Intermission: The Weight of Yoga In The Modern World

When the dust settles on any aspect of my life at any given time, pinned in place behind all layers to be revealed with no further supportive substrate is what I call my yoga experience to be revisited time and again, deeply and ever deeper. This is my fact, an identifier of my life, something more real and true than even the truths of my life before it. The one answer to why this is can only be because yoga has shown me my existence outside of life, outside of time, beyond this life and into death, and a comfort in that connection. When you take all friends, family, individuals known and unknown out of the storyline purposefully to create the sense of not only solitude but a lone existence, that part of the mind that always crops up when you have to test just how truly independent you really are so you imagine how long you think you would survive if not another soul was there to help you, share any time with you, meet with you, or even see you, in that pure helpless scenario yoga emerges as the warm friend to console, advise, inform, support, nourish, and ultimately rescue from any possible calamity either real or imagined. With much of today’s pathology of man and woman residing squarely in the mind and extending into the physical world, both real and imagined situations have equal weight in posing danger and illness not only to the individual but all of society.

We are all connected no matter how much we repeatedly convince ourselves that we can’t be and don’t want to be for any number of possible selfish reasons, and yoga is unmistakably the clearest and strongest way to stay connected even in the stark helpless loneliness of dying alone; but this state is not guaranteed even in the yoga community among all the yoga practitioners, it isn’t a given that this is understood and experienced, to be assimilated into daily memory and being, the most important message falling on not only deaf ears but forgetful minds. It is in this fault of the current decades-long resurgence of yoga across the globe into western cultures that lies my focus on what is left of the core message of yoga that all seek and few seem to find in the confusion of fitness fads, distracting gymnasium classes, trendy diluted offshoots of yoga to feed to the masses, presumptions of religious connotations, pit stops for injured dancers, false guru creations and followings, and contortionist training groups. When the dust settles on all of these distractions, there are a few people who somehow stay away from them and get the real message in the experience at the seat of their being during moments in the practice. These few do nothing special or spectacular, they just pay close attention and actually do what all who enter can learn to do. The rest simply have been distracted and faked it while at the very most being able to say they were in attendance. Just because you were there physically doesn’t mean there’s anybody home upstairs in the secret attic closet whose door is covered in cobwebs and settled debris, evidence that there wasn’t even a recent attempt to look inside.

So now back to the importance and what the message is for modern people: Yoga is the great deprogrammer. Without removing the layers of scar tissue, dysfunction, pathology, memories, programming, personality-splintering trauma, etc., that makes each one of us unable to be us and therefore false representations of humanity because we are only operating as sums of layered programming from birth all through adulthood handed down from family and environment, how can any of us expect to be anything but a worse facsimile of the broken generations that came before us?

Erase. Rewind. Restore. Run. This is the most profound message I have gotten from Yoga, and it need not be anything else. You can talk all you want about all the peripheral distractions of Yoga that are not even remotely related to this message and get lost in your pleasure seeking narcissism that hides in “your yoga” as a predator does in concealment of night, shadow, and cover while lying to yourself and hoping nobody finds out, or you can seek a silent room for a short time and look yourself straight in the eye in the mirror of introspection and actually help yourself be you for once and allow it to spread to all of humanity. This is what both excites me as the most important priority of potential that is most often overlooked and dismissed, and equally dismays me with no hope for humankind even as I look within those barefoot disciples sitting on rubber mats. When the dust settles and I embrace my sorrow in joyful happiness, Yoga emerges again, as it always does. Now another level deeper, alone and helpless, Yoga is there.

So what becomes of this? If I can’t connect in plain as day face to face alert contact with people, that is not enough concern to give up and throw it all away. The waking consciousness of walking and talking is but one small part of consciousness as any Yoga practitioner knows, and it is the one most expected to fail so all is as it should be. My focus is now shifting into advancing all other aspects of consciousness, the ones that work on the waking mind and define its operation through habit, behavior, and ultimately ability to be attentive or to simply attend. Here is my hope, here is my goal, here is my connection to all that is, here is where truth sits undisturbed. I go there, I’ve been there, it is where you will find me, and it will be easy because I can tell you without hesitation that it is poorly attended. Members only.

Metal Yoga Strengthening Series: Why We’re Here

As you have decided to take action through your own volition to advance your abilities and transformation potential in human form, it is important to solidify the basic concepts that few elucidate about the basics of the yoga meditation atmosphere. What follows is an explanation of these, as well as further metaphorical description of the arc of the yoga interval as it pertains to metals in elemental form.

The yoga space is a space of mutual respect, no judgment or criticism, and equality amongst all of humanity. Silence is the atmosphere, and inward communication is preferred.

A greater importance is put on the meditation that one is striving for during the interval. With the very first breath and movement, it is the beginning step toward meditation.

You are nothing, thoughts are not welcome; walking into the room, your brain is a blank slate except to compute your biomechanics as an automatic background task; this mental simplicity opens the ability to connect with the stream of information rushing into our minds from the matter around us that is often blocked by thought.

The asana aspect of yoga is purely for overcoming physical challenges. The poses are intentionally designed to pose a challenge that is felt as positive stress with a blank slate mind. Relaxing momentarily from this stress prepares one for meditation. The true strengthening is of the mind, with the added bonus of strengthening the body.

I strongly advise on learning to be independent of the crutch senses and relying less on ordinary physical senses. In developing a higher sense that is outside of the normal five senses, feeling will become a direct information pathway, outside of seeing and hearing primarily, and also of touch, smell, and taste. Seeing is the typical biggest crutch sense, hearing is the second. The five senses are what leads the mind to thought, and intellectual processes, thoughts, are the enemy of meditation.

A yoga interval is simply an accumulation of stresses and releases to move one through the phases, beginning with the hard metals phase, through softer metals, and ending up in the liquid state, where one is ready for the meditation that defines the entire interval. Outside of metals, the ultimate liquid state of being would be Water. Transcending the molecular complexity of metals and entering the simplicity of two hydrogen atoms joined with one oxygen atom, one is free of the weight of all metal states. Yet, consider that hydrogen, the lightest and most abundant element on earth, when under enough pressure becomes a metal.

Now here’s the kicker: when I spoke about the yoga space, and walking into the room, where is the room? Herein lies the problem because there isn’t any room, any space. In yoga, it is not where you are or when you are, it just is—or it isn’t.

 

Metal Yoga Strengthening Series: Chromium

Metal as a music genre is identifiable by its attributes of strength and power. These sounds are performed by humans expressing power and strength as technique in their playing styles. There is nothing overly delicate or fragile, nor soft or forgiving in metal music. This characterization of being carries over to Metal Yoga, where the skeletal framework is aligned to positions, over a short interval of time, inducing structural integrity inherent in the biomechanics of the human body. The repeated alignment creates a memory and awareness that translates into the unlocking of potential power and ultimately empowerment through knowledge that contributes to wisdom.

Beginning a session, which I will call an interval, one may feel inflexible and hardened by the situations of modern life that irritate and wear one down. This beginning state of hardness can be called the Chromium state, a state of physical and mental hardness, a general rigidity. One can move through soft metal states like a Lead state, ending an interval in a state of Mercury, a liquid metal, or ultimately in the Gallium state. Elemental gallium does not occur in free form in nature, but as a brittle, solid, silvery metal it will melt in your hand above about 85 °F. Gallium in this sense is a good metaphor for the scarcely real experience among yoga exercisers and poor meditators with actual spirituality, awareness, and enlightenment. The molecular structures of the hardest metals form lattices that combine to exert stability and strength over the span of their surfaces and interiors, while others can be malleable; the combining of different metals with special attributes to achieve specific results has resulted in the most spectacular and most beautiful metal objects the world has seen.

To pick up where we left off in the last entry, we work on advancing out of Chromium. Because the majority of individuals move repetitively and cause muscle injuries that require healing through stretching techniques, it is most important to begin by carefully and slowly stretching from the center outward. At the center for these purposes is the spinal structure, and this muscular center spans the entire length of your trunk to the base of your skull; the spine is your power center. When radiating out from a point with an ever increasing radius, the most minuscule radial motion results in greater distances in circumference. These beginning motions should be small and gentle at first at the spine, but can result in appearances to be greater motions at the extremities which when outstretched will trace greater circumference distances. Because it is also paramount to choose at discretion beginning movements that take the spine into movements within all planes, a variety of movements are available at this stage of stretching and lengthening from the core that will lead to greater strength potential to be unleashed in movements of later states during the interval.

Since the first ten minutes of sitting and breathing covered in the last post is also a time to activate and focus on root chakra energy, the beginning spinal movements serve to move that energy up the spine to energize the rest of the body during the interval. Good spinal choices are Cobra, Lord of the Fishes, Bridge and its variations, Cat/Cow, Sphinx, Alligator, Canoe, even Child’s Pose and Sleeping Baby for initial relaxation, as well as poses that can begin by stretching the hamstrings so tightness of the spine is not exacerbated by the back of the legs. Staff Pose is a good opener to these, sitting as tall as possible and seemingly doing nothing while the tiny muscles around each vertebra are brought to action.

Next I will talk about standing strength poses that use an awakened spine throughout the extremities and our Metal state moves from Chromium to softer metals like Iron, Copper, and Bronze.

Bulletproof Yoga

Have you experienced nirvana? If not, I’m sorry to hear that, but the following short entry may help. If you have not, you may find it consoling to hear that it is only entirely your own fault.
Welcome to Bulletproof Yoga. I’m not referring to making you bulletproof in any way. I am describing a method of delivering yoga to others in a way so that nobody leaves feeling that they missed the point. It begins by my unmistakable delivery of yoga to you, through my words, and continues on indefinitely as you deliver these concepts upon yourself through movement, concentration, effortlessness, stillness, and the absence of thought.
Let me begin by stating (once again) that there is nothing in my solitary practice that ever left me looking for more. This means I have no desire to attend a yoga class anywhere, and although I am constantly being asked to teach yoga, I have no desire to teach in a class or group setting. This may change in the future, but only if a situation would arise where ego cannot be found in my intentions.

I’ve just completed a 65 minute sound file that can be used during your full yoga practice if desired, based on the previous 30 minute Theta wave binaural entrainment file that I created for relaxation at any time. You can stream the file here, or download the file for your personal use. The binaural and audible tones move through the frequencies attributed to the chakra points from root to crown over the length of the program material.

Let’s jump right in with the most difficult, the absence of thought. If with your first figurative step and your first actual inhalation you can stop all thought that comes from you, halt the mind, all else will be easy. Even in difficult physical movements under the banner of yoga, the mind will be your biggest obstacle. This leaving behind of all mind activity is the impossible for some, a great challenge for most, but everyone can do it nonetheless. Your mind is your greatest enemy, it is what will be the root of your undoing, and it is also where your idea of who you are is seated. Who you are is nothing. What you think is so high and mighty and amazing about anything you pin on your chest is just another dark spot on your being; any self-describing character trait that shines like the bright lights of vanity in the mirror of morals and virtues is actually the most disgusting thing about you that you could do well to lose quickly. When you are nothing, you are pure beauty. Only then do you become loving, and with that you can radiate unconditionally for all and everything like you did before your mind learned how to be deceptive, conniving, selfish, guarded and emotionless, conceited, and unable to see without the filters of “my world only” through dead eyes.
With these concepts you can breathe slowly in and out, aiming for 4-7 seconds for each. Eyes closed, or open if you are able to ignore visual distraction, with silent privacy or on a busy street, it won’t matter when your mind is appropriately calibrated to stop all inner thought. Here you will stay for a matter of minutes, up to about ten, breathing and not thinking, hopefully learning to be newly amazed and appalled at who you find you were up until just now, losing all identification with the ridiculousness of descriptions like “retailer”, “manager”, “CEO”, “athlete”, “businessman”, “entrepreneur”, “salesman”, “vegan”, “writer”, “creative”, “doctor”, “teacher”, “pilot”, “mother”, “husband”, or any other foolish word that is attached to who or what you may think you are. From here on out, you are nothing.
If you are familiar with yoga sitting poses and use a mat, do this while attempting to be as comfortable and relaxed as possible in what is called Lotus. The reason this is important is because your goal is to become the “lotus floating in the pond”. If you’ve never heard this before, it is a very powerful concept that cannot be overlooked. By beginning here, you still the mind like a lotus flower gently floating atop the stillest pond you can imagine, with a still air, but not a freeze frame like pausing a movie; you are in the living universe that is extremely calm and still, so much so that it may give the illusion that nothing is moving but you are moving with the movement of living and with your slow breathing only. By sitting with your legs apart like longish and slightly full petals in Lotus Position, you resemble that lotus flower, and seated on a flat surface you are floating on that unmoving water that delicately holds you up with its surface tension. Your spine moves gently into a straighter and more erect and comfortable posture with each breath, until eventually little by little you do finally become that lotus, perfectly still, effortless, in one short moment of extreme joy in being that an eternity has just come across you, not from within but by tapping into the “thoughts” of the cosmos beyond the confines of time and space once you got your horrible, petty, worthless mind-thoughts to stop, vacate, and make room for nirvana, where you can know without question that “the jewel is in the lotus”.
Quick enlightenment checklist:
1. Do you feel an overwhelming love and compassion not only for all living beings that you have encountered in your life with a personality you can perceive, but also for all those you have not met as well as every atom and particle that vibrates to the living frequencies of reality in you, around you, and furthest away from you? If the answer is no, I’m sorry to say you are not ready and have missed something very big in your ten minutes of alone time. Work on that.
2. Do you smile so openly and wide with joy deep from within your being that not only is your face clearly smiling, but so is every cell in your body as it functions in its daily living tasks? If the answer is no, then I’m sorry to say you are not ready and seem to have missed something very critical about what it means to be a human on this planet striving to understand the meaning of life. Once again, work on that.
3. Are you still having thoughts that come from your mind, things relating to you, your memories, your experiences from the past, material ambitions, socio-political goals, etc.? Sorry, try again!
4. Have you quieted your mind to the point that you’ve noticed something different and are amazed at what is happening because your mind is being flooded with experiences that are clearly not your own (that your mind can tell) and the grand truths of unknown intelligence have graced you for either a millisecond or a lifetime or more, and you’ve been disassociated from your physical body in any way? If the answer is no, try harder to work on yourself. Only you are standing in your own way, and anyone can do it without any outside assistance. The key is in your pocket, you just have to get it yourself.
5. Are you able to differentiate from your mind that distracts you by having useless conscious thoughts about yourself, your body that is a biomechanical vessel housing your blood, organs, and flesh, and your emotions that have nothing to do with your mind and body unless you mistakenly entangle all three into a knotted mess that sets you up for unlimited suffering and personal turmoil? If the answer is no, try harder next time, but always be effortless!
6. If you state the six words, “The joyful participation in life’s sorrows”, and feel you can answer all of the above 5 questions correctly, then I no longer need to speak or write on the subject.

Next I will continue by going into asanas that will deliver you to your final pose, savasana. But for now you can go and get into Lotus and reread this post while actually doing it. For help with Lotus, feel free to search it on YouTube, there are plenty of extremely fit women eager to explain it in thorough detail, along with just about any other yoga mat acrobatics. Please remember that I am nothing.

Your Band Sucks

Even if you don’t have a band, and most of us don’t, there are individual components that make up who you are, and if they aren’t playing in concert together, your band sucks. To clarify, let me begin by defining a word that bothers me, then I’ll get back to how your own personal one-man-band sucks (hopefully not). There is one word I dislike as much as the word Yoga because of its connotations. I may dislike it more, but not by enough to discern at this point, and that word is spirituality. Yoga and spirituality go together, and in one subjective viewpoint they can be obvious and beautiful; but in another, the skeptic, doubtful, close-minded viewpoint, a misguided or misunderstanding one, the two words together are ugly and laughable, a point of embarrassment for anyone who dares use them without joking. So which is correct? Probably neither, and it is irrelevant. It is the differing comprehension of the meanings of these words that is at fault, much like when using the word God.

So, onward we proceed to discuss not God, not the creation of the universe nor the creation of the creation of the universe of the universe. Let us first agree that the human body is a thing, much like all things are things, but the human body has the appearance of a unique identity through a complex collaboration among different areas of that body, performing specialized tasks. To be a person, with a name, and unique identifiers to be singled out from any other similar other human being, even a genetic clone like a twin, is the result of a whole that is clearly greater than the sum of its parts.

We can compartmentalize these parts into three categories, thereby simply adding the sum of only three parts, and coming up with one whole that is greater than the sum of these three parts. This whole we will call the fourth part, slightly greater than any human body, yet fully containing the whole human being. This fourth part is the right of every person, the skill of utilizing these three parts of the human body no matter if your body feels lacking in some way, and this fourth part is also absent from many people who do not understand how to be alive in the sense of making themselves whole. The three parts identified are the Intellect (the mind), the Body (the entire physical mass of your living flesh that occupies space), and the Heart (the emotions that are felt). We can say Mind, Body, and Heart while understanding the delineations of how these three do not overlap each other even though the words can be confusing if we think the mind is the brain which is part of the body and the heart is in the body so it is all body. But, just as the mind is separate from the brain, and emotions are separate from the heart itself, these assumptions are misleading and the delineations should be recounted or simply different words used.

Now with these three parts defined, dwell on your own experience of owning and using them. Confirm that you have them and define them within you. See that they are separate and individual. Also see them in the next closest people in your life and think about how they are expressed so that you perceive them. Think of every human being on this planet as owning, using, and expressing these three aspects of their being that contain everything that is who they are. That’s right, now back to you, everything about who you are is contained in these three categories independently expressed by you out in the world.

Now if these three things that make up all of you are used together, sympathetically, they resonate into something bigger and greater and unexpected, a greater whole. What this means is that when using the Mind and being aware of the Body and Emotions, not just being all-Mind, or all-Body, or all-Emotion, all three aspects of you are included in everything you do or don’t do. When you live this way, a greater whole emerges in a wisdom state, a knowing that is mind-knowing, body-knowing, and heart-knowing, so you KNOW with not just your little 3 pound brain and your Mind, but you know completely, with your whole self. This knowing which is still you, not God or even a god, not the universe or any universe, but you. This “you” is spirituality.

Now look up the definition of spirituality as all popular dictionaries define it. Here is an example, and see how wrong, confusing, and lacking of explanation the definitions are in comparison to the above:

World English Dictionary

spirituality  (ˌspɪrɪtjʊˈælɪtɪ)
— n  , pl -ties
1.	the state or quality of being dedicated to God, religion, or spiritual things or values, esp as contrasted with material or temporal ones
2.	the condition or quality of being spiritual
3.	a distinctive approach to religion or prayer: the spirituality of the desert Fathers
4.	( often plural ) Church property or revenue or a Church benefice

spir·it·u·al·i·ty [spir-i-choo-al-i-tee] Show IPA

noun, plural spir·it·u·al·i·ties.

1.

the quality or fact of being spiritual.

2.

incorporeal or immaterial nature.

3.

predominantly spiritual character as shown in thought, life, etc.; spiritual tendency or tone.

4.

Often, spiritualities. property or revenue of the church or of an ecclesiastic in his or her official capacity.

It really is no wonder that the word spirituality makes people like me cringe and the misuse of the word, or should I say the disuse of spirituality as the fourth sum of everyone’s three parts, is ruining its own chances. One very welcome benefit of living with spirituality realized within yourself is the independence of the self. Many people without understanding spirituality are too dependent on one or more of other people’s three parts, pulling and draining from them what their own body craves naturally, the greater sympathetic resonance of all three categories of self. In using the word resonance, it applies to the way sound energy resonates objects and causes them to ring at their resonant frequencies. Your three parts can be focused to ring at their resonant frequencies to the highest extent of their amplitude like three notes being played on an instrument, or like three instruments being played together in concert. Within each of us is a trio of musicians dying to play together the most beautiful music imaginable at the loudest volume. When they don’t it’s like your band sucks because they’re each only interested in their own terrible solo projects. So when you see somebody lacking in spirituality, don’t even try to talk new-age mumbo jumbo, just know that their band sucks, and no one is coming to their shows.

The Desolation Of I

I stood on a drizzly night at a corner waiting to cross the boulevard contemplating the freedom and power of being alone, acting alone, choosing to be alone. Not truly alone without other people, but alone in the sense of following no one, moving ahead with conviction, and choosing not to be weighed down and held back by those who will not propel you further and faster through this world with your inner purpose at the helm, those that latch on to you to catapult them forward at the cost of taking away some of your inertia that ultimately needs no hangers on. While having these thoughts, I saw a multitude of doors left graciously open by me inviting others to come and join in on the ride, because if they could put in as much effort as I do (my common flawed assumption), the sum would be greater than all of its parts and quite remarkable to behold.

I felt the draft of all of those doors left open for so long that it seemed nobody was minding them as dozens of seasons passed with unswept piles of autumn leaves building up around the untended thresholds, damp with a staleness of disrespect. Doors began to slam shut, locked with a key, as I spoke the phrase, “The Desolation of I”.

Desolation has many meanings. One definition is a state of complete emptiness or destruction. I prefer this one over extreme sadness caused by loss or loneliness. Some people are incapable of sadness from loss or loneliness because they have transcended the reflex attachments of the ego that define the existence of loss and loneliness, that harbor the possibility of either loss or loneliness. On the subject of ego, the cause of all suffering, desolation of the ego with emphasis on destruction may very well be the goal or meaning of life that few will achieve before they breathe their last breaths. The sooner one can comprehend this and put it into action, the more enjoyable the life will be that flashes before one’s eyes just before it’s all over. Somewhere in that selfless life is a moment defining the whole purpose of being here, and if you blink you could miss it, keep on living aimlessly, and still die lost and confused after a life that felt too short.

A life filled with the depopulation of the self will not be the life one needs to escape while passing on to a better place. An ego ruled life will be a dissatisfied collection of regrets and painful memories of a wasted lifetime that needs to be relived just as the last grains of sand have run out, hoping for a new chance at all we so deserve but didn’t get, ending finally on some idea of happiness. Are we entitled to happiness? If so, why not make the simple correction within? To be unhappy is to be unwilling to be happy, mostly because of taking something so personally that it drowns you in an ocean of your own creation. All unhappiness can be dissipated in an instant by stepping away from the self and seeing all reasons for suffering fall into a loose writhing pile of parasitic creatures at a loss for a nurturing host.

One would do well to be comfortable early on not in fear of loneliness that brings on sadness, but instead the strength of being alone and requiring nothing for the self to want or need, just as it is in the final moments of passage from life into death. Happiness alone with the purpose as simple as the falling autumn leaf that helps signify the abandonment and disrespect of somebody else’s doorways that suddenly need to be slammed shut in the desolation of I can be the difference between life and death done right and life and death done with the intention to come back and do it all over again because you screwed it up so royally.

Death Plan

There is nothing more certain than your death. However, in this time that you are alive, the true certainty is that you are living. While you are still here, you need a death plan. I don’t mean anything that has to do with the material and financial, I mean a spiritual death plan. Although your death is certain, and planning is helpful, it is the antithesis of being present in the now. By planning your experience of death on the inside, alone with yourself now just the way you will have to face death, you can happily leave this living world without loose ends and hoping for more of the life you still wish you had left. This death plan is one that is pointless to try to share with anyone because it is not relatable to anyone else’s unique life and death experience. However, we can all go out content with smiles on our faces if we have a healthy death plan, and this is part of the inclusive experience of yoga, if not one of its crowning characteristics.
I admit, I may be a unique situation. After I explain myself, I may also be nothing special. To put it bluntly, I should already be dead. I could have died many different ways in my short life thus far. Luckily for me, by the age of 23 I understood and accepted death as a very real possibility and felt my mortality way before I hit 30. My most debilitating experience was when I was in the prime of my youth, full of energy and enthusiasm, yet for months steadily began feeling like I had no will to engage in physical activity, woke up not tired but weak, and I felt most of the bones in my body aching as if the marrow itself hurt, but not any of my joints. Due to testing difficulty at the time, no blood tests came back positive for the possible culprit, Lyme infection. I had to go on for weeks longer hoping this would just come to pass because I was young and healthy and strong, but I felt like the world itself was passing me by and just walking was a chore, to say the least. Eventually another test came back with more positive results and I was lucky enough to have standard doxycycline capsules bring me back to the world of the living within three or four days of a two week cycle. It was so bad that I still felt incredibly weird and not normal, but I could tell there was a change, a spark of a tiny hint of a flame that was previously out cold. Nobody could look at me and tell what I was experiencing in my body, the pains I would endure and have to put on an act to fit in with the normal and healthy world of which I used to be a contributing member. I’d say it took me about seven years before I was no longer regularly reminded of the infection through varied unexplainable pains. When I was most ill, a few months into it, I would play a game with myself just to cope with the discomfort, counting how many seconds would go by before I felt another sharp pain anywhere on my body that would stop my mind in its tracks. I would only get as far as counting to four usually, sometimes less.
For some reason, the standard antibiotics worked for me but others are not so lucky. Since I’ve been infected almost twenty years ago, I’ve learned a lot about the bacteria. The Lyme bacteria is a spirochete that burrows into all living tissue, forming what feels like a neural network of whole-body microscopic torture, and it could be different for everyone because of the variables. I could have suddenly died of heart failure or brain damage. My blood tests to this day show antibodies for Lyme, and with an illness whose victims can be treated like they need psychiatric evaluation because doctors don’t believe they are ill at all, confirmation is a good place to start.
I didn’t even know what yoga was at that time, but that small brush with a downward spiral into oblivion helps me to connect with my spiritual death plan during meditation. I know that I can own my death, be in command of my powerful exit from this body, free and strong in a way I could only imagine now while being alive, where my freedom and strength are clearly defined and limited. By drawing upon death, I can aim for a more accomplished life. I’ve seen people on their death beds whining, squirming, and sobbing for more life, admitting where they messed up and could have had ten more glorious years of health, reluctantly facing death with regret in this life. This won’t be me, because I should already be dead.
If you haven’t already, for information and personal stories from people infected with Lyme, go to underourskin.com, or see the documentary Under Our Skin.

Free Yourself From Within

Like the tattoo on Thomas Edison’s forearm depicting a quincunx pattern that can be left open to interpretation, so too does every moment of our existence tell the tale of either subjugated confinement or an excursive impatience fueled with limitless creation. The only difference may be who is doing the looking, the seeing, the observing, and whether they see a propitiated projection resulting in judgement that can swing easily one way or another, or an unbiased, non-judgmental view. It is precisely for this reason that judgement should begin solely as self judgement, and preferably should also end there. The famous maxim, “If you can’t change the world, turn within and change yourself”, is a simple observance on the futility of using arrogance as a bastion to defend self-centered idealistic views disguised as character markers, imposing them quietly on all who don’t meet a narrowly defined set of criteria, in effect mirroring the already flawed self like a reflective array dispersed across the globe in place of every other living human being, leaving no real people in its place and nothing left to learn or wisdom to gain. In other words, few change the world, yet everyone wants to and is set up to fail miserably with the first attempted step, tripping over one’s own foot, catching the fall with a knee, thrown forward with inertia desperately seeking retaliation from an elbow on the ground, all before a split second later the jaw, teeth, and fleshy facial protrusions all impact with the required force to finally put an end to what seemed at first like a wonderful idea.
The artistic metaphor of judgement of others by mere human beings is most often a flaying, or skinning alive. Whether referring to Michelangelo’s “Last Judgement”, or Rabbi Akiva as discussed in the Talmud, being flayed for publicly teaching Torah, the affiliation between judgement and a most horrendous end is quite clear. Consider what wasteful displays of pseudo philanthropy occur with each person vowing to contribute to changing the world for whatever reason, only to stand concretized in immoveable inflexibility and reticent resistance to change in any way with regard to the deepest, most intimate and defining self. This, it seems, is the human condition, yet we have a choice to do otherwise. It may however feel like a dream in which you are desperately running in slow motion or crawling on all fours through thick particulate sand-like earth, taking altogether too long and going nowhere fast until your loudest inner voice begins to console you about giving up and how quitting and admitting defeat is all right because it’s the only thing left after you’ve suffered for so long, yearning for relief. But this is the misconception; it is not the relief you are searching for. Relief will be attained by moving forward, continuing through the pain until you can smile through it and learn to await and desire it, see it as your trouvaille, and in that you are set free to attain your just rewards, unburdened by what falls away as the imperfect misjudgments of others unnecessarily attached to your shoulders, relieved at last.
Constant change, adaptation to the self judged condition, newer perspectives revealed and customized by the richness of wisdom, the discovery and removal of ballasts and moorings that hold you in one place, these simple notions can free an otherwise caged animal destined to remain so until death.

The Sound Of Importance

Sound can be sacred. In the presence of noise pollution, the absence of sound is sacred. Both are equally important. The misuse of sound can cheapen the experience of sound in general. Your life has a soundtrack, and it is important.
When you are done planning your life’s daily egotistical considerations with the soundtrack of horrible music made by superficial people who can barely string any sense of comprehension together, it is important to take stock of what your life is really about, and hopefully you have some important music, or some important silence while you do so. You are a sensitive organism designed to set itself to external cosmic events and adapt to the constantly changing environment. When people around us affect our environment and they are living empty or unbalanced lives based on meaningless material priorities leading them on a leash, we can easily be thrown into that vortex of distraction, requiring recalibration of the conscious mind to a state of unadulterated purity. This can be done with the cessation of thought and the careful use of sound.
Sounds of nature that are tens of thousands of yeas old and more are important, helping to reach back into our genetic past that is aware of these sounds on a limbic level of deep subconsciousness. Sounds like wind, rain, the ocean waves crashing, big undeniable sounds. Even in absolute silence we can easily imagine these sounds and have them comfort and aid our inner reflection for undistracted sight.
Although you may not be taking part in it, your human physiology has thousands of generations of genetic coding within you already programmed to unleash the dance that is the music of the universe, waiting to be unlocked. All you have to do is challenge yourself to do what you once thought impossible, or that you in your narrow view of yourself considered incapable of, because most often we are wrong when we say no to accomplishing great feats.
Unleash the power of sound in your inner code.

Stepping Away From Yoga

Yoga is the brain eraser. You don’t come in to a session with yourself in order to leave with more. You step in to let go. The reason you are even seeking yoga is because you have too much weighing you down that is making you ill or has made you ill and you now need restoration. If you are holding on and trying to gain and attain more just like you do in other aspects of materialist life, you have not only been wasting your time and energy but you have also only been feeding your ego the whole time, and most unfortunately not been engaged in yoga at all.
It’s not too late to start with proper and immediate results. The mind, not the brain, but the mind, which is where all of your thoughts exist that scheme, plot, plan, desire, lead to dishonest behavior and selfish habits just to show you what it means to be a typical weak human being among all other weak human beings, must be shut down, disconnected, and erased during each session with yourself. What happens when you do that? The body takes over, with its incredible intelligence, and healing and restoration take place.
And now the point of it all. If you’re doing it wrong, doing it while leaving the mind on and plugged in, with no erasing but instead with more accumulation, you will continue to become addicted and attached to yoga with no progress, no further results, for years and for as long as you live. To progress is to erase with each session little by little until the corrupt data is removed, the reason for seeking yoga in the first place is removed, you live each moment of every day with no weight of a corrupt mind corrupting the body, having with each session with yourself stepped away from yoga and stepped closer to yourself until you can finally walk again undivided and whole. Step away from yoga as you step in and see how much deeper you can live with yourself, what you have been missing in life.