The subtext

Alright, i’m on board.

After many requests for me to start a blog, here it is.  Like my initial foray into Facebook, i see this as an experiment in how to fuel remembrance of connection – to the kula, to our family, to friends we thought long gone, and to the wisdom in our hearts.  And it feels like it will be a good outlet to expand upon my oft times wildly deep themes in class.  I’ve got to keep those intros brief you know, we’ve got asana to do.

I’m fascinated by mythology.  It’s actually what initially drew me to Anusara® Yoga, primarily through the story of Nataraja.  Amy Ippoliti was my first Anusara teacher at Crunch gym on Broadway, and I’ll never forget the day she animated the tale of the great lord Shiva as the dancer in the forest of the Tillai trees.  The myth spoke to the wanderings of my own heart, and what it was for me a decade ago or more to be seeking an ecstatic experience of joy.  I’m still seeking the ecstatic experience, daily!   Now I’ve been taught by great teachers and masters of many traditions how to find it.  Look inside the heart, and underneath the mist.  Look for the subtext of the story.

Mythology is everywhere, especially on TV.  I will happily admit to being a “Lostie”.  I friggin’ loved the show, and anyone in my classes last week heard me speak of why.  Mostly its a fantastic premise of the possibilities in life.  What would happen if… you had to form a society with people you don’t know and didn’t choose to be with.  So un-like our modern lives where we live more in the paradigm of choice.  So the show presented challenges of simply how to get along.

In Hindu myths, often the scenes of gods, demons, heroines and sages are battling, and battling the same things.  Their stories take place on battlefields, in dense forests, in the vastness of the sky, or the wild churnings of the oceans.   The Island in Lost had all of these elements.  Wandering through the jungle is roaming the inner landscape of your emotions, and things always got heated on those long walks, day or night, for the characters.   The oceans in Hindu myth are mirrors of the great flow of consciousness itself, and when it stirs or even churns wildly, it’s the call of the great Light to awaken inside your own very heart.  How could you not wander into your own reflection when staring out at the beauty of the wild sea?

My conclusion of the show Lost was as obvious as everyone else’s (even before Jacob actually said this);  these were people we knew, (or even some of us) who were so disconnected from their heart, they felt ‘lost’; purposeless, skeptical of life’s goodness, ignorant to the laws of life, and simply had lack of faith.

The great sage Paramahansa Yogananda teaches 3 paths to healing the Being through yoga, and gaining freedom from a variety of suffering.  He first teaches to heal the physical body.  Many traditions and cultures teach this.  When the body is well fed and taken care of, physiological functioning returns on all levels (Hello, Jack Shepard was an MD).  The second thing Yogananda teaches to heal is the mental constructs that make disease, like fear and anger.  But deeper, the psychological bad habits that we all fall into like failure consciousness, feeling a lack of initiative, and lack of confidence (In my opinion? John Locke).  The third thing he offers is the healing of Spiritual diseases like indifference, and spiritual blindness.  ‘Lost’ was a great myth of the 3 Paths of Life, and each character went through some kind of awakening as a yogi (and I won’t say more in case any of you are going to catch it on Netflix).

Remember we define ‘yoga‘ in Anusara not as ‘union’, referring to a prior separateness, but asengagement.  From the Shiva Shakti Tantric perspective, the body, heart and mind are already in union with the Divine. Shiva, the great Absolute, the Supreme is simply manifest as You, as Shakti, and the two remain in communion in you as you for as long as she’ll breathe you.  The terms of our Island, our life, are a given.  Deal with when you don’t have choice, and must accept.  Our yoga is simply to awaken to this experience of communing with the Divine and engage it fully, in the shadows of the forest, and the clarity of the sea.  Each character rediscovered or renewed their sense of purpose, their dharma, from the interaction with the Dharma Initiative.  And man, it’s a long, very challenging journey, but so worth while.

This is going to be fun.