On September 30 2009 I entered the final era of my life. It may last for a year, it may last for 20 years; the time is not an aspect, as time exists only as a form of a concept for the purpose of communicating with others, just like language.

When I got up that day, I was not aware yet that it was going to be a significant day that would change my outlook on my own existence for the rest of the time that was left for me to dwell in my body. Earlier that day, I said goodbye to a group of teachers who I had just graduated and with whom I had spent a whole month in the beautiful wild nature of Golden BC. After my group left, I went through my usual death experience that I often go through at the end of intense courses. Physical sensations of death and loss were whirling in my third chakra, manipura, located in the navel area. Butterflies were fluttering in my tummy, trying to find their way back to their cocoons that were hidden beneath my consciousness. I went to sit beside the river. There I was watching my life streaming through me and away from me, as I was watching the river running alongside. We were one, I and the river, vibrating side by side through death and birth, being in the moment with our crystal clear consciousness. The only difference between me and the river is that I have a mind and the river has just pure consciousness with no interpreter. For a moment I was wondering if the river was watching me just like I was watching it.

After a while, I started walking away from the river, toward the local crystal labyrinth, while chanting Om Namashivaya Guru Dave, to notify the bears in the area that I was around.

I was standing in the entrance of the labyrinth, watching the stones inviting me to enter for my private ritual. As I stepped in, I knew I was entering the final fragment of my life. I was walking towards the centre of the labyrinth in kinhin style (a zen slow walking mediation), shedding my needs to the ground, one by one, stripping myself of my mind’s burden, getting lighter and lighter in my physical and psychic energies. I knew I was going to live my final time in my physical body with the utmost awareness, unlike the years of my youth that had passed through deep sleep. I found it fascinating and quite exciting to enhance my present moments with the knowledge that my time was arriving to its end. The future years were envisioned as cubes of ice rolling towards me at the speed of light. Each ice cube presented a coming year. Not many of them left. As they got closer to me, they melted to dust and time became invisible, untouchable and unreal.

When I got to the centre of the labyrinth, I could hear myself chanting loudly. I was in bliss.

As you are evolving on the spiritual path, while observing your intents and actions, you let go of your primal fears and less and less identify with your emotions. As a result of the above you become freer, joyful and less needy, if at all.

That’s all good, as long as you do not have any expectations to receive an Oscar from your friends or relatives for being freer and for removing suffering from your life. Your friends and family won’t be happy to see you taking off to a blissful life while leaving them behind with their pain and suffering.

So be prepared! The moment you stop taking responsibility for other peoples’ pain by not allowing them to use you as the one to blame for their suffering, they declare war against you and the main weapon is accusation.

If you refuse to be pulled into their drama, they accuse you of being cold.

If you engage with them without a need while they need you, they say you are manipulative.

If you refuse to be swayed by their emotions, they complain you are hurting them.

And the best is when they claim your spiritual practice is selfish because you are not willing to take part in the collective mind’s drama anymore.

You are probably asking: so what to do when your friends and relatives are blaming you for not taking part in the human drama and for being detached? (On your side, make sure that you do not detach yourself from the world, cutting yourself off life. Non-attachment, the spiritual path, means not identifying with anything around you as well as yourself, and still always remain one with everything around you.)

The first thing is what not to do. Do not try to explain where you are at in seeing reality as it is. This will make them even more furious because they do not always have the capacity to experience where you are at. As a result they will start telling you what they really think about you (even though you never asked for their opinion ;-)). Trust me; their description of you is not going to be flattering, as this is their last chance to convince you to go back to reality where no one takes responsibility for their own emotions or actions.

Secondly, do not expect them to even want to understand your new “you”, as all they really care about is what they are going to lose by letting you be free.

But never stop loving them, and don’t become superior to them. Simply breathe and continue doing what needs to be done in each moment.

It is all about love love love
shakti

Sunday July 18^th 7pm – 9pm

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A spiritual discourse and discussion about

Spiritual intimacy between lovers

shakti mhi will talk about the conflict many seekers deal with when walking the spiritual path while being involved in a physical relationship.

The discourse will be open for questions relating to the topic.

Pepe Danza is an extraordinary spiritual musician who has the ability to elevate the listener’s consciousness purely through sound and vibration. His meditative playing expands our hearts beyond mind and thought, connecting us to the sound of the inner muse herself.

Open to all by donation

Even though it is not mandatory, we will appreciate your confirmation by email info@pranayogacollege.com or by phone 604-682-2121.

Please let your friends know about this unique evening.

Location: Centre for Peace (1825 W 16^th Ave)

Free parking available

Where in India can I practice yoga?

I often get asked by yoga students where to go in India to learn and practice yoga; and again and again I disappoint my own students and teachers by saying I have no idea.

Other than a close relationship with Shiva, my Ayurvedic doctor in Vancouver towards whom I have great reverence as well as deep gratitude for always helping me when my body needs guidance, I have no more connection with India. Most of the yoga ashrams in India have to do with worships and religious practices. Through my three decades of yoga and Zen practice I realized that the highest form of spiritual practice – which has to do with a direct experience – must move away from any religious aspects that always deal with a set of beliefs.

There are many levels of learning and experiencing the art and science of yoga. The simplest one and most common is through religions, as this is the easiest for the masses to take in. The highest one is practicing it beyond all concepts and perceptions. In the former you clutter your mind with more and more beliefs; in the latter you strip your mind of all you think you know until you have the space to enter existence with the utmost knowing instead of believing or understanding.

So if you are wandering in India and find a yoga ashram which is free of any spiritual nonsense – which means no religions, no worship, no dogmas (you must be a vegetarian to reach realization), no fanaticism (only by the grace of a guru you can realize), no moral codes (you must always say the truth if you want to reach nirvana) – please let me know and I will pass on the information to all the yogis who truly believe that once they step on the mother land of yoga, bliss will descend from the clear sky of India and unveil their highest conscience which somehow cannot be materialized in any other of the world’s continents ;-)

The other option is to be aware that even though realization is already within you and you can manifest it HERE and NOW, you can still go to India and enjoy a good curry dish.

With love and joy

shakti mhi

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Today I took the boat from Totnes to Dartmouth, an hour long ride along the river, in the breathtaking countryside scenery of Devon, England. The boat was filled with senior people aged 60 to 80 years old from different continents and countries. I was the only person below 50 years old (but tightly close to it) and felt like a teenager. Watching so many older people almost put me in a state of shock, realizing the condition of our elderly. They were all (!) overweight and in a terrible physical condition, unfit and barely able to move without their walking aids or without wobbling. Some were sitting in wheelchairs only because they were so overweight they couldn’t carry themselves. They reminded me the people in the spaceship in the movie Wall E. But the worst of all was their level of consciousness. They were nice people with no wisdom in their eyes. When the boat stopped in beautiful but spirit-dull Dartmouth, they all rushed with their wobbly walks to consume the content of the town’s stores, restaurants and pubs. I felt so sad; here I was among old people, the elderly of the tribe! Here were the ones who should be the wisest of all and I felt neither reverence nor gratitude for being in their presence – a feeling that young people often experienced in many cultures, in the old times, when they were in the company of the old and the wise.

As I was walking around the postcard streets of this little, adorable looking town I realized the only things here were pubs, small beautiful old shops with dreadful fashion, and restaurants. If you were not interested in drinking, eating or shopping there was nothing to do in this town and many other towns in this country and in many other countries in this world.

This small old town had completely lost its spirit, culture and depth. Or maybe I should say the only culture it has is one of consumption and nothing else. The elderly wiseless tourists I was watching were, in the end, products of our poorly, shallow culture that most of our youngest are fed from and will probably end up in the same shallow state as their tribal elderly.

We are worried about the holes in the ozone but we should not be less worried about the “holes” in our collective consciousness through which we are rapidly losing our spiritual evolution as we get lost in our dull evolution of consumption.

You people are the alternative for the modern culture that brings the low consciousness most of the world is moving into. Maintain your high consciousness and physical awareness so that as you age, your youth is replaced by infinite wisdom.

Love shakti

Wise Woman

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Our mind perceives reality by filing segments of information in its filing cabinet. Each folder represents a concept and the subfolders represent our perceptions of each concept. For example, to believe or experience God you need to have a file in your mind that is labeled “God”. The subfolders for the file “God” will be your perceptions of this concept. We cannot grasp a life experiences if we have no folders into which we can file them. For example, you wouldn’t be trustful if you didn’t have a file labeled “trust”; you wouldn’t feel confidence if you didn’t have a folder for it. The size and the amount of folders in each mind differ from person to person as well the way the files are classified and labeled. The amount of files, subfolders and their classifications is what make us different or similar to each other. We have files about sex, religions, friendship, death, moral codes, taboos, fears, goals, love, etc.

Rarely do people choose their own labels and folder selections.

At the time of our birth, each of us gets X number of files made by our parents, teachers and other people in our tribe. This is the filing cabinet that we start our lives with. As time goes by we keep adding new folders but often as sub folders to the files we already received in heritage. Seldom do we create new categories or new definitions or new perceptions. This is why it is so common to find family members carrying similar filing cabinets with the same folder classification systems for generations. In other words, the same way of perceiving reality is passed down through the family tribe.

Inheriting filing cabinet from your tribe with esoteric folders will enable you to have esoteric experiences as part of your reality. If you only have files for physical world experiences labeled “what you see is what it is”, in times when you cross an esoteric experience you either will miss it or dismiss it as you have no folder in which to file it, and you are unable to process it.

If, as a child, you received a huge filing cabinet with a large number of files that may consist of art, magic, spirituality, generosity, oneness, etc, you will probably have a large capacity for filing a large variety of life experiences. If you received a small filing cabinet with fewer files that may only have to do with evolutionary routines like marriage, kids, mortgage and retirement, obviously, you will be limited by the amount of experiences you can file. Thus, your reality is much more limited.

Most people are not aware that it is up to them to change and rearrange their filing cabinets, and by doing so change their reality. Actually, the head office of each tribe (in the form of churchs and religious leaders) will try to make sure that all of their members are classifying and filing their concepts and perceptions in the same order and manner so everyone thinks, feels, and believes the same.

Once a while, a unique child, a rebellious teenager or a brave adult will have the desire, the need, the yearning, or the strong drive to rearrange their own filing cabinet by getting rid of old files such as marriage, money, war, degrees etc. and adding new files such as freedom, arts, traveling, realization etc. The tribe, which always tries to keep its members’ filing cabinets in one custom, will find the individuals who have their own unique filing cabinets threatening. Those who take the freedom to be creative with their filing cabinet arrangements will be filed as rebellions, odd, unusual, unconventional, original, eccentric, etc.

We do not only file people and events in our personal filing cabinet, we also get filed in other people’s files and we are very much aware of it. In fact, being filed by others is one of our main concerns. Often when people who are important to us do not have a file that we can be filed into, this forces us to change who we are so we can fit under one of their existing folders.

Family members’ folders are usually all classified and titled in the same way as they pass the filing system from one to other. If you need to be filed in your family’s folders as who you see yourself to be, for example as a gay, as an artist, as a spiritual, as a traveler, as rebel, as a nonconformist, etc. and they have no files for these categories they will either dismiss your existence or will force you to change your definition to be classified into what they already have in their filing cabinet: straight versus gay, intellectual versus artist, conformist versus nonconformist, religious versus non-religious.

On the path of spirituality we may go through process that will consist of:

• Questioning all the files we received in heritage as well the ones we created
• Observing the limitations of a filing cabinet (i.e., the mind) in its ability to hold onto reality as it is.
• Starting to experience our moments outside of our filing system (i.e., oneness)

Namaste
shakti mhi

Large Filing Cabinets

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The train ride from busy London to the tiny town of Totnes was beautiful. The countryside of England hasn’t changed much in the last few hundred years. Castles are lying in the open fields like wedding cakes in a bridal shop window. An hour earlier, I lost the mac I just bought, forgetting it in the black English taxi on the way to the train station in London.”. “So now I am mac-less, still attached my old faithful Dell computer that will hold the first chapters of the new book I am about to start writing in Totnes”.

When the taxi in Totnes dropped me beside the small rusty gate of Hillfield B&B in the back alley of a noisy street, I wanted to run back to the taxi driver and beg him to drive me back to London. But then I decided not to be me and simply go with the flow into the unknown, even if it does not fit my standards.

I entered the rusty gate after a few long and worried efforts to open it. It seemed like no one had opened this gate for hundreds of years. I walked in to a hidden, flowery backyard where I met Nancy, the weird looking owner that suited so well the old house I was about to enter. Endless old doors opened one after the other to allow me into a beautiful stairway that was wrapped up with old carpet, running along a wavy wall decorated with brown photos of people who had long ago turned to dust. I was led by odd-looking Nancy into my suite on the second floor. Stale air was standing still in all the rooms.

As promised on the website, my suite has a living room, a kitchen and a bedroom. In reality, the kitchen and the living room exist as one tiny room, you want call it a kitchen, you want call it a living room. Actually the best room is the bathroom as it has huge windows and 2 old arm chairs with an old rug in-between. You want call it a sitting room, you want call it a bathroom; Odd- Nancy is not attached to room definitions.

The amazing view that was promised on the website was sent in for repairs long ago and will be back in a few hundred years. In the meantime, Odd- Nancy has replaced it with an old back alley view that fits the old windows perfectly.

Nancy kindly handed me an ancient set of keys that allow me to come and go as I wish. When you lock the doors you need to kneel down as all the lock holes are close to the floor; maybe it used to be a dwarf’s castle in the times when fresh air was still flowing along the curved stair hall.

So this is my home for the next 7 days where I will spend most of my days and evenings in writing, and I love it, or at least that is what I think I do.

Namaste shakti

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This article was written as I receive many emails regarding this topic from spiritual people.

This article is not meant to support meat eaters, but to demonstrate that any one way of looking at life is limited and can be dogmatic.

Not everyone is born to be vegetarian!

I do not believe in one way of living (or in this case, one way of eating) for all human beings as we have all evolved from different tribes that came from different climates with different eating habits according to what each environment provided. Some of us originated from tribes that were wandering from place to place for thousands of years like the Tartars, Inuit, native Indian or the desert people in the Middle East, where growing and harvesting food wasn’t an option. As a result, hunting or fishing was the main source of food for these tribes. As a consequence, due to the different evolutions of eating habits there are a great many populations in the world who, genetically speaking, are customised to eat meat and fish. Who is one to say that these people are not entitled to a spiritual practice simply because they eat meat?

North American native Indians were hunters and meat eaters who were very much connected to nature and had a great respect for the animals they hunted. They conducted a highly spiritual life.

Throughout my years of teaching yoga and meditation, I met many sincere yogis who forced themselves to be vegetarians for spiritual reasons and often ended being physically unwell (low blood pressure, anemia, physical weakness, fatigue, etc.) Their bodies were simply not getting nourishment on a foundational level. One of my closest friends who regularly ate meat went to consult an ayurvedic doctor about shifting to a vegetarian diet (this was after a few futile attempts of his own, that made him feel weak and caused him to lose undesirable weight). The ayurvedic doctor told him blandly that because his roots are from the Tartar tribes (which could be seen easily by his large and strong features) vegetarianism was not the right diet for his body and would weaken him.

The main concern in regards to eating meat while doing any spiritual practice is the act of killing.

Any child can tell you about the cycles of nature wherein animals eat other animals to keep balance between the populations of various species. Since we are a part of this food chain, the question is why have we taken human beings out of the structure of balance? Human were always part of the cycle, controlling the populations of other animals by hunting and, at the same time, being eaten by other animals.

As we evolved more sophisticated methods of protecting ourselves, we became less and less vulnerable of becoming meals for other animals; and yet we are still getting eaten – but mostly from the inside out. We may have become too smart to be easily hunted by carnivores but we still often get “eaten” internally by endless bacteria and viruses that can easily wipe us out in huge numbers.

It is also true that now that our population has grown immensely we need to consume more food than before. This definitely changes the balance in numbers, but it does not mean that eating meat is wrong. It is more a problem of us reproducing without control, taking over the planet by numbers and draining all of the resources – not only animals, but also vegetation, minerals, water, etc.

So there is no one way for all of us. Vegetarianism is often taken as an absolute way of living by the ones who were born to be vegetarian. If this way of living is not suitable for your body and you still choose it as a lifestyle you may find yourself in doubt from time to time as your body demands its natural nutrition.

Often, the conflict over vegetarianism makes people who need to eat meat feel as if they are less on the spiritual path than they should be. We need to know for ourselves. Each of us must tune into the needs of our own body with great awareness – discovering the right way of eating that is suitable for our way of living. Even this may change during different periods of our lives or depending upon activities or non-activities that the body carries during our life. Sometimes our eating patterns may change depending on climate, etc. So there is a place for being vegetarian and there is place for eating meat.

If your body tells you that you need to consume meat:

1. Do it mindfully without greed (this means: do not live for eating but eat for living).
2. Tune into your body and see what kind of meat works best for you: how much and how often you need to consume it without making your body and mind heavy.
3. Make sure that the meat you eat is from hormone-free animals and organic.
4. Make sure the meat you eat comes from animals that are treated with respect and live in a healthy environment.
5. If you consume meat, practice pranayam 4-6 hours after your meal. The best time for a pranayam practice is early morning on an empty stomach.

My point here is to give you another perspective on this issue, as opposed to the conventional one-way yoga approach. At the end of the day, the most important thing is to contemplate this matter and reach your own authentic conclusion. If you hold a fear about practicing pranayam while consuming meat, the practice won’t be effective. So you must make sense for yourself.

For every argument I have presented in this article you can bring one to support vegetarianism, especially if you are one of them. The same works vice versa, and it is not because either of us is right or wrong, but because there is no one way for everyone. Anyone that takes one side on principle is missing the whole picture and risks becoming a fanatic by limiting their point of view.

Namaste,

shakti mhi

If you’d like to discuss this topic, please do so here: Meat and Pranayama

What follows below is an imaginary scenario that is made up of endless scenarios that people experience in their realities of “being in love”.

It is a hand-made painting created from the many layers of fears, pain and desperation in the collective subconscious. None of the figures in the painting are real yet the painting and its frame represent our own individual prison that we create with our perceptions when it comes to love.

My love

… Last night I dreamt that we were in a hotel room. In the dream we were 2 people so entangled together that one’s carbon dioxide becomes the other one’s oxygen. So subconsciously, the idea of separation and losing each other was attached to the feeling of death.

In the dream we had a fight and you were leaving the room, slamming the door behind you, telling me you weren’t coming back. I furiously run to the door to stop you from leaving but I couldn’t open the door from the inside. I was hitting the door with anger and devastation, asking you to open it from the outside but you were long gone. In my dream I couldn’t handle the idea of separating from you. I was flaming with pain and desolation and seeking revenge – to hurt you back.

When I woke up I was feeling the pain from the dream in my lower abdomen. My mind wandered to all the moments of pain and despair we went through in our times together, where only the thought of losing each other was enough to shatter us to pieces.

As an experiment, I lay down in bed and tried to capture the physical pain in my body that I had created with my disturbed emotions. It felt like I knew this pain very intimately inside and out. I searched my memory for the first time in my life when I had met with this incredible emotional pain — the same pain that has brought so many people throughout the history of love to the edge of insanity. A river of live pictures, of moments of pain, fears, emotional breakdowns, despair and the hopelessness of losing the “other one” gushed in front of my eyes. My investigating inner eyes continued their journey further back through the tunnel of my life. Here I am with my parents, me as a child, looking for their love, seeking their approval, asking for their acknowledgment. I say, “me as a child” but surprisingly I am seeing pictures of myself aiming for their recognition at much later stages of my life as a grown-up.

Interestingly enough, my internal eyes shifted from my personal movie to the biblical Garden of Eden. God removes his unconditional love from Eve and Adam and sends them away from his property, saying: “You disappointed me and I do not approve of you anymore.” The biblical story of the Eden exile represents the deepest emotional pain human beings feel in the form of rejection.

When we do not know ourselves as a complete existence, when we do not experience ourselves as an essence, we need external recognition to reflect back to us that we exist. We often choose the one we “fall in love with” by their ability to reflect to us our own existence. Unlike true love, the business of love is all about getting acknowledgement and recognition from “the other one.” Like in Garden of Eden, we turn our love subjects into our creators. We give them the power to create us through their approval of us.

This is why we feel that we disappear when our love subjects take their eyes off our appearance.
This is why we feel that we vanish when they remove their touch from our bodies.
This is why we feel that we evaporate when they take us out of their thoughts.
This is why we feel that we fade away when they take us out of their memories.
This is why we feel that we cease when they leave us…

When you hear the door slam and your heart doesn’t even blink…
Not because you don’t care or because you do not love anymore
But because your love is free of need,
This is when you know you are truly free.

shakti

The pain of being in love

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There is no such thing as an unconditional love, unconditional love as opposed to what? Conditional love? If love is conditional then it is not love, it is business: it is manipulation, it is fear, it is ignorance.

Love by its very nature is unconditional. So saying unconditional love as is like saying wet water. When you experience love there are no conditions to base it on. The experience stands on its own, and depends neither on circumstances nor perceptions nor agendas.

All concepts have their opposites because this is the way the mind perceives reality. Love has no opposite as it happens outside of the mind. Hate is not the opposite of love. If love is the sun, our minds’ perceptions are the clouds. When the clouds block the sun, darkness in the form of hate may disguise reality. The sun never stops shining; it is just blocked by the clouds of our perception. So love cannot have an opposite, as it is never absent.

Love neither ends nor begins.
Love is not born and it does not die.
Namaste shakti

If you’d like to discuss or comment on this posting, you may do so in the forum on the topic dedicated for that purpose.