Kundalini experiences!

The Kundalini is said to be a serpent coiled three and a half times that lives in the sacrum. The very word sacrum is derived from the word sacred and the sacrum is at the base of the spine, a triangular shaped bones that sits between the hip bones.

It is said that when the Kundalini is awakened it shoots up the spine and unites with the 'thousand petalled lotus' in the crown of the head. When this occurs we become 'enlightened'. Wow!

This is a fantastic notion, and to the non-yogic mind may seem ludicrous, so they can just pour themselves another drink. On the other hand an account of the sudden awakening of the Kundalini is written about in a book called 'Kundalini The Evolutionary Energy in Man'. It is written by Gopi Krishna who experienced this state after meditating regularly for 17 years. It literally blew his mind and it took him many tears to get over it and integrate his experiences enough for him to write about it.

I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO ANYONE SERIOUSLY INTERESTED IN WHAT IS REAL AND POSSIBLE IF YOGA IS UNDERTAKEN WITH SOME SERIOUSNESS!!! ...note the word serious (twice).

The reason I am saying this here is because of my ongoing boredom and sometimes annoyance with the current situation of the so-called yoga scene in the west opposed to my own personal experiences with some of the more powerful techniques of yoga. Did I mention that the true purpose of yoga is for the transformation of consciousness.

Gopi Krishna did not have a guru (as far as I'm aware), but he was an extraordinarily disciplined man, which I am not.

The point I am trying to get across here is that the warnings on the 'packet of yoga' which are in very, very small print do suggest that yoga should be taught by a competent teacher but stories reach me on a daily basis of incompetent teachers doing more harm than good.

The above mentioned book is what happened to one man in his sojourn to higher consciousness.

B.K.S Iyengar gives constant warnings about the dangers of pranayama techniques used prematurely, so the warnings are there.

Well what is it that they are warning us against, what can happen? Feelings of disorientation, ringing and buzzing in the ears, headaches, sensitivity of the eyes to bright lights, and sensitivity in general. Not to mention psycho-emotional issues that may be inflamed, the list is a long one. Please try and read the above book.

I would say for most of us that awakening is a gradual thing. Feeling a bit lost as to the direction in our life and feeling very emotional are two examples of the way some of us may feel at times. If you amplify these by 30x it becomes a very serious matter, a nervous breakdown may be on it's way, uh oh, or an emotional breakthrough even?!

A 'spiritual emergency' is a phrase coined by Stanislaf Grof. This term was used by him to describe the state he saw some people get into after traumatic experiences. A kind of losing of all meaning to the so-called material world. I know for sure that after some intense pranayama exercises I have fleetingly felt like that. What is it all about ? Why am I here ? What's going on?

This is the dreaded existential angst, but multiplied by 30x, this may not feel too good, but maybe a necessary thing if we are going to undo the congested layers of conditioning that can exist within our complex mental apparatus. Ohhhh it's all getting a bit scarey innit? Well yes and no! More on this later . . . . . . . ..

Take care of yourself Hari Hari Om.

It's not why it just is!

How can I relax, how can I learn to sit still and quiet my mind, how can I become a great piano player? The answer is the same in all of these questions, just do it everyday. But I don't have the time. Then do what you have time for. How? Oh come on!

The way I see it is if you want to do something enough you will find a way and you will find the time to do it.

I have heard it said that 'we' all have something inside of us that is waiting to be born, forget about 'alien' the movie, I'm talking about that something that will take us forward or backward maybe, but it will take us somewhere and show us something. Sorting the real from the unreal?Forget about doing something so complicated as that and just find out what it is inside of you that is waiting to be born.

It is hard to sit still for long for most of us, we are used to instant answers and we want instant success and we want it now more than ever. Because of our learnt impatience we grab at things and hope that this will do the trick. The bookshelves are full of 'how to' books. Throw them in the bin and get on with looking at yourself in the mirror of your own mind. You are it! 'Oh no am I'? Yup!!

Of course the 'odd' technique to enter deeper realms of relaxation are worth an investment, but they only take you in and if you don't want to go in, in the first place you may just keep going out, quite literally, until there is no in left to go to.

What I mean by that is the idea of entering into the spirit of relating to yourself a little more honestly and to stop looking for answers out there. Do you need the 'guru' or does the guru need you? If there were no criminals there would be no need for laws and policemen. If there were no disciples there would be no guru's. Seekers of the truth! There is no truth is there, and if there is who knows it, Jesus, Buddha, the Virgin Mary? I have no idea myself so I make it up as I go along, or do I ?

"Oh dear this guy seems to be a fool" Anon

There is a truth of sorts, it is the truth that if you keep going through the various layers of your thinking mind you may hit a place inside of yourself that is quiet and peaceful. Now that to me is a kind of real truth and the only way I know that is because I have experienced it. If I had, had a vision of all the saints etc I may just as easily believed that but I haven't. The closest I've come to this is through my yogic experiences of peace and serenity and if it doesn't get any better I really don't care. The reason I say there is 'no truth' is in the sense that the old saying 'it's all in the mind sums up quite well'. The mind is a strange thing indeed, as the universe is a vast and expansive realm of unknown dimensions to most of us, so is the mind. What can you do about that, study psychology? Hmmm.....

You may be one of the lucky one's that has already found this 'something' and you may be well on your way to enlightenment, or your first million. Or you may be like me, a struggler for the truth, a truth that never seems to come that easy. 'Oh why me'? I have heard myself say in the past. Well why not me! What is there to do now? What is it you/I have been avoiding doing now for so long that we've virtually forgotten about it? If you look you may just find something hiding away just out of sight. I may of course be talking rubbish, indeed I probably am, after all what the Hell do I know about anything?

On my journey to here I have read many books on health, healing and all the surrounding districts. I have come to no major conclusions yet on who has got it right. But I know what works for me now, more than at any other time in my life. This is the trial and error method, if you believe it try it, even if you don't believe it, try it you may just blow your own mind in the process!!

This is it! This is the main show so what are we waiting for? Are we saving ourself for something that may happen at some unknown point in the future. One thing I'm pretty certain about is that this is now and now it will always be until now runs out and I think 'shit I knew I should've done that stuff yesterday'.

'What'?

Breathing - Relaxing - Surrendering - into the unknown birth of each precious moment.

Hari Hari Om .... . . . . . . .

More so what!

The problem for me writing this blog is that I find myself wondering if I'm telling the truth. I have always liked to write in the form of a journal or some kind of 'diary'. But putting my thoughts out onto the world wide web is something else. It brings into sharper focus my ability at times to talk rubbish. I trained many years ago and acquired a diploma in osteopathy. When I entered this 5 year course I was to say the least, very naive in terms of the why's and the wherefores of the healing sciences, to be more specific the so-called natural or alternative healing sciences.

I'd had some amazing transformational experiences with reflexology and cranial osteopathy and massage and breathing techniques etc. Unfortunately for me these necessitated being rather too dependent on the therapist using said technique, and not only that but it was all a bit expensive as well. Nevertheless as someone 'who needed help' I was willing to go the extra mile and get the money and pay the man/woman. Of course the main thing for me was that the effects of these treatments were always temporary for me andI found this highly frustrating.

OnceI gained my diploma in osteopathy I worked for a time as an osteopath. I was disappointed with this approach to health in the way that I witnessed it being used, i.e, a another fix and repair job, and more often than not as a great way of earning lots of money, which I personally wasn't interested in. This is not to say that osteopathy and all the other opathy's and ology's don't have a place, but in my opinion they are palliative most of the time in the same way that allopathic medicine is.

So again this is my opinion, and yes I know that there are all sorts of people that have been cured of all sorts of things with these various modalities. The point of this for me on a personal level is that once I started to do yoga I found my 'need' for external support evaporate.

Dependency is an insidious by-product of the consumerist way of life is it not? NO? YES?

Moving on; Yoga is not necessarily designed for healing purposes anyway, it is designed, if that is the right word, for the transformation of consciousness. We may find that we are unhappy with our lot in life, we may find that we are no longer satisfied with buying more things for ourself. What do we do? We seek out a therapist maybe or we learn some relaxation classes and we start to feel better and more relaxed and we can get on with our life again. That may just do the trick, but if you are the one in a million that is never truly satisfied what do you do? My God there a million and one therapies to explore and have fun with, but which if them is lasting, which of them does the trick? Trick what trick?

Anyway you may or may not get the point, you may think the world is going to end in 2012, or that we are doomed to die in a heat blaze in 50 years or even starve to death because the food sources have dried up. you may think it's all bullshit and keep on going the way you have been on and on. . . . . . . . . So what !!

When you have had enough you may just sit down and think. You may then start to breathe and tune into the natural rhythm of your own breath. Your heart rate may slow down and in spite of all that is supposedly going on you may feel better. You may see things in your mind that will scare the bejasus out of you, but it is your mind is it not? How did those things get in there? Can they be changed or even replaced by a more optimistic mode of thought, hmmm, maybe. Can you even start to imagine stopping think altogether for short periods of time? Blimey that would be a miracle then you my start to see that thoughts are illusions. The only trouble is these illusions have the power to affect your very physiology, electrical impulses (thoughts) leading to chemical responses (Hormones etc).

Hari Om Sat Tat.

So What!!

An interesting idea came to me regarding this whole idea of happiness as opposed to unhappiness. Do we assume that it is man's/woman's divine right to be happy? Did we pick this idea up from somewhere and assume it to be true? Because my personal experiences of life have taught me that this is not the case. It seems to me that men and women are continuously under the whip in one way or the other. We don't have to look too far to see that the human race has been under extreme pressure from the beginning of time. Whether battling mother nature to find a secure way to live in times gone, by or being made redundant through no fault of our own in our modern consumerist culture, it ain't easy.

It seems to me at this point that the idea of peace in general is a fallacy and it is not without hard work that peace is somehow maintained on a personal and global scale. You may argue with this point, and good I'm glad, but what I am trying to get at is the idea that life somehow 'should' be easier that it actually is and that somehow we all fall below the mark when it comes to 'getting on in life'. We fall below the 'ideals' perpetrated on us from where?

We seem to place high regard on those that 'seem' to have made it in some way, even in the so-called 'spiritual world' we pedestal people and hero worship those that 'seem' to have some answer that us mere mortals do not posses. The fact that these super-heroes allow this 'pedestalising' to continue proves to me that all is not well in the garden.

Ah well what can one do? Oh yea I know sit down and breathe in and out through the nose, sit and breathe and turn the attention to the inside and 'see' what is going on between the ears. 'Hmmm that's a bit disconcerting, that makes me feel uncomfortable, oh I like this and I don't like that, oh yea and what about . . . . . .?' And so it goes, the lovely little thought processes churning through the mind. 'Hmmmm I need to relax a bit here my shoulders are aching, oh my back hurts, ok keep breathing.' And on and on it goes, until the larger mind comes into perspective and 'we' actually 'see' these thoughts for what they are, nothing but outworn software programmes, the programmes are now running the computer, what happened to the 'master programmer'?

It is my experience that if you are looking for something there will always be someone that will be very willing to give it to you and in large doses and, take your hard earned money at the same time, nothing is free after all is it? Well you could always sit down on the floor or wherever else you choose to sit and look into the nature of your own thinking mind, but that definitely is not fun is it? So there's no way we can possibly do that, not when we can go to the local yoga club and give it all to them.

I'm amazed at some of the people that I come across making vast claims of having done this or that workshop and then not being able so sit still for 5 minutes. "Oh yes I've got my little bo-peep diploma from the cranial reflex metamorphic school of shampoo therapy, and I'm a grade three imbecile with honours, I charge £75 per hour." "Oooh that sounds amazing can I book 30 sessions in advance?" " Oh ok in that case I'll give you a 1% discount on that 'cos I'm the generous type my guru told me I was, and he gave me my spiritual name grabitwithbothhandsandrunananda ".

Oops here I go again getting all spiteful . . . . . . .

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.Om

Satya

What is 'the' truth? What is 'truth'? How can we be honest? Why do we 'need' to be honest? Why do we lie?

'The' truth as far as my understanding will allow is that 'I' am living in a conditioned reality. That is; everything that has happened to me in this life has shaped me psychologically, physically, and any other way you can think of in to the person that I am today. That to me is a very profound realisation.

'Truth' is something that appears to hold relevance for 'us'. This wall is blue is true for the person seeing the wall as blue, someone else may see the wall a green. Who has the 'real' truth. For millions of people on the planet Jesus is the true saviour, for millions of others it is the Buddha. Who has the 'real' truth?

'How' can we be honest when we don't really know what the truth is? When we hear people telling lies all the time or evading questions how can we dare to be honest? Why would we want to be honest in a world that doesn't seem to value honesty? I am cold is being honest when I am feeling the cold, but it wont have any relevance to someone nearby who doesn't feel cold they may think we are deluded!

We 'need' to be honest with ourselves is all. I am lying to this person is an honest statement of truth to yourself. Hmmm it seems to get more complicated. The old 'Johnny Cash record from the 60's says, 'It really doesn't matter if the truth was there, it was the cut of his clothes and the length of his hair. And the lonely voice of youth cries, what is truth?'

Oh why oh why do we lie? 'Tell the truth and shame the devil', has a great relevance to this. The devil being the ego wants to deceive and protect itself in the great illusion of it's grandiosity etc. To admit to not being quite as good at something as you pretend to be has this quality of exposure and revelation, transparency etc.

Well I thought I would ramble on this subject for a bit, feel free to sneer in disdain,

or laugh derisively in my direction if you must.

I read this recently; 'It has been suggested from the beginning of meditative practises that the mind is the final obstacle to enlightenment. The mind's major by-product thought must be harnessed so that in the end the mind can be re-programmed, not just of content but of the way it operates as well. It follows that to undo all unnecessary tension frees the mind from it's programmed thoughts. This will make the task of ego-mind re programming (transcendence) easier. In order to clear the mind of thought each sensate muscle group should be cleared of tension or at least reduced'.

This is from a book called, 'Undoing yourself with energised meditations'. By Christopher Hyatt.

Well I seem to remember that yoga asana'a are specifically for this purpose.

'When we are very very still and the mind is very very quiet, do we still exist'?

'When a man/woman is ready for enlightenment they will hear the sound of one hand clapping, have you ever heard it? What is enlightenment anyway?' Overheard in a West london yoga class.

Yama (restraint)

The Yama's are the first limb 'anga' of the Eight limbs 'asht-anga' of Yoga, the eight fold path. These are 'moral observances' according to *Georg Feuerstein's book, the 'Shambhala Encyclopaedia of Yoga'.

There are 5 of these Yama's; Ahimsa (non- harming), Satya (truthfulness), Asteya (non-stealing), brahmacarya (chastity), and Aparigraha (greedless-ness). *These five vows constitute to great vow of the yogin, (maha-vrata), and are to be practised on all levels irrespective of time place and circumstances.

The book mentioned above goes into this subject in more detail. Indeed there is much more information on these 'observances' should you choose to seek them out.

I am an ordinary person, more or less, and have no great desire to achieve enlightenment anymore, having said that I find that attempting to follow these observances serves me more as an aid to waking up the dormant element of the 'self' that exists below the surface of the chattering robot mind. If you note above these are 'moral' observances and 'moral' as defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary is to do the with, '1a.the goodness or badness of human character or behaviour; or with the distinction between right or wrong. 1b, Concerned with standards of human behaviour. 2 Conforming to accepted standards of general conduct, etc.

Bearing in mind earlier topics of 'conditioning' it would be easy to be tempted to twist these words into becoming whatever we wanted them to be. But if we look at ourselves with some Satya we may have some 'feelings' on the subject, and let these 'feelings' guide us, we may then be inclined to change or not.

It doesn't need to get too complicated does it? We are who we are and we may be perfect or we may be not-perfect. How do we get a handle on that? Right or wrong in terms of human life is never a black and white affair that is why we have devised a complicated legal system. Mankind has tried to find ways to control what it considers to be 'bad behaviour' and we seem to have got in to a right old mess with that!

However if we make this a personal issue and look at the way we behave in the world. For example our tendencies to be more or less truthful under different circumstances etc, can become an interesting way to look not so much 'that we do lie' but more to the point why we find the need to lie in the first place.

I thought I would touch on the Yama's so as to bring to light (AGAIN) that we are asleep most of the time and all of these practises serve to WAKE US UP!!

Your body and your mind belong to you and it is your right to do what you want with them. But I would say to you that you have been given an incredible opportunity to go beyond what you consider to be 'reality', read 'conditioned reality', and to experience something else.

Ahimsa is non- violence. Satya is Truthfulness. Asteya is non-stealing. Brahmacharya is chastity. Aparigraha is non-greed. Write these on a piece of paper and cut them up and put them in a bowl and take one out each morning and try to work with it throughout the day, and enjoy the show. Have fun with it, life is hard enough without having to give yourself a 'hard time' too.

I read this recently and thought it was funny: 'A disciple is an asshole looking for a human being to attach itself to'. Don't be an ass-hole!!

Why/What/Who ???

Questions, questions and more questions, the why, why, why of it all is an endless game, what is there to know? In terms of the here and now, what is it I/You/We need to know ??

Let us use the modern computer as an analogy of 'us'. We are born, like a new computer, with our fresh new hardware ready to be programmed. Our hardware is our brain and nervous system. The imprinting of our reality begins with our first contact post birth, i.e, when we move from within the womb to out into the world and into the loving arms of our mother or the cold hands of some overworked paediatrician, imprinting has begun!

Of course conditions in the womb will have affected us too. The mothers nutrition or the lack of it. The mental emotional condition of the mothers condition and all sorts of combinations and permutations come into play, making us into the divine individuals that we are to become. Chemical reactions leading to chemical responses shaping us, literally.

The hard-wiring of human growth is in place as the child cries for food when hungry or when uncomfortable sending the signals of distress to the mother, then mother comforts and feeds or changes the child an so on. Teething, crawling and learning muscle movements leading to walking, the speech centres are switched on at the right time etc, etc, until we become human adults. I know this is over-simplistic but I am not really concerned with the natural inherent hardware, mother nature has, in most cases, taken car of that adequately.

As we evolve as humans we encounter other humans, with our parents or guardians usually being the one's that will influence our outlook (software) the most. So Karma is as simple as where and when we are born and the parents we are born to. The question as to whether some divine intelligence places you in these positions for particular lessons is a possibility but it is not a necessary requirement to believe such a thing. Just waking up to the realisation that we have been imprinted by our culture, our parents outlook, our nationality and religious views or the lack of them is a starting point.

The Yamas cited by Mr Patanjali are not merely for moral development but are used as a way of un-condtioning your mind, the imprints you have received throughout your life have become concretised into your system and in most cases are no longer questioned. Once you start to use the Yamas you will certainly start to see how attached you have become to your own way of seeing things. Once more I must add it is not a question of morality or of right or wrong, it is more a question of starting to see how much like a 'robot' you have become, which is a little bit upsetting. For example a bad experience with butter beans in my primary school meant that for years I thought, "I hate butter beans". It was only after I realised I had been eating them for years disguised in stews and soups that I realised I didn't hate butter beans I just thought I did.

Wilhelm Reich was in the view of most people that know, the first person of scientific persuasion to see how the mind's conditioning can literally shape the body. He believed that there are at least three layers to most humans. The outer layer is the one we show to the world, this is the mask we show to people. The second layer is what we consider to be our real selves, our grumblings and discomforts reside in this layer and will only show themselves when we are with people we are 'comfortable' with. But the deepest layer he said is the authentic us, this is where our natural human traits of love and humanity exist.

So what am I talking about? The same as always really. If you are happy and contented then yoga may not be for you, if you are not happy and contented yoga may not be for you either. Yoga may not be what you think it is, have you ever wondered what yoga really is? It may just be another thing you do that keeps you locked into your neurotic world, but that's alright as long as 'you' know that. that is what you are doing. Don't kid yourself!!

pos/neg +/-

Being a bit arrogant at times I sometimes get a little extreme. So on that note I want to come back to the subject of positive versus negative. I mentioned this topic several blogs ago where I said there is no real need to think in terms of positive and/or negative. I said this because in the final analysis using the idea of non-duality there is no positive or negative there is just what is now and how 'it' is now. In other words the world and all that is in it, is just being what it is, what 'we' project on to it however is something else.

For example if we look out of the window and see a blue sky it may make us feel happier than if we see a grey sky, blue sky being associated with summer and grey sky with winter etc. So what 'we' project out is what we get back.

I have talked about conditioned reality too, in the sense that 'we' may be someone that is naturally inclined towards positivity or the opposite of negativity. These end results are based on lots of different things, not least of which are our childhood experiences and our physiological inheritance.

Ok so here we are, we have all of medical science as it is today to help us understand the physiological mechanisms of the hormonal (endocrine) system and the nervous system etc, and how these affect our psychological outlook. In some sense we are nothing more than nervous/ electrical impulses stimulating hormonal/chemical responses into our systems. Hormones as we know create a kind of reality of their own, adrenalin stimulates aggression or fight or flight responses and glucagon controls blood sugar levels and we all know about sugar highs don't we.

So we have to consider and appreciate the physiological processes at work within our systems. It's no use whatsoever using positive affirmations if we have an hormonal or blood sugar problem in the background. A simple blood test is easy to organise with your g.p if you find that you are tired and/or otherwise compromised physiologically. Poor nutrition and not resting properly will also affect your health. But of course you may well say that doing yoga will bring these things to light anyway, but there is no harm getting checked out at the fundamental physical level first, your choice!

So now we have a starting point for the practise of yoga. According to Patanjali we start by Yamas and Niyamas. If you are using Patanjali as a 'way' to do yoga then that is what you should do. If not then what? I myself started with pranayama, but like I've said before I'm not really like other people. I had many years before used a technique called re-birthing, which is basically a very dynamic form of breathing which can last for at least an hour or more. So once I discovered that there was a whole strand of breathing science which was known as pranayama and that it had been evolving for 5/6 thousand years I jumped in to it with both feet. I got very high and then i got very low, 'hmmmmm', I thought this is interesting and I persevered until the high's and the low's started to reduce in intensity and I found an energised an relaxed position within myself.

Then I knew I needed to do asana's to strengthen my body, to contain the energy that i was generating using these pranayama practises. This is what I call the natural wisdom of the intelligence of the body waking up to itself. This was REAL-IS-ING things in the true sense from the inside out. To be honest allot of the so-called teachers I met eventually taught me what I 'did not' want and how 'not to' teach. All teaching are a blessing bringing you closer to your true self.

So a gradual waking process starts to occur. Things that were hidden from you are revealed as you go deeper into the unconscious mind. What is the unconscious mind after all except parts of ourselves that we haven't had the time or the inclination to get to know well enough, because probably we have been to 'busy' being fucked up by people places and things.

Dharana/Concentration, is learning to stay with 'it', whatever it is! Refusing to scratch the itch or fidgeting around whilst 'trying' to do an asana or sitting for a moment. This has certainly been one of the major challenges for me. Sitting or being still, watching an waiting and doing nothing. Ah well!

Once we reach Dhyana/meditation we are strengthening and lengthening our ability to stay still for longer periods of time. We are now only one step away from Samhadi, this is what Mr Patanjali tells us.

The 8 limbs of Raja yoga are leading you to the top of the mountain. I'm still very happy at base camp to be honest. I think most of us are happy to be happy and fulfilled with our life and I definitely think yoga practise can give you that much.

For the more extreme types who are never happy there is always the top of the mountain, but what will you do when you get there? Enjoy the journey.

'Dogma is a drug and we are dogma addicts' Anon.

"The worlds all wrong 'cept for me and thee, and I'm not too sure about thee sometimes' Someone from 'up North'.

'When it all comes down to dust I will kill you if I must, I will help you if I can'. Leonard Cohen.

'Shut up!' Anon.

Whatever age you've reached on this mortal coil you have become who you are now. Whatever you have done so far you are still who you are right now. Do 'you' like being who 'you' are right now? Do 'you' know who 'you' is that is asking the question? The question being are 'you' enjoying being who 'you' are right now?

An earlier blog touched on the idea promulgated through the 'psychosynthesis' model of multiple sub-personalities forming the larger personality that we know and love, or not, as ourselves. Applying this idea to meditation or self-reflection, who is doing the thinking and who is doing the observing? I am here asking these questions not literally but more in a way that may challenge us to think a little more about who we may or may not be at any given time.

I usually encourage people to make a commitment to practise yoga, i.e, asana, pranayama, dharana and meditation for at least three times per week for a period of six weeks, for an hour a day. The point of this exercise is not to get fit although that may happen, but to differentiate between the part of you that makes the commitment and the part of you that resists. We may start off feeling very inspired and energised, but after a while the resister kicks in and we feel less enthusiastic and less inspired as the more negative part of ourselves is drawn out into the open. The witnessing agent inside of our mind that is being brought to life through regular committed practise is becoming more and more aware of the duality in our thinking. This witnessing agent which we could also call the 'neutral' part of ourselves is 'seeing' the disparity that exists within our own mind. Through meditation if we can get the gaps between our thoughts to widen we may reach a point of silence, the question then is where does thought come from?

For me going mindlessly to classes cos' they made me feel good was a good beginning. Then the questioning mind started to ask, 'when I know this class inside out and back to front, why do I still need to be here, (the issue of needing again), and what is it exactly that I get from this experience?' Well once that little thought found it's way in I couldn't really go back to sleep could I? So after a time I stopped going to the classes and started to practise at home. I found this to be a much more challenging and much more rewarding process. For the first 3 months or so I literally heard my ex- yoga teacher's voice in my head. This was certainly brainwashing but in a positive way I thought. It took some time to let go of the routine and start to work 'creatively' with 'myself', to find out who 'I' was and what it was 'I' wanted to do or not to do. (Yes I'm aware of using the 'I' word).

Liberation is not slavery, liberation is not having to choose between this or that. Liberation is freedom and as Janis Joplin sang, 'freedoms just another word for nothing left to loose'.

In my mind yoga is life, yoga is all there is and I suppose a footballer may say the same thing about football. Yoga like life is also challenging, sometimes very challenging, but it is also rewarding.

Yoga, as far as I'm concerned is for people that may not be too sure of who they are or what their purpose might be. To me it seems to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. It reveals at the right time the hidden aspects of the mind, the parts of you that may be sabotaging your purpose. We have to give some credit to the body's natural wisdom/processes, so if we can get out of our head for long enough we may be disturbed or comforted enough to move nearer to the top of the mountain, only to find of course that we are at the bottom of an even large mountain. Then all we can do is surrender again and enjoy the journey.

'If you look into the eye of the Buddha be at once prepared to see everything and nothing' Anon.

'Action speaks louder than words and I'm a man with a big experience' Otis Redding.

'But there is also in us an aspiration for the mastery of nature, health, strength, duration, happiness and ease and liberation from suffering which evolution is called upon to realise.' Sri Aurobibdo.

Good News/ Bad News

I am a little perturbed at the moment by what I see as the grand underselling of yoga especially in London. Most of the so-called health clubs I've been associated with, are not qualified to know a good yoga teacher from a bad one. In fact there are not many people at all that would know that for sure I hasten to add. So we have people teaching yoga that basically should not be, and if you bristle at the thought of that you are probably one of them.

We have to start somewhere that's fair enough, but to be teaching yoga when you don't even practise it yourself at least on a daily basis is not good. Of course you need to pay the rent and most people are probably oblivious to any notion of whether you are good or bad, but really.

I'm very aware that I am being very judgemental here but I am expressing my view on my website.

It's easy to learn a routine and throw you're weight around about how to do this or that posture, and I have come across some very aggressive and authoritarian yoga teachers, who seem to me to have no idea of what they are doing. So what are you essentially doing with your students? What are you doing and why are you doing it? To earn money isn't a good enough answer. Where are you taking your students, do you know?

I read recently that yoga is being born in the West at this point in time, in other words we are at the start of a real yoga movement, and I would agree with that. In the long term the quality of yoga teachers, i.e, dedicated teachers, will become become more clearly defined as the big money goes out of it and hopefully we wont get some self-ordained authority setting up to tell 'us' what we can or cant do in the meantime.

And here we hit a sticky point. The true form of yoga I would dare to say, must go beyond the bounds of our comfort zones to say the least. Ok if you want to learn to relax go to a relaxation class or do some aerobics, yoga is not essentially for that. It is for, as far as i'm aware, the transformation of consciousness. What is consciousness, do you know?

In daily life we all know we have good days and bad days. For most of the people alive on the planet these good days or bad days are for the most part completely arbitrary, some good some bad, we don't know why perhaps it's all to do with the weather.

But for the yogi (this is a yoga website by the way) this is not the case. How can it be, are you not the master of your own senses? Probably not, but hopefully a little more than you used to be if you're practising well. To be honest I have heard so much utter tosh talked about yoga and surrounding districts that if I hadn't myself been transformed more or less by the effects of my own practise, I would have given up years ago. I haven't met anyone 'yet' without an 'ego', and the one's who claim to have the least ego to me seem to be the one's that have the most.

Ego-less ecstasy is a very rare bird, it occurs and it goes again. We may have glimpses of these profound states at different times in deepest relaxation, maybe, at the end of a good asana/pranayama practise?

Gopi Krisna, has written a good book on his experiences of the awakening 'kundalini'. In this book he describes some ecstatic experiences, but these are quickly followed by some rather intense psychological problems that remained with him for years to come. He writes two other books that I know of on this theme, well worth the read. Of course this is one man's experience and he is an exception. I would say for most of us the awakening of the 'kundalini', if I may use that term, is a slow and gradual process. Regular committed practise will do the best work in my opinion.

Then of course back to the 'old nutshell' of our individual needs etc, our little ego considerations about having the time or the money to go to the yoga class today or next week, and then when we get what we've paid for we run away. We pay for the crisis that comes with ongoing practise and when it comes we don't want it, we want 'valium'.

I will always refer you to the appendix in 'Holy Madness'. It's called (Prigogine's Dissipative Structures). He say's more or less that 'spiritual practise', and surely this is what yoga is, is designed to put the practicioner under a 'peculiar kind of tension' that leads to a crisis. Of course no 'spiritual crisis' can occur if you keep running away. But then again maybe you run away for the right reasons, yoga in the correct sense of the word, the way I understand it, is not for everybody. I'm not even sure it's for me sometimes!

Om Shanti.

Guru/Teacher

In the long distant past and perhaps even today in some places a seeker of the truth would search out a Guru/Teacher. This process itself may take many years, let alone getting anywhere with the practises given by said teacher.

In our current situation of yoga teachers everywhere with varying degrees of competence how are we to find a Teacher/Guru, and in the traditional sense do these people still exist?

Guru means 'weighty one', and you can read stories of these people from the older yoga books available. I myself have never found 'a one' but have been inspired by several different 'teachers' throughout my life.

As mentioned in an earlier blog, what is it 'we' are actually looking for in the first place, and once we know what we are looking for how can we know that someone can pass this thing on to us? It's not like we are learning to play the guitar is it? We are searching for something else, something we obviously do not posses otherwise we wouldn't be looking.

Being around a person that possesses some kind of power and authority in itself is a challenging thing. Do you remember seeing the headmaster at school, or an interview with a particularly intense boss, surely it's the same thing. This person has something you do not posses and you may want something from that person. In the case of the headmaster it may be reprieve from punishment, and the boss may be able to give you more money or the 'sack'!

So here we are at the place where we definitely want something although we may not quite know what it is? Once we do know what it is we may need to know how badly we want that thing and why indeed we cannot give it to ourselves.

As some of you may know addiction is prevalent in our modern culture, and In my opinion addiction is caused through a feeling of lack, the 'I'm not enough as I am', syndrome, and much more besides.

The unscrupulous boss may take advantage of you're lack, as tyrants have a marvellous knack for seeing people's need. But even so if we have enough of a need we may in some cases go along with it. This is ok I guess as long as 'you' know what 'you' are doing, and indeed what you want. If we apply this to the guru/student situation, the onus I believe is on you the student to a large degree to know what it is you expect from the guru teacher, i.e, what do you want, what do you need, and why do you need it?

"Keep your own counsel". Fred Little.

"Human all to human". Neitchze..

"Sweet dreams are made of this". Annie Lennox.

Why is a very good question .....

Asking yourselves why is a very good thing to do from time to time. Why do you/we do what we do? The 'pleasure principle' is a major drive in human endeavour. We like to feel good, so we find something that makes us feel good and we do it, it's simple really. Why don't we feel good all the time? That's an interesting question. We must feel useful, we need to earn money, we 'should' enjoy ourselves. So much to do and so little time to do it.

Well I gave up asking a little while ago and began to accept things as they were and once I did that things changed. Things are still the same, but a little bit different from how they used to be. What's different? Nothing really, I suppose I stopped needing to know.

Some people want to be big in yoga. I want yoga to be big in me. I get so mystified by the whole hype thing that occurs when the "big shots' turn up and people go and see what they are like, and isn't what's his/her name fantastic and oh how lovely it all is. It seems to have the opposite effect on me, but then I've never really been what you might call very normal.

I spent years looking for something and it was right there under my nose. Now where have i heard that before? I was looking and didn't really know what I was looking for. Once I found 'the peace that surpasses understanding', I knew that I had found what I was looking for. All I needed to do now was hold on to it. But like a slippery snake it kept getting away from me. But through, for most of it, an ongoing commitment to my yoga practise, I now get longer periods of peace for longer periods of time. Some of you that know me may be shocked and wonder what I must have been like before, wonder on.

I found it difficult to find that peace, I used all sorts of things to get it, but it always slipped away. Then as I see it I was washed up on the shores of yoga. I was 45 and I had spent that last 7 years undergoing treatment for luekaemia. It seemed to work, the teacher was good and knew how to teach well. I was inspired and kept going back. I started to feel better more often, I became addicted to yoga.

Hmmmm, another addiction was what it was, but a good one at least, I told myself. After several years encouraged by my teacher i did a yoga teachers training course, and reluctantly became a yoga teacher. Well here I am now I've been teaching for 10 years now. It's great!

There isn't really any big secret, find a good teacher, go to classes until you don't need to go anymore, and then start doing self practise, that's when the real yoga starts. You and you all on you're own on the mat to work things out for yourself. You may become enlightened and you may not, who cares.

'It's the journey not the goal' Everyman.

Reality what reality ??

I seem to keep coming back to this subject/object about the nature of reality because I find it fascinating. Many of my problems in 'growing up' were caused by my needing to know that 'I was ok'. How could I know that for sure? What reference points did I have? As a child of course most of the time I accepted things just as they were, there was no need to question. I 'wondered' about things as a child but that is different. As I grew into so-called adult-hood I began to question things. I very well remember questioning the accepted view that after I left school I was meant to go to work for the next 50 years or so. Perhaps this was more a matter of the times, I left school in the mid-sixties when 'a whole generation had a new explanation'.

I witnessed the naivety of the hippie dream crumble into seventies paranoia. The paradox between the the idealist view of the sixties against the assassination of the Kennedy's and Martin Luther King confused me greatly. Vietnam and Watergate were in the background throughout this time. I can remember the Cuba crisis as a child of about 8 wondering if the world was going to be blown up by these things called 'new-clear' weapons.

Ah well I'm still here and the nature of reality, like I said, still baffles me from an ego/psychological/personality perspective. In the background of my own life has been an ongoing search for understanding and therefore peace of mind, or a least some contentment. Against the backdrop of my yoga practise I am told something called enlightenment is possible. I am told that if I do this I may become enlightened in this or perhaps some other lifetime, and only then if I am karmically pre-disposed to such a condition.

Well that may or may not be so, what have I got right here right now?

Another thing I keep coming back to is the idea that there is only one moment to act in, and it is this one. I have sat on many hard cold floors and listened to many so-called teachers giving me their versions of the truth. It was all good and all bad, it was confusing and enlightening. I find I don't have the need, at least at the moment, of sitting on anyone's floor anymore. Does this mean I'm enlightened? Who cares! I don't care anymore about enlightenment or anything else that I don't seem to have. I think it's enough at this point to have found a way to live in a relatively peaceful way in this rather confusing world.

Just sit still long enough, keep still and look within, that's it! Or keep going to the latest fantastic yoga teacher on the block, listen to the music they play, then go home and sit still. But please find some time to sit still and breathe and then laugh, or don't.


"Stand back- We're on a mission from God!" The Blues Brothers.

"This is not a normal World". Batman.

Duality or not ........

As mentioned before we seem live in a world of duality or opposites of good or bad or up and down etc. I have found that by keeping involved in my ongoing commitment to go beyond this idea of opposites my attachment to being a particular way is lessening. But having said that it's not like I had much of a choice in the matter. What choice is there between the attainment of some level of peace of mind or nothing?

I believe there are not too many people that would not admit to being attached to being happy all the time, even if they're not. But being happy and trying to be happy are very different from one another. We seem to try to be happy and somehow we find ourselves getting upset by someone or something, hmmmmm what to do do?

When we practise 'Yoga' regularly we find more often than not that we get into a space that could be called neutral or detached, i.e, nothing bothers us quite as much. For me it seems we are creating a new element to the mind or ego or whatever you want to call it. This new element of the mind we are creating is like a position of observation, and from here we can see the up and the down of things, we can see our tendencies to be one way or the other. This is the awakening process in action and to my way of thinking there is nothing else to attain from the practise of yoga.

The physical body as a container for the mind and the energy of the mind/body needs to be strong and flexible, therefore we do Asana. The breath is like a dynamo and when we breathe deeper we create more energy, if the body can't contain this energy we blow a fuse or collapse into 'our stuff', a 30 watt light bulb can only contain 30 watts of power, if you try to put more in it will blow up!!

Rather than seeing this as a negative thing, we need to start seeing it as being perfect, like a young bird learning to fly, we climb and we fall, we collapse into our stuff. We do it over and over again until we learn, when we fall we learn why we fell, and try again.

Tenacity is the necessary ingredient, we need to need to want to fly, otherwise when things get tough we just go on holiday and things stay the same, which is very boring.

If we can get a perspective of our need, i.e, where our weak spots are we can work on these aspects.

"Necessity is the mother of invention"

'It's not much use being able to quote the yoga sutra's of Patanjali or do the one handed hand stand if you can't manage to speak to you're next door neighbour, is it?"

Ommmmmmm . . . . . . .