the lives of the other species of animals we share land, water and air with.
Today, I feel that we could call America, McDonald’s, or Domino’s, or KFC. They’re in every city and town, purely corporate, cheap food enterprises - ensuring future revenue for the American corporate medical cartel for when cancer and heart disease strike from eating the toxic trash they’ve addicted the people to.
We could call America - Amazon, NASA or Walmart. We could call it Enron or Lockheed Martin. We could call it the Fed.
Corporations are what take us into war and what manufacture the weapons we use to kill each other.
America today is where when you are born you are stamped with a social security number and a future debt to pay. Everything you do will cost you to do it. Even hunting and fishing - you will pay the government for the 'privilege'. You were labeled as a ‘citizen’ of a nation and are now financially and morally responsible to the governing body determining your life belongs to them. No other options offered.
Your name in capital letters on your birth certificate and social security card are not ‘you’ the sovereign, god created being, but 'you' the corporate enterprise, owned by the government, forced to live by their rules, or else.
MAGA
Make America Great Again is a vague slogan that former game show host and six time bankruptcy victim, Donald Trump, has yet to properly elaborate on. He’s never specified when he’s talking about that America was so great - nor has he itemized HOW it will be great like that again.
Seems like need to know information.
Let’s muse:
Is he thinking at its inception? Like the beginning? When the country was still brand new, wild and free, unharmed by its long time inhabitants? When white men were kicking those brown godless asses and taking names with no accountability whatsoever?
Or maybe he is talking about the time just before The Fed? He doesn’t seem to like the Jewish driven Federal Reserve so might he be referring to America when it was still on the Gold Standard and actually stood behind its (white male) citizens investments with actual precious metal?
Or, maybe Trump is thinking just after WW2? America made its name in the world with its military influence in Europe. The world went through a time of negatively reinforced unity, war had brought the world into a common focus and due to war, the economy was decent.
Some Trump supports are quoted as saying he’s referring to the years around 2000.
It’s a question that is up for debate and only one person can clear it up but his supporters don’t seem to require, much less demand, straightforward, academic answers.
In the end, what Donald Jessica Trump really means when he says Make America Great Again...is Make America WhiteAgain. His undeniable disdain for the presidency of his half black predessesor, as well as his narcissistic personality disorder, added to his performance during the Central Park 5 tragedy makes this more than clear.
An Experiment?
"They" call it a grand social experiment....?
(Overseen by the Rothschild mad scientists, no less).
So here’s my breakdown of what's happened during the experiment.
The experiment seems to be that white people from England and other imperialist European countries, came to this land already inhabited by people who had been here for thousands of years. A cultural annihilation took place and occupation of the already occupied land. Remaining native children were forced into Jesuit school systems and/or placed in concentration camps still existing today called, ‘reservations’.
African people were bought and sold for slavery, harshly abused, traumatized and tortured by those who 'owned' them.
Eventually a 'constitution' and 'declaration of independence' were propped up as the new absolute law of the land. The enslaved were used to forage the fine architecture unable to be constructed by the men who used the comfy offices within those buildings to make rights for themselves and no one else.
"We the People" should have read…."We the White Men, (the rest of you will have to fight us to celebrate the same basic rights) in order to form a more perfect union..."
We the people had nothing to do with ALL the people, it was only for them and it's been a fight against this imbalance for the life of the country.
As I said before, white women were not even included in the constitution or declaration of independence. And other white people from places deemed as undesirable, shit holes no doubt, would also be excluded and segregated into a life of poverty, poverty we see all over America, among all races, to this very day.
There is Something GREAT
What’s great about America is what’s great about the hearts of many human beings - the will to fight and to keep fighting until justice is done.
So what exactly are we founded upon to make us proud?
The freedom fighters, of all the generations.
The men and women who fought for civil rights for all people should be proud. The white men who were freedom fighters are what make America great. Black people make America great and should be proud that they and their ancestors and descendants survive and are courageous to live in a place where they endured such inhumane treatment.
This American experiment involved hundreds of years of the enslavement and torment of countless generations of human beings and until reparation and acknowledgment are fulfilled, this experiment will remain strained, sick and stagnantly unable to more forth. It is a sticking point that won't budge, no matter how angrily people deny that the descendants of the African people who had their lives ruined for generations, deserve to be paid for lifetimes of unpaid torturous labor and loss of independence.
Shall I Leave?
I do not accept the false history of greatness imposed upon me by the American school system, the military industrial complex.........or by Donald Trump.
I do my own research because I have my own mind and I am not a parrot stupidly singing the glories of an establishment that continues to deny me and others, simple equality's.
When I look at this magnificent creation I feel connected to something greater than just a 'country' and through the eyes history, I do not perceive that America is the epitome of greatness, not when so many have suffered here...and still do.
We don't even give our school children healthy lunches.
Does that mean I’m going to leave?
No. It means I will do what I can to improve it.
From my angle, that means taking care of our land and economy. It means investing in citizens resources and especially children. It means carefully and compassionately screening those from other parts of this same Earth who would like to live here too and allow them to enter as equal human beings. Welcoming those who appreciate justice and do not feel to exclude those they do not understand and refuse to learn about.
It means being the best person I can be and contributing to the good of the whole.
America is no melting pot. It never has been. It’s a pot with many segregated compartments. Those in control are not even in the pot. They are the ones manipulating the fire, adding toxic ingredients and keeping everybody exactly where they want them.
To me, its the best of the freedom fighters. The human and animal rights activists. Those who seek to end needless suffering and oppression and to establish balance and health to the planet and its inhabitants.
My withdrawal from extraneous social interactions has allowed me the time necessary to study things I needed to know about – things now available to us through the technological evolution of the living encyclopedia we call the internet.
Here is a list of subjects I’ve researched to the point of not being able to find any further information on the matter:
Moon Landing Hoax
Illuminati – Federal Reserve – Rothschild’s – Zionism
My only child, a 22 year old son, moved out a week ago. He’s in his own place now and we are each transitioning into our new roles with one other - roles where we live apart.
And turns out, it’s weirder than I anticipated.
I guess I thought I was more prepared - because I had prepared.
I had prepared by never denying that the chapter of my life called “The Motherhood Years” would eventually turn its final page and a new chapter chapter heading would begin. I accepted that never would my son, nor I, stay in any stage forever and that by the natural order of things, our lives would eventually take different directions.
My son prepared me in a two ways.
First, he wasn’t always easy to live with. Other parents with young adults living at home may relate. Kids don’t stay little and cute forever. They become big people with their own idea of how they want to live regardless of what you think you’ve taught them. They have their own way and this makes letting go a little easier - because each of us has our own way.
Second, he prepared me in a positive way by getting the training he needed for a good job, making himself financially capable of finally moving out. (It’s not an easy economy for these kids to start out in.)
Once he did finally do the move out – a strange kind of sadness hit me in the heart and solar plexus;
a strange-nostalgic-yet empty-feeling-sadness.
A sadness which served to trigger memories of motherhood's past….lifetimes before this one….and other children I had experienced losing in varieties of ways.
This caused me to feel something I’ve felt in regard to other developmental stages as well, and that is:
Redundancy.
Development/Reincarnation
I’ve done this before, so many times.
I’ve been the mother and I’ve been the child.
I’ve been the mother without a child and the child without a mother.
I’ve gone on the roller coaster ride of Earth life time and time again through the natural process we all live inside of called,
RE-INCARNATION.
So I wonder, why do I continue playing the game of inevitable loss and gain this world provides me over and over?
Am I still getting something out of it?
Can I get out of it?
Questions yoga confront us all with, if we are really practicing yoga, every step of the way.
When we are young, our developmental accomplishments feel really motivating, enlivening and inspiring. Like start school, first sleepovers, starting your period, first dates, college, marriage, having a baby. These stages bring us a zest for a future stretched out in front of us and produce an energy momentum toward destiny.
Part of that destiny is the empty nest and it is a pivotal stage of human development.
Rather than giving us the feeling that we are young and will live forever, empty nest can turn us in that strange feeling direction toward the wrapping up of our current life on Earth.
It might cause us to wonder if reproduction and child rearing was the whole point of this creation after all – and then to the question, what is my purpose now?
To just get old, die, be reborn and pro-create again?
And again?
And again?
Empty nest lets us know that one of the most consequential experiences available on Earth is the reproduction of ourselves and our ancestors and every tom dick and harry that needs a body on this planet.
We are programmed to gestate and rear bodies with the final result being the relinquishment of a functional young adult to set to sail toward basically a repeat of the same story.
If we are aware of reincarnation, we have a great opportunity.
Knowledge combined with motivation and a little where-with-all can give us the option to curb natures little program here, into our spiritual favor.
So the real measure of the understanding of developmental stages is beyond what we learn in western psychology. I, like many, study and really appreciate the work of great developmental psychologists like: Erikson, Piaget, Freud, Jung, Vygotsky and others contributed to our understanding of development – but only in terms of one lifetime – and this is greatly limiting.
Our study, as higher spiritual aspirants, has to be on the grander development. The development of the soul from one lifetime to the next, solving the issues within each lifetime, getting closer and closer to real self awareness and liberation.
The Fundamental Principles - The Gunas
This creation is fundamentally based on paradoxical energies of anxiety (rajas) and depression (tamas)– we pendulum between the two forces.
I find that the collective experience of motherhood is the ultimate expression and ultimate experience of the powers of dichotomy this creation is built on.
Studying our own natural anxieties, our vulnerabilities as well as our own passions help us to become objective to them and begin to wield them.
A lesser know element of this creation is equilibrium. In other words balance, detachment, peace of mind, contentment, in Sanskrit this element is called, sattva.
In a condition of sattva, nothing in this world can truly affect me. Taking control of the body and minds vital energy allows me the option of not reacting so intensely and with peace in my heart.
Our personal stories contribute to how we process empty nest syndrome.
Some moms are ready, some are not.
Each of us handles it differently and yet often, the same.
Personal Note
Our personal stories matter. They should not be discounted.
We are affected beings and studying our affected condition can lead us to greater insight, strength and to higher spiritual goals. (We find this wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita 15:16)
I grew up a full adoptee, closed adoption – Catholic-don’t-talk-about-it- style.
I had never laid eyes on a blood relative before my son was born and I saw him. He was the first real connection I had to a past I knew nothing about - but was dying inside for.
The presence of a child of my own motivated me to face up to some of the things I needed to do for myself in this world, and I did them. Parenthood helped me develop myself, not just the person I was parenting.
Where Are You In Your Parenting Chapter?
Parenthood can serve us well on our spiritual path as long as we understand that this whole thing is one big program and the more we are consciously enveloped by the program the less objectivity we have about ourselves, spiritually, within it.
And where we would like to be next.
So consider where you are in your parenting chapter. Look closely at yourself and your past. Can you sense having been down this road before? Is there anything you can do to help yourself navigate through the developmental processes of life?
Of lifetimes?
One thing I would suggest is to analyze your child's psyche. Try to pick up on cues that could lead you to knowledge about their past lives. Your child may not even be related to you in the way you think they are. They may not be a direct member of your spiritual lineage or even of your family continuum.
Through meditation I was able to discover where my son had spent his last life. I was also able to determine where in his father's family history of reincarnation who he was related to and where he fit into the family he had come from - from his last life.
This knowledge about how my son, and we providentially came together mother and son, having not been related in any recent past lives, gave me invaluable insight into who he is and why he is how he is.
Knowing even just a little about our children's past lives can give us great insight into who they are and how to guide them toward their best possible path in life. Same for ourselves.
In Closing
We really are spiritual beings having a human experience.
These human experiences are not who I am as a soul (atma), but are Earth’s happenings and pastimes. But I wonder, with all the nonsense yoga happening in the world, all the misconceptions and mis-translations, how long will it take each entity to have had enough and to start taking the yoga liberation process seriously. Applying it the way a prisoner in a prison would apply a plan of escape that God himself had handed him.
Mothering and the experience of empty nest are on one hand, sacred Earthly experiences, but on the other hand, possibly not something that we want to continue, relentlessly repeating, throughout all time?
I'll leave you with this. I especially love the part at the end where the parent is reminded of how much God loves them too.
It is likely that we will agree that the mind exists.
Generally we think of ourselves as either;
a.) living as the mind (even if we think it is illusory) or
b.) living in the mind.
Due to differing beliefs regarding the existence of the eternal individual soul, we cannot all agree that there is a self, existing either conscious or unconscious of itself, inside the mind chamber.
Despite the duality of dvaitism and advaitism, I would bet that we can also agree that the individual mind is an astral container full of contents which psychically control the physical body while embodying it. And when the physical body is not functional due to old age, disease or injury, the mind exits the physical form, yet, remains the mind - remaining a container filled with psychic organs which cause it to function in this realm, both the physical format of this realm as well as the astral formats.
Most of us are aware and agree that we go back and forth between the physical and the astral places - its called 'reincarnation'.
But is this existence simply explained away as an automatic pilot situation where the “Brahman” is making believe that it is multiple things and the game is to bring all those divided parts (us, our phony existence) back into its original, exclusive state of oneness?
Of nothing-else-ness?
The same lonely condition that supposedly caused 'the one' to 'make believe differentiate' itself into illusionary diversity?
----------------
There are many forms of meditation that promote relaxation and engagement of the visualization component of the mind meant to take itself (the mind) to a more pleasant, albeit make-believe, place then the one it currently finds itself in.
You know the places….a heavenly flower garden, a crystal beach, a quiet forest. The mind can conjure up better places to pretend it exists in then it does in it's actual reality.
But is that all it can do?
Pretend?
Imagine itself as something that is somewhere better?
Patanjali didn't seem to think so.
He thought that the little self could get along without imagination.
He seemed to think that the spiritual self had things to do and people to see beyond what the local mental tools were able to perceive. He required us to put down those local mental tools if we were to attempt to experience any of those non-local things.
So what did Patanjali want for us?
Not supporting the primitive idea of advaita, he instructed that we stop making believe anything during meditation and give up the vrittis, the fluctuations of the mind.
His demands of stabilization and sublimation of the mental activities for the sake of what?
For Patanjali, it was for the sake of the PERCEIVER.
The SVARUPE.
Why does Patanjali bring up the Svarupe?
Who is that svarupe?
And why does It matter?
To Patanjali the individual mattered most in much the same way that Lord Krishna thought it mattered when he reminded Arjuna so sternly on the battlefield that the individual soul is, was and will always, be.
Patanjali thought the self mattered so much that he was willing to leave it with nothing to relate to on the local level upon which it currently depends.
He was willing for you and I to be left alone.
Why?
Seems like torture for one who relates so strongly to the
mind.
Seems like trauma for one who believes that they are the mind....and if not the mind, then a nothing, an illusion to themselves.
Seems like a torturous request for the one who doesn’t believe that there is even a self in there to redeem.
Because if there is not a self to redeem, there is no one to experience the bliss of self realization, of spiritual self love and of one’s relationship with Ishwara, the Supreme Spiritual Person. The very person Lord Krishna claimed himself to be. (You can forget about experiencing those things if there is no self.)
Patanajali requires that we sacrifice the addiction to the relationship with the mind.
Just as when an alcoholic begins the process of sobering up, he can feel boring, lifeless, personality-less. underdeveloped, no fun. But once the alcohol leaves the system, he may awaken to himself, a self he knew previous to the drink or had never known before.
They begin to value the real person.
The one not under the influence.
When Patanjali asks us to leave behind the drug of imagination, he asks us to sober up spiritually.
Through this act of tough love the self is given the chance to awaken, to realize its own personal essence, its glorious relationship with God.....and to plan for its future.
Recently, I entered meditation praying to Lord Shiva.
Requesting, as I have in the past, for his attention somehow. I asked him to give me some inkling that he was aware of me and that my yoga practice was registered by someone in the higher ups.
In the past, the times I’ve become indirectly aware of Lord Shiva’s influence was during postural adjustments. Upon praying to him for help, occasionally, his energy would enter the asana/kriya and adjust it perfectly from within me. I also had a nonphysical/abstract vision of him during sun gazing which I illustrated and included on the back of my Sun Gazing book.
But in this meditation there was a deeper need in my reaching toward the higher beings and their energies that Patanjali instructs us to focus on.
Here's what happened:
I became aware of Lord Shiva, enourmous, seated in sukasana (easy pose), his body gigantic, his hair long and brown. He was barely clothed, and not in tiger skins, but burgundy cloths.
The atmosphere was darkish but clear.
Sitting in front of Lord Shiva was my teacher, Michael, who was in the body of a young boy in miniaturized form.
My teacher next to Lord Shiva was about the size of a child next to the Abraham Lincoln monument.
I was not the size of a child, but the size of a bug.
So it was the three of us in a row, biggest to smallest.
A person associated with Michael was also seated next to him, but I was aware that this person was transparent and invisible to Shiva. Shiva seemed unaware of this person’s presence, but made it clear to me psychically that he was very aware of my teacher and that he had significance to him.
Lord Shiva gave me a hint that he was aware of me, that I wasn’t invisible, but that I had much work to continue doing before I could grow in size to be of significance.
He said, "Keep going and you will grow and you will get the attention you seem to want. Right now, you are too little for me to bother with much. Look at your teacher, look at all he’s done. He is here with us like this.”
=======
So back I go, a little bug, into my corner of existence, for more practice. I strive for divine association and refuse to pretend it into being.
What else is there to do while we make a living and feed ourselves in this petri dish called Earth?
Can this figure of speech be modified, philosophized, personalized?
As I am tumbled through time and yoga, I think of this saying and discover that it is no longer true for me.
I find myself to be what it says I am not, an island.
I am an island, which means I am a small piece of land
disconnected from a large mass of land.
So philosophically speaking, I guess it comes down to how connected to the whole one feels in this particular creation. (Do you feel that you are one with all of this and that that is all there is to know?)
Or, how connected to one’s self one feels in this creation. (Do you feel that in this material creation everything is everything and that identification with this oneness soup is what holds me back from knowing my independent spiritual self, atma?)
Can one feel connected, be connected, accept and even celebrate that connection while also knowing, experiencing and relishing not being connected to the whole?
I am an island because although I am out here as a piece of land and as a member of this operation we call Earth, I am still independent, belong to myself and retire unto myself.
Although, like everything supported by the waters and pillars of this creation, I am a dependent....yet I am also isolated, remote, lush, abundant, self sustaining and satisfied.
I sit back within my island self and observe the world going by without the heavy influence and industry of the main land as my identity.
As fate has caused me to face up to the realities of this creation, inherent within it human frailty and nature’s conduction of exploitation, birth and death, my world has become smaller on the outside, but larger on the inside.
My satisfaction with the outside world continues to diminish while I cater to my inner world and make ready myself for the next location of my spiritual person-hood.
Satisfaction with my inner world grows, independent of the laws of this creation, as I let go of needs, dependencies, old ideas, people places and things.
One of my goals has always been to conquer even the most slight feelings of anxiety. This is extra challenging in a world where one of the main ingredients is anxiety itself.
But as a result of Patanjali’s yoga standard, I've found out it is possible.
It takes effort but it is worth it.
Telescopes, like advanced souls, work better on islands; less visual resistance, less electrical influence, quieter and a great place for calm study.
It’s the same for the spiritual aspirant, the more like an island you allow yourself to become, the clearer, brighter and better will be your spiritual reception.
On the bulk, this place is made up of a few primary ingredients: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. The stuff our bodies are all made of.
And on the psychic plane of life, our minds are comprised of the astral form of these elements too.
In addition to the meat and potato elements, there are a few special herb and spice elements thrown in to make other stuff possible. But that’s it.
Observing the trees and flowers, waters and mountains, the diversity of animal species and the complexity of reproduction, it’s not easy to reconcile how the periodic table turned out to be so strikingly small.
What appears to be diversity in this creation is actually a whole bunch of same-sameness!!
So when we talk about this same-sameness in spiritual discussions (or "oneness" as it is popularly termed), when we get right down to it, it must be concluded that when a person says they feel "oneness" with the creation, what they are saying is that they feel one with: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorous, etc, as well as multiple highly radioactive elements found in the Earth’s crust.
Really?
We certainly know that life in this Earth dimension “carbon” copies itself. (pun intended)
Sacred geometry, fractals, star trails, mathematics, cell division, reproduction and reincarnation verify this in obvious ways.
And sometimes, when a person meditates and successfully quiets the body and mind, they may sense less constraint within the confines of their narrow, immediate, basic consciousness. They may interpret this as meaning they are everything and no individual identity exists. For many, the mere experience of this no-mind condition can be enough to convince them that omniscience and omnipresence were experienced - even though nothing of the sort happened at all.
In reality, they simply quieted their mind.
Which is the very first step of self-awareness.
A feeling of oneness/nothingness is the first of many stages of self awareness - as it is likely that that is how much you know about your spiritual self.
Basically nothing. You've been totally caught up in the life of the kundalini and her elements.
But if that is all you have then that is where you begin.
Here is the great paradox WITHIN the paradox:
It is within this creation of same sameness (which appears super diversified) that we will find individuality, if we really look for it and go to its location.
Aaaaand it is within the one pointed focus of meditation (which can appear to be oneness or nothingness in elementary stages) that we find the truth of duality, the existence of the singular self among many singular selves.
As one repeatedly returns to the location of the spiritual self in the center of the head, the awareness that a self exists within this dimension as a singularity becomes profoundly obvious and the reality of eternal, not just duality, but multiplicity, becomes unavoidable, acceptable and joyous.
NOTE:
For most people, going to the center of the head to locate the spiritual self turns up a big blankness. Try it.
What do you find when you quiet your mind in deep meditation?
When you investigate this supposed spiritual self in the head center, what do you find there?
A black hole?
Pineal gland?
Nothing?
A spiritual personality?
Anything?
I’ve found that the spiritual self is unknown to most who actually believe themselves to be fully enlightened, including many, many of the biggest named Gurus out of the east.
If you did know about your spiritual self you would not be assigning that self to oneness-ship with the periodic table of the elements, I do know that for sure.
Everything is backwards and upside down in this domain and to be a philosopher in this place takes an ability to not only go down the rabbit hole, but to navigate the tunnels and strange dimensions encountered within it, whilst keeping ones shit together and remembering the experience.
Don't let new agers, even in the name of yoga, tell you what "karma yoga" is, they will having you spinning your wheels in this creation for 100k lifetimes, being a people pleaser while neglecting your own issues and spiritual work.
I'm the biggest bleeding heart in the world and eventually even I have figured this out.
Considering that in the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna is backing the warrior prince Arjuna into a corner demanding that he kill his corrupt family members instead of trying to love and serve them into cooperation, I think that the Gita is certainly the real standard on karma yoga.
In regard to the application of Patanjali yoga and greatly considering what Lord Krishna stated in the Gita and Mahabharata, it seems to me that yoga is an exclusive practice focusing on the liberation of the individual soul.
Krishna tells Arjuna that all material nature is going to remain the same despite Arjuna fulfilling his own personal dharama and liberating to the abode of Krishna.
IMPORTANT: Karma yoga has been propagated mainstream as selfless community service when actually karma yoga is meant to aid the aspirant in his/her own goals.
Ultimately the yogi/yogini has to be ok with leaving this world as he/she found it and not expect to change nature overall but to only change his/her own existential situation.
Years into early adulthood and years into thinking I could save the world, I found myself still receiving low wages, no benefits, in debt, divorced twice and a single mom with no eligibility for assistance because I 'made too much money', even though I was just above the poverty line.
While my own issues and my own real needs were neglected.
It began to dawn on me that I AM my own responsibility and my own greatest project. Studying Gita made me realize that on a yoga path where serious attempts at liberation are planned, MUCH of our social interest has to be meticulously regulated if not sacrificed.
This creation has a mind of its own and so must I if I am to have any chance of transcending it.
Karma yoga is the application of yogic regulation of social obligations and activities, those you are responsible for and those you are NOT.
You know how when you were little you would fall down or something and it would hurt and you would cry?
Remember crying to the point of finding yourself with mouth open in suspended animation, big tears brimming, breath nowhere to be found, until finally, the big cry came out?
I didn’t always make it to the crying part.
Something happened and my awareness was forced out of my body into another mental state and my physical body would pass out first. Often when this happened I would be holding onto my mother and as I lost consciousness with my body, I would slither down her leg into a heap.
But the experience of it for me was not one of passing out, but of a strange and pleasurable entrance into another realm of consciousness all together.
I lost touch that I was someone crying - and found myself with no sense of the physical body but with some partial sense of the subtle body – which felt less like a body and more like an environment that felt very unusual, magnetically charged, wiggly, shifty and to a slightly uncomfortable extent, out of my control.
This passing out business naturally worried my mother and she took me to the pediatrician who told her I would likely grow out of it. (Little did he know...)
Today as a grown woman, when I cause kundalini to rise on purpose during breath infusion and application of yogic locks I find myself in that same strange place, but now with developed control and insight and the option to take it further.
Where is that place?
It’s out of body and like a tiny near death experience one can have over and over, safely and while still fully alive.
It’s a transcendental, non-imaginary environment one’s consciousness may shift into if one can harness (yoke/yoga) the creative energies of the complex subtle form and apply the yogic locks in order to control this force of creation that exists as our minds and bodies.
Kundalini rises are natural but the quality and control are different from person to person. A rise can feel bad or good depending on the quality of your subtle energies which depends entirely on your pranayama practice, or breath infusion.
A kundalini rise with bunky, toxic, contaminated bodily energies will feel like a bulldozer crashing through your head.
But a rise within a person who has properly cleaned up the diet, cleaned up the socialization, and cleaned the CO2 from their system will celebrate the highest function of the human psyche.
Kundalini rises in yoga are not sudden realizations about things or learning something new that makes us feel great. Too many times I read about so called kundalini rises that are nothing of the sort. It's important we keep these things categorized so we know what's from what.
A kundalini rise is a very real bio-electrical function that in yoga we value and utilize because it is our way to make spiritual advancement and to guarantee ourselves eligibility into higher dimensions.
If you want to ascend to a higher dimension in your next life than your own personal dimensional energies need to match that higher place so that upon leaving your body physically you will have already properly prepared your vibe for relocation.
Pranayama during the asana while fully engaged in pratyahara is the yogic way. This leads to application of samyam.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
So what happens when a small child raises kundalini repeatedly, naturally and seemingly without provocation?
I became aware that there was a self within the body who had done this before.
Kundalini rises in children so young indicate that they left their previous body having performed the same or similar disciplines.
Aside from the beginnings of past life realizations, I started seeing auras, viewing my third eye, hearing naad and thinking mystically.
During the childhood kundalini experiences I was not an age or a name. Not a little girl or an old one.
The subtle body simply became a psychic/electric chamber I was suddenly aware of being inside of - however the chamber was far larger and more electrical than the physical body I had just been so aware of moments before.
This experience is so valuable as it has given me the chance to understand the sacredness of duality. How precious the acceptance that we can all exist and that we have the power to sort ourselves out of the seemingly oneness soup that is material creation.
As we harness the great mystic material power of this creation, Kundalini, we are able to use it, manipulate it and influence it for our own greater spiritual good.
I am me, the body is the body, the energy is the energy and it's becoming easier on the daily to sort things out.
We don’t have to be mysteries to ourselves.
The answers, strange as they are, are within us.
The more we practice in one life, the further our practice can be taken in the next. Each life builds on the one before.
In Yoga, our efforts to separate (kaivalyam) the internal mechanisms, which produce the seemingly seamless experience of life in this dimension, are seriousefforts with seriousexpectations for seriousresults. Like a bundle of necklaces tangled together, with patience and precision produced by consistent yoga practice, the psyche becomes disentangled and can be experienced as a collection of parts.
Relentless self examination, interrogation, and application of the 8 limbed yoga method is a recipe for development of insight into all sorts of things. Inevitably veils are lifted through the process of yoga - and otherwise unknown connections within oneself are witnessed.
Yet, it must be recognized that we actually have little control over how our yogic progress unfolds. One simply cannot predict the true story of one's circumstances and all that is yet to be understood. We have to take it as it comes.
I had an experience yesterday of communication between my personal kundalini life force energy - and me, the observing self. The life force energy gave me a clearly conveyed personal lesson on itself. The lesson was spontaneous in the sense that I didn't see the revelation coming, but not spontaneous in that, these things should be expected when actively pursuing spiritual awareness.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yesterday, at work, in the breakroom, alone. Totally quiet salon.
I was sitting down, did a typical upper body stretch to get my blood pumping and ready for my customer, closed my eyes, looked within, centralized consciousness in the middle of the head, as usual, looked down though the psyche into the kundalini reservoir at the base of the body - which suddenly began communicating person to person style.
I became aware that I was in an acute, clear state of observation, under a gentle instruction of, "just watch this".
Kundalini showed me a miracle it had once provided me. A phenomenon that assured not only survival of the body but also, and incredibly importantly, survival of , clarity of consciousness. The frame of consciousness I brought with me from my past life was preserved, despite the circumstances, due to this natural, albeit unusual, intervention.
I was transported back in time, like a quick easy roll though a short worm hole, taking a fraction of a rewind moment to get to - to the first days of infancy.
I was in limbo immediately after birth - I had been marked for adoption. Even though my birth mother was in the same facility she was not allowed to see me. As per Catholic adoption practices, we were separated at the birth so as to not make eye contact - much less physical. They promoted a severing of the mother/child bond continuum - right away.
My birth mother searched the facility during the nights she was there (she told me this herself) but the babies were kept on a different floor and in difficult to access locations. She wasn't the only young mother wandering the halls. One night she found me and was allowed to hold me a few minutes - but it didn't happen again. After that the reality was that she would never return.
Kundalini reminded me that babies cry at certain pitches and screams to try and attract a missing mother - we see this in many species.
It showed me how when I was a newborn, crying this way, I, like all babies in this situation, become exhausted and pass out in a form of psychological death. (We're talking about newborns here - so there is no ability to rationalize this missing-mother-disaster situation its in. It's all instinct during these first days and months.) In the absence of the mothers electromagnetic energy transference which occurs when the child is held and nursed, strange things can happen to the infant psyche.
Eight days after birth, my adoptive parents picked me up at the agency. (Yay! Nice people! Willing to tolerate my anxiety provoked projectile vomiting!)
My adoptive mother says when they picked me up from the agency I was skinny and stinky. Go figure. Later life experiences with the no-nuture-policy of the Catholic school system, I'm somehow not surprised.
In those interim days of not being mothered, just barely tended too, I experienced dark moments. And kundlaini all of a sudden took me back too those very moments of infancy and showed me how it itself handled the situation. I felt no sorrow or trauma when viewing all this, just understanding.
I'd cry about something as a kid, like skinning my knee. The cry would begin - but then I'd get caught in one of those mid cry no breathing states we've all been in. However, at the peak of this cry thing, I would pass out.
At least, externally, that's what it appeared. My mom says sometimes I would just slither down her leg onto the floor, dazed. She took me to the doctor about it. He told her I'd 'grow out of it'. (Good doctor, didn't try to use meds.)
But what was happening to mewithin mybody and mind in those strange moments was a pleasurable kundalini rise. I was somewhere else completely. My connection to this material world would slip away and I'd be in a different place. My pain would turn to an otherworldy magnetic type pleasure where the movement of time was different than in the physical. Just imagine a kundalini rise, that's what it was. All of the exact same qualities.
What the kudanlini showed me yesterday is directly related to this. The kundalini transported me back to my infancy, in the maternity center for unwed mothers, in between caregivers, hungry, lonely, bitter and crying. It showed me that I suffered little psychological deaths, several times, as the mother didn't show up as a result of all the effort made by crying.
BUT WHAT DID SHOW UP, AND THIS WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE REVELATION, WAS THE KUNDALINI LIFE FORCE.
It showed me that, it, the kundalini, kept my mind and body thriving, despite the catastrophe (from the infant perspective) by sending up pulses of life force energy through the central channel of the body. Kundalini rises.
Weird. But that's what it showed.
It again showed me the same scenario the next morning during meditation.
The kundalini showed me how it swept up through the little body like a hero and kept a lonely baby going, gave pleasure to a lost child even for a few moments of relief, the kundalini showed how it made sure I lived this life and that I lived it without being broken. Despite this unnatural separation (kaivalyam, there's that word again) experience.
It showed me that that is why I continued to have those kundalini rises throughout childhood and why I am blessed to have them now.
It was also made clear that I did suffer those first several days, motherless, partially as karmic repercussion from committing suicide in my most immediate past life. A consequence for exiting my body early.
After the experience I happened to pick up the book Meditation Expertise by Michael Beloved and opened it to a random page but the perfect verse for this particular experience. Page 206. Chapter 3 Glory Displayed - Verse 36.
"Experience results from the inability to distinguish between the individual spirit and the intelligence energy of material nature, even though they are very distinct. By complete restraint of the mento-emotional energy while focusing on self-interest distinct from the other interest, a yogi gets knowledge of the indivudal spirit."
1)I Accepted My Failures – At the age of 35, after several failed long term relationships including two marriages, I admitted to myself that, clearly, something was wrong. These relationships ended with loads of resentment too, never amicably. And by the time the relationship met its demise, I hated the guy. I asked myself, 'How can this keep happening?', 'Why am I choosing men who ultimately feel like emotional dead weight?'
In this article though, I won’t spend any time blaming the men I ended up with - because this is about me.
Is not Christianity dependent on Judaism as its very foundation?
Is Jesus nothing without Jewish prophesy?
Hypothetically now, and stay with me here, if you, as a Christian, became aware that Jesus was, in fact, NOT the fulfillment of the Jewish prophesy, would you stop thinking of him as your Lord and Savior?
When I was a little girl, before learning to swim, I revered the deep end of the pool. I'd nervously inch my way along the side to the life rope in the middle, slide my foot down the steep declination of the pool floor and shiver with an excited fear that hurried its way through my nervous system.
I waited, as a little thing, for the courage to dive down into that depth and gloriously expand myself into that strange, dark place of momentary wild freedom.
In 2001, without prompts or encouragement from anyone (quite the contrary, I’m sure people found it strange and even off-putting) I began to regard myself as a "Priestess of Yoga".
I found the title ‘yoga teacher’ or 'yoga instructor’, underwhelming, slightly insulting - and decided I would allow myself more. I was delivering a spiritual message from a place of knowledge and compassion. I felt this qualified me as a priestess. I figured that due to the sad shortage of priestesses in the world at this time, maybe the world needed some around, so I embraced myself as one - even though no one ordained it but myself.
Unfortunately, people throw the word narcissism around too easily, resulting in it being inaccurately attached to people that maybe just have a really healthy sense of self. People who love and admire themselves, appreciate themselves and protect themselves - but who are still nothing like a narcissist.
I grew up in a very small town in west central Illinois. Not much happened there. It was far away from any big cities. Farm and hunting country - 100% white - most of the time.
When I was about 9 years old an Indian family suddenly moved in across the street. The Patels. The house they moved into was an antique and hadn’t been kept up well. The father of the family was a doctor and became our town physician.
My older brother and I, to my knowledge, were the only people in town who were interested in this fascinating and colorful, culturally unusual family. I'm sure we were the only people who ever stepped foot into their home.
As a Yoga teacher - I am also a breathing teacher. Breathing, called pranayama, is one of the eight limbs of the ancient Vedic system of spiritual liberation called "Yoga". In our primary Yoga texts we discover that the promises of fulfilling the Yoga process can result in ascension to a higher plane. All eight stages of Yoga rely on each other, therefore, they all rely on breathing. I'm always interested and concerned with how people are utilizing oxygen - so this new mask thing we are dealing with as a society is an interesting quandary for serious Yoga practitioners to ponder.
During meditation this morning, after asana/breath infusion, a few things occurred to me.
inSelf Yoga practitioners, past and present, notice the abundance of oxygen coursing through the fused physical/subtle system when you end your exercise session and sit down for meditation.
We sit in the midst of the results of putting the respiratory system to work to detox and infuse the system. That is the function of utilizing the respiratory system in this method of kundalini yoga.
I was four when my adopted mom told me I was adopted. A pivotal moment for me when the blank reality of my personal history was brought out of the recesses of my mind into the light of immediate consciousness. Up until that moment the loss of my origins was an implicit, or subconscious, memory.
We were at my Grandpa’s house for our regular Sunday visit, my mom, dad and my older, also adopted, brother. As usual I was entertaining myself in the sunshine and green grass when my mom approached me with the news. I can’t imagine what she felt as she started this conversation. She must have contemplated how she would say it and how I might take it. She loved me very much and more than anything had always wanted a daughter.
Truth can sometimes be taken from us. It’s too bad, but part of life. Sometimes we don’t even know a truth has been taken - and sometimes we do. When we don’t know we may be subconsciously bothered by something we can’t put our finger on. And when we do know, we may, at some point, be compelled to pursue the truth and retrieve of it what we can.
During the course of truth retrieval there is often incredible anticipation and excitement - especially when the information is and was fundamental to identity formation and was absent, implicitly or explicit, for a very long time. Information so quintessential to one’s individuality, that when finally faced with it, feelings of fulfillment and relief can be incredibly evolutionary and intensely moving.
My life began with a big secret and I lived with it for 25 years.
For the last few years, I’ve been compelled to reconsider what we are taught in school about the Earth, the sun, moon, the stars and the layout of the ‘universe’.
Through an application of naturalstudy, meaning, through the use of my own senses and intelligence faculties, I have been looking at this environment, this natural world, in a different way.
I'm using my own developed method of: research, contemplation, meditation, application and deduction.
Each step of the process from research to deduction, takes time and is given whatever time and attention needed to make a sound conclusion.
Identical twins are different. If you are around any, you know. Although so similar they are hauntingly different when you really look at them. And in my experience, they are often conflicted. Cooperative, attached, but conflicted.
It’s hard to imagine the intelligence of nature being able to manufacture two of the same thing, but differently.
Nikola Tesla said: “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
I agree. And....if you want to understand the secrets of your deeper self and your whereabouts in existence, think in terms of the level and quality of vibration.
Proponents of what’s called, ‘Kemetic Yoga’ claim that the practice of ‘Yoga’ actually pre-dates the detailed and standardized source texts developed in India, where it is commonly believed Yoga has its roots. Despite Egypt having its own uniquely developed spiritual tradition and metaphysical path, teachers of Kemetic yoga stake claim on the standardized detachment process called Yoga, expounded and recorded by what we know of as historically Indian bodied adepts.
Could this be true?
Justifiably, one might think that this could be yet another attempt to exploit the already exhausted pseudo yoga market. There’s a yoga for everything and everyone - and now there’s also a yoga specifically for black people.
And not just forblack people but developedby black people.
The message is clear – yet the assertion deserves a deeper look.
In Yoga what we ultimately want is to liberate ourselves from the wheel of reincarnation.
The wheel of reincarnation is made of a substance, a bio-psychic material intelligence that, for the purposes of this article, will be known as the ‘kundalini life force’.
Kundalini is a Sanskrit word that literally means ‘coiled she-serpent’. It is the designation, or name of, the ever changing program we experience and refer to as “Mother Nature”. She has many names; some call her Goddess, Madre, the Matrix, the Material Universe, Prakriti.
Kundalini energy is not spiritual energy - quite the contrary!
Kundalini is the energy of nature her-self. It is the ever mutating force of material life. It literally means ‘coiled she-serpent’. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna speaks in detail about this material nature - with special emphasis on its three moods, or gunas.
Kundalini is material intelligence, a complex program of evolving energetic elements of various forms, combinations and refinements. These elements provide, or force upon, the spiritual self (atma) an environment, both physical and mental, to operate within.
Kundalini is already active in our body and mind, it does not need ‘activation’, it is not dormant. It is already in charge of all the functions of the physical and the subtle body and can be found everywhere within them. You can feel it right now, beating your heart and digesting your last meal.
Kundalini gets the body/mind up in the morning and puts it down at night. It makes the body hungry, horny, excited, sad, clingy, nostalgic, goal oriented, depressed. It is and does everything you have ever experienced in this universe.
Rarely does a Yoga student learn and apply the secret to a real yogic exercise practice. Most students accept what they’re offered at a Yoga studio by a certified ‘teacher’ as being yoga but the truth is that very few people, even well-meaning teachers, understand what it really means to perform Yoga exercises.
It was only 6 years ago that I came to understand that despite a dedicated 15 years of practice and teaching, I was not really practicing, or teaching, Yoga.
All Hatha Yoga is Kundalini Yoga ......but you may have to be actively raising kundalini daily to understand why.
There is so much ambiguity regarding the Sanskrit words. Most of the time the person using the word is using it how they’ve been told to use it rather than how they have individually learned, experienced and studied how to use it.
I myself was teaching Yoga before I had any business doing so. Society told me I could though. There were no laws or regulations against me saying I was a yoga teacher and no assessor came around to check on my classes or question my knowledge.
Even a respected institute of yoga, the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta School, gave me a paper certificate with a fancy Sanskrit title and ordained me to teach yoga. It only took $1500, one month of following the ashram rules and passing an exam and I was a teacher of what?
It’s no big deal though, right? It’s just yoga, right?
It is a big deal that myself and millions of people in the world are considered certified teachers of:
the MOST COMPLEX AND HIGHLY PSYCHOLOGICAL SELF ACCOUNTABILITY AND PURIFICATION SYSTEM EVER STANDARDIZED BY MAN THROUGH HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH SUPERNATURAL BEINGS.
A SYSTEM OF LIFESTYLE REGULATION AND MEDITATION SO INTRICATE, COMPLICATED AND ULTIMATELY LIBERATING THAT OUR OWN SCRIPTURES DEEM IT APPROPRIATE FOR FEW BEINGS.
Here, as a person who has made mistakes in the past and learned from them, I offer a list of what makes a yoga class a yoga class and what makes a stretch class a stretch class.
What makes it Yoga?
It’s religious. Boom. Most teachers won’t admit it to their classes and some don’t even know it. The religiosity of yoga cannot be extracted from the goals because they rely on each other. Marketing something as religious puts limits on the potential for paying customers since most people come to yoga for physical and mental health related reasons – not because they are interested in spiritual liberation through the instruction of Lord Shiva or Lord Krishna or Patanjali. Studios need more, not less students - because of money. So they leave the deities out of the teachings, which just as with Christianity or any religion, nullifies the goal of the practice.
(If yoga teachers would honestly push for legislation to make yoga studios religious centers, they could become tax exempt, couldn’t they?)
The primary scriptures are what the teacher focuses on. Even during exercises. The Yoga Sutras and Pradipika are gold for teaching material yet if you find that the teacher isn’t especially focused on teaching the substance in them, you'd be wise to become suspicious that she’s making up what she thinks Yoga is, or wants it to be, combined with what she’s been told by mainstream culture and new age books on the subject.
No music. This one isn’t popular. Personally I had way more students when I was a two-bit-new-age-happy-little-know-nothing teacher offering ‘themed’ classes which included music. I even did a class to the tunes of Led Zeppelin back in the day. (major face palm)
Music has its place in our lives and in the execution of conscious living. However, when it comes to practicing yoga, Patanjali requires elimination of distraction. Music stirs emotion and that’s not what we’re doing. We are instructed to purify and take control of the tendency of emotional and mental fluctuations. Yoga requires proper focus on lifestyle, postures, breathing, mystic exercises, internalized focus, lack of emotion, lack of memory, lack of imagination, deep concentration and completion of insight. We don’t let ourselves be dependent on music to get us into a certain mood for yoga. The yoga itself will shift you in the correct mood but it takes effort. It’s that effort that empowers us.
As a former kirtan band leader I say this with due respect to the honored practice of devotional chanting. But as my own practice progressed, I left behind the activity of group chanting. Eventually I admitted to myself it was barren of authenticity.
Yoga postures are performed so that the subtle body can be moved into certain positions for optimum cleaning access. Subtle body anatomy is the focus in class, not physical. Yoga teachers aren’t physical therapists or physical anatomy experts. Indeed, they should strive always to be subtle, or psychological body anatomy experts. If any graphics of the body are used in class they should most often be of the subtle system not the physical. In a genuine yoga class the teacher is regularly redirecting the students focus onto the subtle body.
Meditation, purely yogic, according to Patanjali, is required after the asana/pranayama/pratyahara. Meditation is the main point of performing the postures with breathing which serve to prepare the mental space for quietude and high vibrancy during meditation. Meditation is performed immediately after the exercises and is done in silence so that naad sound can be accessed and meditated upon. (Again about the music – it inhibits proper naad listening, it does not enhance it. The only instrument helpful is a singing bowl or chime, used momentarily only to induce the awareness of naad at the beginning of the mediation.)
What makes it a stretch class?
None or little of the above occurs.
Physical stretching and its health benefits are the focus.
You hear words like Namaste, Om, Om Namah Sivaya, Jai Ma and the like. You’ll likely hear Sanskrit names of postures. In fact you may hear them ad naseum (i.e. chaturanga).
It’s usually new agey and self-helpy. A lot of ‘yoga’ teachers are more like self-help-stretch teachers. Readings, that have little or nothing to do with the goals of yoga found in our scriptures, are favored, and often quite popular.
A lot of physical adjustments made by the teacher. This is an unconscious smoke and mirrors trick that makes the teacher seem knowledgeable as a ‘Yoga’ teacher. This illusion depends on the ignorance of the students because most people think yoga means postures. And if the teacher knows the postures so well, she must understand yoga, right?
The teacher tells you that there are many kinds of yoga, then says some Sanskrit words and names – such as vinyasa, ashtanga, kundalini, Iyengar, Sivananda.....but fails to explain that any form of postural yoga falls under the domain of Hatha yoga who’s instruction is found in our authority text the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. This error is so prevalent it is made regularly by some of the so called highest authorities on yoga in the mainstream.
That’s my list.
We have the documents explaining this magnificent Yoga, we have information from the gods of Yoga themselves for the highest inspiration and yet, most Yoga classes are just glorified stretch classes. I hope this changes and I hope my lists, cheeky as they may be, might help.
This article addresses 3 categories of ‘yoga users’ and asks a fundamental question for each to consider. I don't want to offend with use of categorizations, however, sorting things out can help shed light on a matter and help reality come into focus.
I wonder, has yoga changed so much since the historical days of the Mahabharata where we learn of kings, queens, warriors and householders who applied yoga to their life (and after life) endeavors?
Or, is yoga really fodder for a business model to be applied to it?
Daily, ads pop up on my FB newsfeed encouraging me to “Use these tips to make your yoga business BOOM!”?
When people ask me about Yoga these days I almost always correctly assume that what they think Yoga is - is inaccurate. I’ve found that my life and their questions are made easier if I make a few simple things clear upfront. Despite that ‘yoga’ is seemingly everywhere, I am nonetheless forced to accept that most people do not know what it is or ignore what it is to keep alive the false imagery of what it is not.
The Mahabharata is to me what LSD was to Timothy Leary…
…..what the mushroom was to Terence McKenna.
These advanced intellectuals were psychedelic activists, philosophers who used special chemical compounds, or plants, as mediums to experience other dimensions. During a ‘good’ trip, profound insight into oneself might be gained, glimpses into the wondrous mechanics of nature and into consciousness, revealed.
Leary and McKenna encouraged use of psychedelics because they offer dependable, non-addictive, and often therapeutic astral experiences. They felt the plant offered a merciful bypass around difficult austerities and the trickiness of yogic meditation.
This is a review of my preferred translation and commentary of the Bhagavad Gita. Today was the second meeting of the study group held at Unity Church of Sarasota where the class decided to focus on the Michael Beloved version called Bhagavad Gita Explained. This book provides some unique attractions.
Standardized holy books, no matter from what background, that have stood the test of time, books like the Yoga Sutras and Hatha Yoga Pradipika, are so very valuable because they remain a fixed statement. A perfect reference.
They are like pronouncements from a deity or saint, capturing the claim, the formula, in a book form. Our Yoga holy books tell us what has been saved of the ancient yogi - scribe's masterful writings on the subjects. They are an intricate scaffolding through which we receive instruction in its most concise form stated in the flow of the language of the time.
Yogins are not people under an impression that by declaring devotion to a certain god that the soul will be taken to heaven upon death.
Yogins do not rely on rituals and superstitions to appease deities in order to gain their favor and be magically lifted out of the material creation into a heavenly world upon death.
Yogins DO sense that there is work to be done and that no matter what deity you find yourself in allegiance with and whatever ritual you perform, the work must still be done.
Before I came across a really well translated commentary on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, (after years of getting nowhere with Satchidanada’s version) even the profoundly important second verse didn’t have a lot of impact since I did not know how to separate myself from the mind.
I didn’t really know who I was separating the mind from.
Maybe this a problem for others too, whether they know it or not, when it comes to applying Patanjali’s most important verse.
The second verse in the first chapter of Patanjali Yoga Sutras Michael Beloved’s translation says:
“Yogah Chittavrtti Nirodhah” - which in English means:
Success in practicing the eight limbs of Patanjali’s yoga is quite reliant on limb number five.
In Sanskrit it is called Pratyahara.
In English it means to literally retract mental and emotional attention energies out of the things they are usually compelled to invest in and to redirect those energies into the 'self' for the purpose of self-examination and purification.
So first of all, who exactly is it that is doing this pratyaharic retracting?
About a year ago I had a student show up who also calls himself a teacher, a ‘master teacher of teachers’ no less.
Even though he came to my class he seemed reluctant to cooperate with my instruction by going through the motions wearing a sour attitude on his face. At the end of exercises and breathing, when time to meditate, the class is very specifically instructed to put the mats neatly aside and head indoors. As usual, the entire class did as they were instructed, simply put their mats aside, headed indoors and took their seats for meditation.
Dharma is how you must live your life – in order to live 'righteously'.
It is the best way you can conduct your daily activities, to live a morally effective life.
Karma, or action, is why you must live your dharma that certain way.
Karma is how you got yourself into your particular fix.
And karma is complicated; it’s a mixture of your own actions, the actions of others and the prerogative of deities particular to your personal existence.
Beginning meditation is a little like first dates.
At first when two people decide to get to know each other, they may feel uncomfortable and anxious about it. Feeling shy, awkward and insecure are things we might all remember experiencing to some degree when beginning a relationship.
The pressure of first dates can be eased by going out in a group. Hanging out with other couples, attending public functions and group events can help people more comfortably ease into a relationship.
Group distraction takes the pressure off.
However, as familiarity deepens, eventually the pressure lessens and the desire for privacy develops.
I see so many advertisements on “mindfulness” meditation. No offense to its promoters, but it always sounds so strange to me. To think that I would sit down in meditation, only to be filled by, surrounded by, comforted by, the mind?
Of all things?
Can I really depend on my mind to fill me with peace? Is it not it itself that is causing a lack of peace? The last thing I want to do when I go into a serious meditation time is to be mind-full. The mind is what I am trying to get away from, to become less full of, less influenced by.
Something that I’ve discovered from meditation practice is that the sound of silence is always present -even if noises are present within it.
I’ve practiced listening to the silence, focusing on the silence, and noticing that it remains available and detectable even when other sounds are there too.
For thousands of years the individual existence of the soul has been debated.
Even with the awareness of reincarnation which involves physical and subtle bodies, the question of a spiritual body still haunts us –
Do we exist eternally as an individual spiritual entity, or not?
Is the spiritual self, the I-self-consciousness (atma, not ahamkara) that some discover in deep meditation, is it real?
Or is individuality, aka personalism, an illusion explained away by the claim that the one and only thing that actually does exist has, by its own accord, split itself into pretender units of pseudo-individuality?
I am not only bound to a physical body - therefore when my physical body dies I will still not be free of material nature.
Why?
Because I am bound to another body - and I will continue to exist in that body when the physical one I use is dead.
That body I will continue to live in is called the subtle body. It is made of matter less dense than the physical body.
Unlike the physical body, the subtle body is difficult to get away from so to speak. You can’t just kill it off the way one can a physical one, it isn’t mortal in the same way as the physical.
We see the divine feminine show up in the physical world in spectacular ways through specific Earthly females of great status and influence. We observe vivid forms of her through activities of women who seek or even inherit great power.
I started college as an 18 year old in 1992 at a Catholic university in Illinois. It was led by Franciscan priests - the ones who wear long dark brown robes with a cord tied at the waist.
Despite ‘union’ being the go-to word used by popular teachers far and wide, I personally do not find it acceptable as an accurate translation for yoga.
I remember being a little girl at St. Mary’s School and my best friend and I would leave our classroom every Friday morning, earlier than the rest of the kids, to go over to the empty church and set up the music for the weekly children’s mass.
I remember being a little girl at St. Mary’s School and my best friend and I would leave our classroom every Friday morning, earlier than the rest of the kids, to go over to the empty church and set up the music for the weekly children’s mass.
