Wake Up Call

I think a particularly fierce form of grace has ripped through the Yoga world. Apparently it is going to continue to rip through the world in 2012.  It occurs to me that it ripped through Yoga first to wake us up - to ask us who have had the great good fortune of being gifted with the teachings and the practices of Yoga - to get our heads out of our closets full of cute yoga clothes and to stop pimping "Yoga as a commodity"  -  and to STAND UP  and act in service to Real Yoga so that ourselves and others will have some authentic ground of being to stand on when the dust settles.

Staying or Leaving Anusara Yoga seems extremely irrelevant to me at this point.  I am STAYING in YOGA - like crazy and with both feet ALL the way IN. I am STAYING in service to students and to fellow practitioners. Everything I have scheduled to teach I will teach - and then some. I'm on fire.

Yesterday I had a follow up session with Jyotish Katy Poole.  (one of my new heroines). She knows all about the Yoga world and about the Anusara situation. All that has transpired is not surprise from the Jyotish point of view.  Saturn in transit has brought an earthquake of sorts. She says that this has happened at every junction of democratic revival.  It happened at the time of the Civil Rights movement for example.  And it happened at the time of the French Revolution. The Saturn situation brings a huge collective interest in justice as well as a fierce intolerance for the elite.  And anyway - it is 2012 and all that is supposed to go with that.

In the Yoga world we have had the elite at the top - comprised mostly of men - holding power and making 99% of the money. That paradigm is breaking up. Katy said that the Saturn thing has only just begun and it is going to include far bigger implosions than Anusura Yoga (economies and governments for example).

Katy had a LOT more to say but most of it is entwined with my own chart and so I won't go on with that except to say that I have tremendous vigor coming up in my teaching and my work – my dharma – There is a fierceness even …..surprising me – arising to save me – after all the pain of the last 2 weeks.

As for John Friend.......John carried a huge amount of light. We liked that part. In fact we fed on it. But the greater the light the greater the shadow. And now we are seeing that there was a big shadow. We don't like that part. We are all complicit in both the light and the shadow. We may not like to admit our complicity.

Another thing about Anusara Yoga is that there has tended to be a repression of emotion because there  has been a dumbing down of the philosophy of Intrinsic Goodness to a lightweight package of ignorance which says "its all good". Within the Anusara system - over the years - there has been less tolerance for looking into the shadow. The philosophy of Intrinsic Goodness - is a deep and a complete wisdom tradition that in no way translates to "its all good".  The philosophy of "its all good" is shallow and incomplete.  (Jnanam bandhah - limited knowledge is ignorance). It has acted as a sort of "gag order" in Anusura over the years.

And yet another thing that affected John and Anusura on High is this: historically - and its true now too - women (having less power) have tended to go to men for power - (talking sex here). Men do not go to women sexually as a way to get power.  Think about Bill Clinton and Hilary Clinton. For the record - I think Hilary Clinton is the bomb. I would vote for her in a heartbeat.  And I would be certain that she would not be having young men visit her bedroom as a way to get power.

Katy Poole and I talked a lot about the Bhagavad Gita - She is a scholar of that text and many others. I think I got one of the best teachings on that text of my life by talking to her about it yesterday. Will post on that tomorrow or soon.

Steady ON!
STAY in Yoga!
Thanks for reading.