OMMMMMM

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Life is suffering. Hmm

Well the Buddha himself said something to the effect of, 'life is suffering'. That was very kind of him to point that out wasn't it, as if we didn't know.

We begin life with a very traumatic arrival through the birth canal, I mean even the easiest birth must involve a little anxiety right? Most of us arrive by travelling down the birth canal and some of us come through the abdomen via ceaserian. Either way we have been lying in amniotic fluid for nine months or so. But arrive we do into this world pure and simple, and then the fun begins.

all of the stages of growth are programmed into the hardwiring, suckling, moving our limbs, to crawling and walking, speech and communication etc, towards the dreaded puberty and the awakening into the world of hormones, then even more fun begins.

We are confronted with adulthood and beyond with no real maps and unless we are lucky to have a nice set of beliefs handed to us in the form of religious indoctrination or something similar we have to try and make sense of the world, mostly if not totally through our experiences. Aggh!

Even those of us that have been used to religious, political or other sets of beliefs may sooner or later start to question such things because our experience may not match the ideals.

As we grow we may be lied to constantly, all for our own good though. Our feelings tell us something and we ask our elders etc and are told our reality is not important, 'of course I love you darling, in spite of the fact that I shout at you more or less constantly and may sometimes hit you!' Hmmmmmm.

So here we begin with the denial of feelings over dominant thought patterns passed on to us through our elders etc.

Read Alice Miller. 'For you're own good'.

Through yoga Asana and pranayama we are put back into our body, this is the first step. We become acquainted again with feelings, past and present. We may not like it, so we read the books written by those who went before us. We do if we have any sense at least, otherwise we may be cajoled into spending another £'s on another workshop or course to make us into a better person.

F--- That !!!

Get real, sit down and breathe in and out through your nose for 10mins, or half an hour or more. The maps are already printed all you have to do is find them. All of these workshops and retreats are made by people that are giving you second hand information because you are too lazy or too tired to do it yourself.

'It's life captain but not as we know it' Spock.

Ommmmmmmmmmmzzzzzzzzzzz

Choices

You/we/I have choices all the time. We never need to be complaining because what we are doing whether you/we/I like to admit it or not is your/mine/our own choosing. Aha!

What a dilemma we are faced with at any moment in time, choosing, choosing, choosing.

The 'double edged sword' of freedom is this, it is the awakening of being free to choose your own destiny!

What are you doing now that you feel you have no choice in? There is bound to be something to see somewhere in the background, lurking away in the dark recesses of the mind.

"It's alright for you! You don't know what I have to put up with day in and day out". The righteous on.

Well I know it's not as simple as that, life happens to all of us, and sometimes it makes us feel not too good. But as one grows into awareness there is no blaming anymore, we no longer have the luxury of blaming anyone else for our troubles.

Rather than being a burden this is a good thing, because we can start to feel more. If we are finding something very difficult we are better of facing it than running away from it. We may expend more energy trying to avoid facing up to something than it would cost us to confront the issue and deal with it.

Pick any Asana you find challenging and do it now! Anything you resist will bring up the same feelings. Resisting having an important talk with someone has just the same feeling to it as resisting doing your least favourite posture.

For me it's a physical inertia coupled with a mental mode of, 'I don't wanna do it'. Thats hard enough right!

Inertia is inertia whatever you/I or we apply it too.

Tamasic . . . . . . . . .too tired!

Rajasic ............ too busy!

Sattva, mmmmm maybe I'll take a look at that now and see what happens.

Om Shanti

giving up giving things up . . . . .

As I have got older I have found the reasons to change more challenging. If we live to be 75 years old, what can we hope for really. I'm really asking this question from the perspective of some of the promises of yoga practise.

I know for sure that my life has changed dramatically since I started to do yoga, but what is it that's changed? My perspective I think is the main thing that has changed.

Prior to doing yoga I had a life, I was always affected by everything in that life, the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' were always affecting me one way or the other. Whether I bore them nobly in the mind or took up arms against them were based on certain dynamics, usually emotional and usually reactionary.

I am still affected by life of course, but now I have a choice with my re-actions or more so nowadays, my responses, to such things. This is still dependent to large degree on some certain fundamental things being taken care of, such as not getting too tired, and looking after my diet, i.e, not eating crap.

So life is more peaceful for me, and that is it really, but it is a hell of allot too. As I have progressed along this 'mirage' path I have noticed more and more about myself. I have parts of myself that I have found quite hard to come to terms with and also certain parts of myself that I have had to let go of. In certain respects I think I'm the same person I have always been, and that feels good too.

We do this and that and the other to try and get something, what is it we are trying to get, that's the thing we really need to know. With hindsight I can say that most of my life I was looking for satisfaction or contentment. I sought out certain things that I thought would give me that and I was always disappointed eventually, the novelty wore off and I became bored.

With yoga something changed, I'm not quite sure what is was, but I know I stopped looking outside of myself for the answers.

The Asana and Pranayama were the hooks that took me to Pratyahara and the inner connection that I had always resisted because of my inability and/or unwillingness to feel anything. Then back to Asana and Pranayama again and again and again, taking me deeper into the layers of my inner experience, of my personal body memory and mind memory, it was and is re-conditioning me mentally- physically and emotionally.

So eventually I realise there is no need to change, just surrender to who you really are and deal with it in your practise.

uphill struggle

Sometimes life is an uphill struggle, sometimes for whatever reason life seems to be a bit more difficult to deal with. It's probably best not to wonder why life has become difficult, it is probably better to look at and accept the fact that you may be struggling. You may need to rest, you may need to do some asana, but until you are more inwardly directed you will never know what you need.

Our culture supports external focus, it is all about how things look and not necessarily about how things feel. Yoga Asana practise is really about coming out of thinking and into feeling. How do you feel? This inward felt sense of self is a guide to the next step, it is gentle and creative rather than aggressive and forceful.

The 'ego' has a tendency to ignore the subtle feelings emanating form within, it has to, otherwise it would never survive. The sense of 'I' from a more healthy perspective wants what is best for you in the long term. The essential question is, 'who am I?' And once you have worked that out it's, 'what do I want?'.

If you take care of yourself and your personal responsibility to your local environment then what more can you do? In terms of global issues if we all took responsibility for our selves and our local environment we would go along way to solving the issues that now face us.

The raising of awareness (intelligence) is the solution to all of the problems we now face.

Yoga is one ay of achieving this goal- it may be the only way for all I know!

If you want to solve a problem you first have to acknowledge the fact that you have one.

As you raise your awareness through continued practise you keep coming up against your limits and resistances to continuing, it happens to everyone, even in the ashram, probably more so in fact.

Every now and again the 'egoic' old patterns will reassert themselves. These are the days when it is all wrong and you are wasting your time etc. Rather than seeing this as wrong see it as fantastic, this is the 'ego' revealing itself to you in all it's glory. This is why you are doing the work!!

ha

Don't forget to laugh !!

Ha hahahaha ...............

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Get upset......

As we come to terms with the fact that we are conditioned by our past it becomes very interesting. It becomes interesting because sooner or later we start to realise that anything we are conditioned to do can be un-done. Of course then it depends how much time you have to do the undoing and how much energy you need to keep going. But that doesn't matter too much.

Because .......

During practise whether in Asana or meditation ( asana is a moving mediation) we begin to see our limits, i.e the point where we start to become reactive. For example in a certain posture we may get tired then we may get tense and irritated with the teacher etc. 'Hmmm is this a projection?', we think. Indeed, unless you have decided that your yoga teacher is an idiot then it is more than likely to be a projection. Otherwise you might need to ask yourself why you are going to a yoga class taught by an idiot!

It does eventually start to get quite funny, here you are again in another yoga class, why? What is it you get from these classes which you know up side down and inside out three times over, why/why not?

The human brain has dragged it's way from the primordial slime to the present, evolving and expanding over millions of years, and here we are at the pinnacle of evolution. Given this information it's strange that we should spend so much time worrying about everything isn't it?

Someone must have realised many years ago that there was more to life than the struggle to survive, hence we have art. As we have moved more and more into the future we have changed our survival mode techniques slightly. We no longer need to worry about sabre toothed tigers, we have other more complex concerns. But what are they?

We eat and sleep and work etc, what more is there than this, anything? Of course it could mean that there is an inherent need to worry built into the hard-wiring of the brain, and that as we evolve we develop more complex thing to worry about.

I'm not saying that global warming isn't real, but don't you think it's funny we didn't know about it while we had the USSR to worry about? I'm just teasing......... of course it's real, isn't it?

The real question is, whether you live to be 100 years old or only have a short time left, are you doing what you love, and if not why not? This isn't a trick question you may have a need to be doing something that you don't love in order to serve your long term goal. There is no right or wrong in a sense when it comes to personal karma, you do what you do, don't you?

The old saying- 'it's not what you do it's that way that you do it', is very applicable now you are a super yogi. You can do those difficult postures with a little more equanimity now, those jobs you hated to do but had to do are a little more bearable now, aren't they?

'If nothing changes it''ll all stay the same'. Ancient proverb.

'the one thing human beings hate is change, the second thing they hate is when things stay the same'. Alfred. E.

Try an experiment, get yourself very relaxed by doing some practise and then see how quickly you can get upset.

Once you have become completely upset, see how long it takes to get calm again.

OmMMMMMmmmMM

1. Kapalbhatti.

2. Tratak

3. Neti

4. Alternate Nostril breathing.

5. Sit still for 10 - 15 minutes without moving.

Try and find out more about the above and try doing one or some or all of them every morning for a month. It'll take about half an hour.

Stop making excuses as to why you can't do it and just start doing it, see what happens. you may feel completely miserable but you do it anyway.

Have you noticed that even though all the signs point in the direction of happiness and peace of mind there doesn't seem to be too much of it around?

Have you noticed that the so-called technological present and future that is supposed to be making life easier for us is somehow not really doing that?

Have you noticed that the media is generally fixated on telling us all the bad news that it can?

If you do some or all of the above exercises you may start to notice more and more. It will be sometimes very upsetting and sometimes very funny but always very rewarding.

The practise of yoga is designed to put you under stress, but in a conscious way. As you are holding another posture for another 10 breaths it makes you pay attention, otherwise you just keep collapsing into your misery and 'stuff'. It's not really real once you see through it. If you just stay there for another breath you may just glimpse something that you never thought was possible.

There really is no big secret, it is all literally there right under your nose! Breathing in and out with awareness and concentration.

Of course if you have the time and/or the money, or you just can't be bothered you can spend the next ten or twenty years floating around waiting for things to get better. Just maybe they will, but what if they don't.

Who is it that is in charge of your life, you or somebody else? If you decide it's you then you might need to take more responsibility to wake up. Or go on holiday . . . . .again.

'You will obey us'. Dalek

'The worlds a funny old place innit'. Snarf.

'Oh shut up' !! Anon.

Omzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

WHO Are YOU ? (again)

Do you ever stop to ask yourself what you are 'really' doing? Like how did you end up doing this, whatever it is ? The amazing thing is, is that whatever you have done in your life, consciously or not, you are here now, that is amazing! And if you are even semi-conscious you know that what you choose to do 'next' will have consequences, of course it will. The weight of this realisation is enormous, so perhaps it's best not to stop too often to consider the consequences of our actions, otherwise we might do nothing!

If we breathe deeply and ask ourselves as honestly as we can what we should do next, especially if we come to a fork in the road, that's perhaps the best we can do. Decide and move on, and if things don't work out then we can start again.

Meditation is intelligence examining itself. Asking the right questions and looking at the answers as they feed back into the mind from Vignanamaya Kosha.

As we bring the mind-Body and breath into harmony we open up another layer of intelligence, a newer perspective is open to us, one that we might not even be aware of in our mundane consciousness of thinking and worrying.

We need to literally breathe life into our psyche, we need to 'pranify' our subtle energy body to see the hidden layer of experience.

All of the 'maha' teachers of all the great traditions have virtually said the same thing 'All the answers lie within'.

'Man is his own absolute lawmaker, the creator of heaven and hell'. Anon

'As you reap so you shall sow'.

'What you believe to be true is true until such truths are challenged and transcended by new truths. This is the truth. There is no truth except the one you choose to believe, and all beliefs are just an illusion.' Gordon Bennett.

If anyone is reading this blog some comments would be nice from time to time, anything even blah!

Anyone noticed spring ??

Om

So what then?

After all is said and done where does it get us all this yoga? Do we become more peaceful, do we become more relaxed and energised, or are we just kidding ourselves?

When we sit for a while and really ask ourselves what we are doing, do we really know anything for sure?

I've talked about beliefs being formed through external means, i.e, the beliefs we may inherit from our parents and family etc. National identity and/or religious or political influences are also very strong. But what about the beliefs we get from our very own personal experiences and experiments, are they any more real than the borrowed one's? And more importantly does it matter?

Sooner or later if you keep putting your hand in a fire you will learn, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly that this is not good because it burns the skin and leaves blisters, so after some time you may stop doing it, or you may not because 'you enjoy' burning yourself. This belief, that fire burns, is formed through your personal experience and/or experiments.

Wilhelm Reich, who I have mentioned before could actually classify someone's personal psychological profile from the shape of the physical body/posture etc. He wrote a book called 'Character Analysis' which is still used today, apparently, as a guide for body workers and body oriented therapists. It is well worth a read!

From this book (if we read it) we could conclude that we are not only psychologically shaped and conditioned but also physically too. According to this schema we can have a body shape that has been very influenced by our behaviour throughout our lives. The way we over-or under eat for example and our occupation are two major factors on the shape we may ourselves get into.

Overweight or underweight a stooped or a too straight spine, sloping or pulled up shoulders, protruding abdomen and rounded spine, all of these and many more are shapes we probably have adopted and in most cases were not born with.

This is the situation where the mind and beliefs are so strong that they can literally 'get you down' (depressive), or in some cases pull you up, almost literally, making you ungrounded and (flaky), to name just two modes of operating. We can see families all more or less the same shape, mothers and fathers looking like their children, so hereditary must also be considered here.

Then along comes the yoga class to save us and we do an asana and we look around and compare ourselves to others (again), because this is what we do, we may go home and feel even more depressed or uptight, or we may feel great. But sooner or later we will start to see that feelings about ourself can begin to change, sometimes good and sometimes not so good. As this process continues and you continue to do your practise (regularly), on the good days and the bad days, you really do start to see that the mind is just doing it's thing and doesn't always have to get the better of you.

I would say that if you have the wherewith all and/or are fed up enough to gain the stamina to continue, you can achieve in a year of committed yoga, that is three or four classes a week, what ten or twenty years of psychotherapy can do. That is a bold statement I'm aware of that but I have tried all sorts of things and yoga is the only thing that has worked for me consistently.

Remember I have tried many different types of healing and therapies including chemo- therapy! So I must be right! And if you believe that you'll believe anything.

Find out for yourself, you will find that this is the only safe way forward.

Om.

The Void.

Hopefully by now after some time practising yoga 'you' may have experienced a quiet mind during meditation. That is a mind devoid of all thought. If it's true that it is possible to create a quiet mind and we experience it as such, it must raise the question, where does thought come from?

As far as I can tell from looking at the anatomy and physiology of the brain in some detail, the 'neo cortex' is the newest part of the brain, and the medulla oblongata is the oldest and most primitive part of the brain. The newest part of the brain is where the speech centres are as far as I know. Which means that the primitive part of the brain is pre-verbal. So in a sense when we make the mind quiet we are shutting off or overriding the thought patterns via the speech centres in some way.

Once we do this we are more in touch with our instinctual brain, our more primitive brain, the part of the brain we must have relied on for survival before we became verbal and thought-full.

The neo-phyte yogi and the new born baby are very similar in some ways as they live in a world of sensation and neediness in a sense. By this I mean that the adult neo-yogi is more or less a victim of his/her senses, eat when hungry, sleep when tired etc, a victim of rather than master of the senses. But as /he/she starts to ascend the path towards self-realisation he/she becomes more and more aware of the 'conditioning' of the mind, or in Freudian terms, the ego, super ego and id. If they don't become aware of this it is probably because they are spending too much time trying to be peaceful or good or doing the postures right. (Is that meant to be some kind of joke?)

It's a very strange sensation to sit in meditation and observe the thought processes as if they are are not part of you, almost as if they come in of their own volition from somewhere else. As you sit and watch the thoughts rise and fall, they come and they go, where do they come from?

As we are all attached more or less to being somebody it is a very challenging experience to 'let-go' of who we 'think' we are. We have become very attached to all sorts of comfortable beliefs and addictions, not least of which is how great or how not-great we are in comparison to others etc. I know this is all kind of 'newage' stuff the idea of low self esteem etc, and the 'inner child' that 'needs' to be nurtured. This is all good stuff if you think you need it, but I am convinced now that most of it is unnecessary and a long winded way toward another set of beliefs which can be wiped out in a moment of doubt, via a funny look or a harsh word.

What I am saying is that any set of beliefs that tell you, you are wonderful or tell you, you are not so wonderful are just that- a set of beliefs. The way I see it is that there are more or less three types of people. (A)The completely ignorant. (B) Those that have adopted beliefs to make them comfortable, religious or otherwise. (C) And those that have gone beyond the need to believe anything at all and live in a world of adventure and excitement as to what might be waiting around the corner.

'One thing I know for sure, is that in the final count I'm not really sure about anything'. Tony Maroni.

'After, during and before practise one should adopt an attitude of 'not knowing' Swami Ji.

'Zen mind beginners mind' ??

If you keep your bowl empty there is room to fill it up, if your bowl is full you know everything and fall asleep tired.

There isn't really any big secret now. I think all the stuff that was once considered to be 'esoteric' and secret is now available to anyone who cares to find it on the internet. There are many, many ways to expand consciousness, it's like a super market now. But before you go there you really need to know what you are doing and where you are hoping to get to. Doing something new because you are bored with the old is another trick of the ego game, it needs to survive. So when you get bored with the practise it's probably the time when you 'should' do more. Ouch!!

Om

Beware of the Shanti Bunny!

The journey you have undertaken in Yoga is a very personal one. We have maps to get us to the place we want to go to, i.e the various very good yoga texts that are available, and there are different routes up the mountain, but by trial and error we will find our way if we have tenacity.

I spent allot of time in the past thinking there was something wrong with me because when others seemed to be peaceful I felt angry or upset. What I didn't realise then was that was 'just the way I was feeling at the time' and it was ok, because I learned that it always changed. Part of the problem stemmed from this kind of semi-subliminal message that you get from some teachers that unless you are in bliss all the time you are doing it wrong!

Take it from me if you do a regular practise, yogic or otherwise, and you check the maps now and again you are 'rarely' doing it wrong. You are doing your best to travel a very tricky journey at the best of times, and the last thing you need is a 'shanti bunny' guilt tripping you that you are 'wrong' because you are not 'happy' just like they appear to be.

Yoga (for me anyway) is not about floating around in the sky with a big smile on your chops, although it's nice now and again, it's more about getting into who you really are now and feeling it full force, which can be very painful. Then using the energy behind this experience to move you to the next step. If you are constantly berating yourself for not being peaceful enough you are wasting allot of energy.

In my experience there is no such thing as an 'ordinary person', if you dig deep enough into anyone's life you will normally find some suffering and no one has a monopoly on suffering.

'Life is suffering'. Guatama Buddha.

There seems to me to be a veneer of bullpoo over the Yoga world, where we all seem to live in a 'happy world', and all we have to do is keep going to the local shanti centre and we will be alright. I have read Yoga magazines in dismay, reading an article on opening up your chakra's, then turning the page to see an advert for a 4x4! Is it just me or is there something not quite right about that?

I read a few years ago, and I can't remember where, that when autopsies were performed on the body's of long term depressives high levels of the adrenal hormone cortisol were found in the blood. If we think miserable thoughts all the time then we eventually start to trigger chemical reactions in the body to support our negative out-look, hence the term 'think positive' is a good idea.

But what does it mean to think positive when you are struggling financially and emotionally in a world that couldn't care less, it's ridiculous. Imagine someone that was really suffering looking at one of the yoga mags that are around, do you think they would be inspired to do yoga by reading them, or run to the nearest bar, Yes/NO ?

'We don't become enlightened by imagining beings of light. We get enlightened by taking the light into the darkness' Carl Gustav Jung.

'Keep your own counsel'.

Wilhelm Reich's inner layer of authenticity is where we are going physically during Asana. We are peeling layers off the onion as we go deeper. It's an archeological excavation of the human body and psyche and it is all your own. It's an amazing and exciting journey of self-discovery you have undertaken.

To put it in perspective it's a bit like watching old clips of Tony Blair constantly grinning when he should have been weeping, you know what I mean?

'Enjoy the journey'

Om.

This Yoga thing!

I heard someone say once that becoming a yogi is a bit like being in the Mafia, that the deeper you go in the harder it is to get out!

Hmmmm not a great analogy really methinks, I'm not sure if this person had ever been in the Mafia but I could see what he was getting at.

There is life before Yoga and there is life after Yoga and I have met many people that have benefited hugely from the practise of it. Yoga definitely does what it claims to do, even on the most basic level it brings more relaxation and fitness. In a way it begins where most other forms of so-called healthy living techniques end. The relaxation and subtlety are just the start!

To be honest I don't really know what more there is to say about it all, I've already started to repeat myself. :))

But - I've always been struck by William Blake's expression; 'The path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom'. He wasn't a yogi in the formal sense of the word, in fact he was said to be a mystic poet. He did copper engravings of a religious nature and 'saw things'. This type of 'insanity' if you like, was inspired by something inside of him. His poems and Hymns became synonymous with visionary experiences.

What were his excesses, what did he mean by this statement? I can only look at it from the point of view of my own ongoing undoing of my conditioning with Hatha Yoga techniques of Pranayama especially. Applying this principle of excess goes against some the dreaded dire warnings of some of our great sages and Super yogi's that have gone before us, but not all.

In Georg Fuerstein's highly recommended book, 'Holy Madness', there is reference to all types of 'crazy behaviour' on the part of some of the 'great mystics' of days gone by. But I do get the sense from some of the contemporary texts on Hatha Yoga that we must all very sensible and careful and we mustn't do this or we mustn't do that or we will go insane or die or worse!

We get the ex-dancer types or gymnast type who 'show off' all through the local Hatha yoga class. Then we get pictures in the yoga magazines of how it 'should' all look with these up-tight looking people telling us this is all for our own good, where's the fun in that! I fear there is becoming a monopoly of 'magnolia' yoga, insipid and washed out of any life. Sweating out all your juices again and again in order to get where exactly? Once you have attained peace what more do you want?

All I am doing here of course is giving my version of the story, trust your instincts when listening to or reading anything relating to yoga (or anything else for that matter), switch on your bullshit detectors.

Admittedly the 'Holy Madness' way of teaching is something else it is 'not' Hatha Yoga per se'. the idea behind the 'crazy logic', is to wake up the individual conditioned consciousness. '

'The sound of one hand clapping', have you heard it yet? I did and i didn't like it very much. It shocked me and upset me a great deal and led me into all sorts of crises. So be careful what you pray for you just might get it!

In response to wanting to get out of yoga (as mafia), why would yo want too?

'You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack'. Talking Heads. Once in a lifetime.

'And with their promises of paradise, you will not hear a laugh' Gates of Eden. Bob Dylan.

Ram.

Truth what truth?

How can anyone have a monopoly on the truth?

Who is right? Who is wrong?

We know what we know and we don't know much more than we do, what is it we don't know?

People, all people including the most intelligent and the most stupid are living in a constructed reality. The reality all of these people live in has been made and shaped by every single experience they have ever had. This is called conditioning.

What is your conditioning? Are you happy with the shape you are in right now?

Do you think the moon is made of green cheese and is there a guy called Santa? Did you ever believe these things and if so what happened to change this belief.

Do you ever wonder if you are insane or if the world is a crazy place?

When your mind is quiet and peaceful and there are no thoughts do you consider that you no longer exist in that moment as an ego?

If you were able to make it so that your mind was quiet all the time what would you do?

These questions are very relevant but in a way they are totally ridiculous. True/False.

'What's going on?' Marvin Gaye.

Hari Om

Memory of a personal nature.

It's a funny time of year for me, coming from the winter to the spring, from darkness to light in some ways is more challenging than coming from light to darkness, from summer to autumn. Coming out of hibernation and getting back to foraging.

Tomorrow is the date way back in 1993 that I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. I can really re-call that time now if I want to. Why would I want to? I suppose in some ways it gives me perspective of the huge journey I have made since then, the journey without distance that always comes back to myself.

The day today is similar to that day, it was grey and colourless, I was feeling very depressed for many reasons, not least of which was I was seriously anaemic, and had various minor low grade infections due to a virtually non-existent immune system.

The memory of it still lingers, it is my memory and it is my conditioning, and it is my legacy , this is what I have been challenged by so far.

It was later in hospital in 97 after I was re-diagnosed with a relapse, after being in remission for three years, that I was sitting in my bed looking out into the darkness of the night that I thought, 'I don't want anymore of this'. I had, had enough and told the doctors I wasn't going to go through anymore suffering and that I wanted to go. Well as you can tell I am still here, I had a break for a few days from the relentless treatment programme of Chemo and an assorted array of drugs etc, until I felt like I could go on.

It's now 12 years since I had my bone marrow transplant and I am amazed at myself and what I have been able to do since then.

'So what is it all about then mate?'

It's not about anything really is it, there are no easy answers to the nature of what to do or not to do, there is only what you do, do and the consequences of such acts, this is Karma apparently. So the more consciously one chooses the less Karma one creates .

I kind of stumbled upon yoga almost by accident and am still doing it obviously and the reason I am still doing it is because it works. What do I mean by that? It works for me in the sense that I am seeing now that my mind is mine and it is what I choose to do with it that makes all the difference to how I see the world I live in. For example, in a way, the treatment for the illness was the easy part, I just had to get on with it and allow the doctors to do their worst. But after the treatment I lived with the fear of another relapse. I knew I could do nothing about that but I could do something about the way I thought about and worried about it all the time. It was only when I found yoga that I saw that this was a practical tool to open up my mind enough to see the conditioned patterns of years of living with subtle chronic anxiety. The kind of stuff some of us live with everyday and accept as normal.

To be honest I'm the last person to know what's normal but I know for a fact it is not normal to worry all the time, whether consciously or not!

Since that time I have met all sorts of people that 'think' they are great teachers and there is a very big difference, in my mind anyway, from someone that thinks they are great to someone that is truly great. I've met some idiots too and the interesting thing is I've probably learned more from the idiots!

'Isn't life strange' Moody Blues.

Hari Om

Consciousness!

If we can see it this way, there is a level of awareness which we could could 'mundane awareness' or ' mundane reality'. This is the place where we spend most of our time. On this plane of awareness we think about things allot, we go shopping and eat and go to work, the things of the world concern us. At the end of the day we go to sleep (if we're lucky) and dream. In our dreams we process 'stuff' that has happened to us during the day the week or even our whole life.

When we do Asana, Pranayama and meditation are we not shifting our awareness from the mundane to the extraordinary? To the person that is doing their first class this can be quite startling. We get high on the oxygen intake of the deeper form of breathing that we are not used to, we may get dizzy and a bit 'spaced out'.

As time goes by we get used to this newer level of awareness, we get used to the deeper intake of oxygen, the high is no longer quite as startling and we begin to 'see' things inside and outside of ourselves that we may not have noticed before. This is probably due to the increased intake of oxygen waking up the more dormant parts of our awareness, we notice more as a result of this. As we continue to continue we find we can hold the postures longer without straining and needing to 'show off'. This is all good and is the result of our continuing effort and commitment.

Then what are all these dire warnings we hear about? Do they have any relevance to us as we move along the path to enlightenment? Well yes and no.

Yes because any journey whether inside our outside brings it's own set of unique dynamics and circumstances. We are all unique in our conditioning, one mans meat is another man's poison and all that. If we have a history of illness whether formally diagnosed or not, whether mental, emotional or physical, we may trigger some unfinished business. We do need to take care of ourselves, and in a sense this is precisely what yoga is teaching us and a whole lot more. To take responsibility for our own issues and get out of the game of blaming and shaming others and ourselves for our misfortunes.

If we keep doing things to ourselves that cause us harm what do we expect? We have to become more aware of what we are doing to ourselves to get some respite from the game of the 'ego'. And as far as I can tell we do this through our tenacity and commitment to yoga. To be honest it's the only thing that has consistently worked for me throughout the years and I have tried many different types of therapy etc, including chemotherapy, yoga is the only one that has really come up with the goods!

So yes there are dangers but if you read the manuals and take note of these things you will be ok. The manuals as far as I'm concerned are the books I have mentioned, but like I have said these are the one's that have worked for me, you should do your own research of course.

On the other hand I personally believe that we do not need to be overly worried about doing ourselves any harm by doing Asana and Pranayama and meditation. Why should we be? We've probably been through some hard times in our lives to know what it is like to suffer a little now and again, you are in charge of your own destiny are you not, if not then who is?

In some of these books, if not all, it tells us to find a Guru. Hmmm well now there is a rather tricky situation involved here I'm afraid. But this is just my experience. As I've said before if you need a good mechanic you have to go out and find one, it may take some time but hopefully in the end you will find one. In a way an authentic Guru is probably not going to be a great self-publicist. Why would someone that claims to be enlightened need to be bothered by idiots running around him/her asking all sorts of silly questions?

' Avoid hyperbole and verbal diarrhea' Rambo McGuinness.

So 'you' learn to trust 'your own self' , whoever that may be. Anon.

'Find out who you are and have the courage to be that person'. Anon.

'Don't become 'big' in yoga, let yoga become big in you, shut up and practice'. Me.

'Omba Woma Woo.' Nelly the Shnoodle.

Have a good life.

Om.

Beliefs what belief?

Following on from yesterday; the truth about belief is that in a sense 'a belief is true if you 'choose' to think it is'. Whatever you believe to be true is true for you, until these beliefs are challenged and replaced by newer truths or beliefs. This is the story of evolution, we once believed for example that the Earth was flat, now we know it isn't, right? To be honest I have never conducted any experiments to actually see for myself if the planet is round, but I am quite prepared to take the view that it is.

The question for me is how much more have I adopted as true and not been bothered to find out? When it comes to Yoga for example are the things the old sages say true, or are we just doing yoga because it helps us to relax and be calmer.

The process of yoga 'is' an experiment in finding out what is 'real' and what is not. And what I'm saying here is not questioning externalised truths, but the truths you personally hold to be true about yourself and others.

Low self-esteem as an example is a big problem for some people, but surely this is only a belief about yourself that has been adopted by the 'ego/mind' to satisfy some kind of warped perceptual illusion. If you were told as a child enough times that you were stupid you may eventually somewhere deep down inside you come to the conclusion that this is 'true'. You might not possibly feel it as a conscious thought process but it may be there somewhere lurking in the background, in the dreaded unconscious. You may now be investing allot of energy trying to prove to yourself that 'it' isn't true by becoming driven and addicted to achieving things just to prove to yourself that you are not an idiot. On the other hand you may just have accepted to belief and be overtly proving to yourself and others that you are an idiot.

This is 101 psychology I know, but it serves to make a point!

In yogic terms we are here of course talking about 'Manomaya Kosha', the mental sheath of our being and experience. The mind is ethereal and abstract it can go to China and back in a minute, it can experience terror by looking at flickering images on a TV screen, it is incredibly complex indeed. But it is ours, it belongs to us, it is our property. What is it about it we don't understand and how can we understand it? Meditation is the process of mind watching mind, of intelligence looking at itself, incredible.

As I and many people before me have said, we are shaped by our experiences, and unless we can become willing to look at ourselves from a more detached perspective, in meditation, we may never realise anything worthwhile. We may just spend our lives acting out our conditioned belief/reality, shopping and eating and watching the telly etc. In other words we will act out our beliefs about ourselves, the very beliefs that make us who we are, are the same beliefs that need to be challenged and meditated upon.

I am being terribly judgemental I know but I'm only saying what I think, feel free to leave a comment any time.

Getting comfortable and in a rut is a way of falling asleep, we fall asleep and become almost robotic. I have met many people that after a few years of doing yoga regularly and in a committed way, have been horrified to look a back at the way they lived prior to doing yoga, it's almost as if they were not alive pre-yoga.

Admittedly these people may be extreme cases but even so you've only got to watch a few episodes of Eastenders to see what some people consider 'normal life'. It's good to watch these shows now and again and laugh at the over the top ridiculousness of it all. But the scary thing is some people live lives much more dramatically than that. It is a most ridiculous thing to complain about your life when it is you that created it, don't you think? And if it wasn't you that created it who did? What a question for aSunday night?!

'The Blue pill or the red one?' Matrix.

'Misery is optional'. Anon.

'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom'. William Blake.

Om Nama Shivaya.

Heavy Levels of Nothingness.

In a way if you can see it like this, there is no such thing as an ultimate authority on anything, everything is open to question ultimately. This is part and parcel of the evolutionary movement. The views of our Universe are changing all the time. The views of the way the mind works and certain physiological functions are being re-assesed all the time. We live in exciting times!

If nothing is true then everything is up for grabs. If you look briefly at the different belief systems that exist within the religious world it's enough to make you see that it's a bit strange to say the least. We have a whole plethora of religions to choose from, the more well known one's such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam and even Atheism all have there own particular set of beliefs. Belonging to one or other of these groups means that you 'believe' in the doctrines of your chosen 'brand'. The only thing they all have in common is the need to believe.

In politics we have a similar situation, a different set of values and beliefs for the particular 'brand' you choose to buy into. So what lies at the background of these beliefs? Why do we choose one over the other? I have mentioned conditioning as a requirement but this is not the only thing is it, what about the 'need' to belong to something. Many people choose to belong to something because they like to feel as if they are part of a community and that they are no longer on their own. We see it more starkly in some of the weird sects and cults that grow up around charismatic teacher from around the world. These sects are founded on a 'new' belief system, the only requirement for membership is the 'you' do not know what that particular belief is, but if you wait around long enough you just might find out, by then you have been imprinted with a new reality, lovely.

So what else is there then, if it is all an illusion then in a sense we have made it all up. Looking back to ancient civilisations which had hugely complex belief systems, the Aztecs, the Egyptians and the Mayans to name a few existed for along time and thrived within their time span. All built on sets of beliefs that some of us find absurd now, but nevertheless they were very powerful cultures in the own time.

Where am I going with this?

'Once upon a time a man/woman sat down and looked into the nature of his/her thinking and believing. As he/she sat he/she started to see that all of the 'stuff' he/she believed was in his/her own mind, that she/he had come to these conclusions along the way in his/her relatively short life. Hmmmmmmmm, he/she thought what is all this then?'

But of course 'these days' as a friend of mine recently said, we haven't got time to fart, why is that? Is it as some of the conspiracy theorists would have us believe, the way it has been set up by the super wealthy, or is it just the fact that this is the way it is because of the continuing strand of natural selection, and what is the difference anyway?

Well now if you read some of the 'Maha' books on yoga you may get a refreshing insight into the nature of reality.

Even better if you sit down and breathe in and out through your nose for a while and keep still you may start to see yourself in a different way.

'F is for fake'. Orson Welles.

'Is there life on Mars?' David Bowie.

'Whats it all about, Alfieeeeeeee?' A song from the film Alfie.

'Who are the brain police?' Frank Zappa.

Shanti Om.

As a Yoga teacher, which is what I am. I am constantly aware of the limitations of my knowledge, and this question of when is the right time to teach? If I waited till I knew everything it would be an awful long time. But what is there to know anyway? What am I actually teaching?

I am passing on second-hand information as it has all been said by now surely, in 'maha' books such as 'Hatha Yoga Pradipika' and the 'Yoga Sutras of Patanjali' etc. If you bothered to buy the books I have mentioned in these blogs I believe you will have enough information on yoga to last a lifetime. So what more is there?

The action must come from somewhere. You have to get to a place where it makes sense to you. Maybe just the realisation that you are unhappy with the way life is going for you. Or you are unwell and want to change the conditions that have caused this illness. Whatever has led you to yoga is the 'key' to your evolution not your death and destruction.

In a sense at any given moment you are either sending life giving messages to yourself or death causing messages to yourself. What you think is what you are and what you are has come about as a result of your thinking and beliefs.

'Shut up and Practise!' Anon.

'Gubba wubba morzag' Crozog the robot.

Ommmmmmm.

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