Laughing Lotus Love Blog

     It's a mystery of the universe that we can be looking at God and judge Her by Star Magazine standards...

    My uncle went to Amma's program in Dallas and wrote me a detailed email of all of his observations of the experience. What stood out to him the most was that both Amma and her leading Swami were (in his opinion) overweight. Oh my Goddess-- I cringed while reading and re-reading that quick slash of criticism-- are you calling the Divine Mother fat?! It was hurtful to feel darling Amma Ma judged by such superficial standards, but then I thought, Oh My Goddess, are we calling the Divine Mother fat all the time?!

     The shock of this superficial judgment made me realize I had been doing the exact same thing (maybe slightly less obviously) during the programs in New York. I was happy to be there and excited as I am every year Amma comes, but in my mind I was also host to a cranky streak, wishing people would move and let me get a better view. I started judging the experience by the actions of people around the hall--why couldn't my fellow volunteers be less frenetic while they sat people? It's a hectic process to get thousands of people seated and oriented, but did they have to do it so harshly? Etc, etc, etc.

     But everything changed once I had Darshan. On my way up it was like spiritual airport security. My Darshan token, S1, like a number at the DMV, was checked and double-checked as I neared the center of the blossom that is Amma's hugging seat. Once I made it that close, having persevered my own obstacles of impatience and pettiness, I glimpsed Amma in her simple and glorious task of Embracing the World. Once you finally do make it up there, the residue of the challenges you passed through to make it there melt away. Amma really is shining with LOVE! You can feel it pulsating from her. In that bright, clear light anything besides just Hugging and Loving life is extra, an unnecessary distraction. Why had I wasted my time even considering the weight of the program around me? Suddenly, in Her arms, enveloped in soft fat, my only rational thought was "Don't Let Go"! My outward eye of judgment to the program was no different than wishing it were skinnier! If Creation is the Divine Mother manifest, than any criticism of ourselves or others is calling Amma Fat! She is what She is and I believe it is Amma's deep-soaked acceptance and compassion that make her so radiant.

     There is an apt Yogi Tea bag quote that comes to mind now: "Where there is Love, there is no Judgment". Amma teaches this in her hugs. It is as if she is saying, "Isn't this enough? This Love--isn't it enough?" The dichotomy between my thinking beforehand and my feeling post Darshan was a lesson in the sharpness of mind and the softness of abiding in openness. This is the power of a Teacher, to lead you into an experience of yourself you can't access on your own. Practice grows naturally out of longing to return to that feeling. I still complain about waiting in line in life, but I am feeling more trusting that the judgments are just passing and that it's, big, plump, juicy, PHAT unconditional Love that makes the world go round.

Every year I read the Gita, but do I sing the Song of God? And I don't mean the Baptist Church Choir Song of God, I mean the quotidian one-woman a cappella ditty that expresses my connection however meagre to the divine. Or let me put it to you this way: ever have one of those moments where you're reading and your eyes and moving left-to-right across the page and you're following the words, but you're not quite taking them in? Or maybe, even though the words are in your native tongue, they have begun to resemble Aztec symbols rather that actual words. But you're there, you're getting the gist of the gist. You're reading it. You're soaking in it. And sometimes you light upon a sentence that resonates. "It's all temporary," you tell your roommate, your doorman or your cactus. "The heat, the cold, the pleasure, the pain. This too shall pass." And you feel it so much and you're ready to make it though all the rashes and the breakups, the head-cases and head-colds. Due to this aha moment, you sit down with the Gita, start reading and the same thing happens again. Only now you're peeved because Krishna spoke to you before. Is he on a yoga retreat? As Shirley Bassey would say, "Where do I begin?" 

It's never as good as the first time, though there is something to be said for a star-studded comeback. Just ask Cher. Or Shiva. Or Yeheshua Ben Nashri, AKA Jesus of Nazareth. Now there's a resurrection. Just when you think life is absolutely at its most excruciating, suddenly, you're born anew. And while Cher may need a team of expert stylists to turn back time, the Anointed One only needed to leave his mortal body in order to become God the Son. Much like Ganapati becoming Ganesh. NB: Both are the products of virgin birth. I'll give you my life's in a turnaround. 

One evening, way, way back in 2005, I was teaching the art of the introduction to my creative writing class at Hunter College. "You want to give enough information that the reader accompanies you on your journey," I said. "But not so much information that they feel they've read the whole story before the end of the first page. It's a delicate balance, like dating. You should be who you are, but you don't have to be everything you are all at once. Otherwise, why buy the cow?" 

Imagine your best friend in the world--I mean your absolute, diehard, fair and fowl weather bestie-- sets you up on a blind date. Now s/he's your BFF, s/he knows you. What's more s/he knows what you really want in a mate, what's best for you and s/he actually wants you to have it. So you know in your heart of hearts when s/he says, "I have this great person for you: beautiful, funny, smart, spiritual, strong, kind, loyal, hard-working, decent, the perfect height," she really means it. And even though you haven't really been feeling like yourself lately, whoever that may be, you accept the offer. Vast preparations begin. The outfit, the hair, the nails. A flurry of phone calls and texts are exchanged with other friends on the topic of true and lasting connection with someone or thing besides yoga, Emile Zola and Dynasty reruns. Another friend, Esther, cautions you against getting too excited. In past situations that have promised even an inkling of possibility, you've become deracinated and acted like a sex-crazed maniac or a human testimony to suffering and survival and thus immediately excised any and all connection. People have literally run screaming. 

Sometimes it's hard to be thankful. Especially staring over a dead bird at your grandmother who quite possibly loves her Beefeater Martini more than she loves you. You have to get uber-yogic just to make it to the pumpkin pie. Smiling beatifically, almost as though you'd recently lobotomized yourself with a serving fork in your parents' powder room, you ask, "Can some one please pass the spinach casserole?" Only no one is listening because they're too busy discussing which hotels in Rome have the highest quality safety bars installed in the bathroom. You look around, at your cousins who are practically half your age and getting married--remember last year when you had a fiancé?--at your mother who is ladling sweet potatoes onto your thirty-five-year-old brother's plate and you say, unerringly, "Thank You, Krishna, for THIS moment ." As my dear friend and teacher Jen Guarnieri would say, It's all a dharma talk. 

Last night I decided reality television is the clarion call of the apocalypse. This worried me because I hadn't packed a getaway bag. Or rather, I had, but there was so much stuff in it I couldn't possibly schlep it all without an entourage. So I called my cousin Hannah Leah and asked her if she would take it: the break ups, the make ups, the crying jags and the make outs. Only she was going through a turbulent split herself and didn't really have the space or the time. My parents wanted to shoulder my burden--well, they'd caused it, hadn't they?--but I felt that at 40 (40!) I should have the moxy either to deal with it or split it between us, which ultimately left me with just a third. Still more than would fit in an overhead luggage rack but this, this I could manage. Thusly, I bequeathed my childhood, teens and twenties to my progenitors and took my thirties to the mat. Oy, vata day! 

In sixth grade there were three types of kids: the ones who excelled at dodge ball, the ones who somehow managed to be ambivalent about it and the ones who feared it. For the fraidy-cats, the very notion of standing there, exposed and panicked, while normally kind and decent beings hurled balls at your head seemed anathema to thinking existence. Whoever invented this game was clearly not an indoorsy, uncoordinated strategist--rather a sadistic savage who folded her/himself back into the pages of Lord of the Flies when s/he went to sleep at night. Simultaneously, it seemed there were also the kids who actually knew how to dodge the ball and have this strange thing called fun. Were they born with this knowledge or did their progenitors teach it to them? And what was so wrong with glee club?

In the cosmic universe, that is, the world beyond the physical, there are triguna--three qualities--that exist in a state of harmonious equilibrium. These qualities are Sattva (light, truth, purity), Rajas (activity, change) and Tamas (darkness, inertia). In the manifested universe, as in the actual day-to-day world with all its schleppiness, worry and wonder, these three qualities exist in every living thing in an ever-shifting state of imbalance. Thus the dodge ball conundrum: the ragasic maniacs chucking large, round objects at your innocent face, the sattvic beings who calmly played the game and the tamasic beings who sat on the sidelines reading or pretending to have their periods. Only here's the kicker: The ragasic kid throwing the ball was technically playing fair (sattvic) unless s/he wanted to hurt someone intentionally (tamasic). The Artful Dodger, ducking and running, manifested elements of Rajas while the non-player, practicing Ahimsa (non-violence), was quite possibly Sattva incarnate. It's all a matter of perspective.

On the mat, we experience a kaleidoscope of thought versus action in which the asana RE-present our predominant guna at that particular moment. True, some people tend towards the rajasic. Especially New Yorkers. They take every vinyasa. Others are more slow moving and tamasic, which is not necessarily a pejorative, because both Rajas and Tamas are simply outward expressions of imbalance in the ascension towards Truth. Think of handstand. Do you kick and fling your legs willy-nilly, do you sulk and refuse to come into the prep or do you calmly yet assertively attempt the shape regardless of the result or what the person next to you is doing? Maybe it's not a question of recognizing your dominant guna as much as RE-cognizing your experience of the manifested universe by playing the game with an open mind even if there are giant balls coming at you from every direction. Yes, there are things you can eat or not eat to balance your guna. It is a science after all. And yet, perhaps the whole science is simply the RE-cognition of the experience as you're experiencing it. With heart. Who knows? Maybe now I'd enjoy a good game of dodge ball if the opportunity arose. The truth hurts, but then slowly, so slowly, it doesn't.

Several days ago I was thinking about the Tridosha (the three bodily qualities) and how vata (air) I am. We're talkin' textbook. While my friend Fred is the ultimate pitta (fire) and his boyfriend Blake a definitive kapha (water and earth), I was obsessed with the fact that I have every possible vata attribute down to the "dry, voluminous hair." And I felt good. Or rather that I belonged to a special club of creative, friendly beings with dry skin. Then I realized I'd been cross-referencing the list of vata balance characteristics with the symptoms that occur as a result of vata imbalance. Like any good vata, I panicked. Then my Jewish nature kicked in and I called to make an appointment with a renowned Ayurvedic doctor. Only, this being vata season, AKA Fall, I couldn't get an appointment till January. Figures.

Frustrated, I called my friend Tovah, a wellness expert and fellow yoga teacher, who told me to eat less salad, more soups and rub myself with warm sesame oil.  This suggestion, however sound, led to smell like a veggie stir-fry for a number of days. If only Tovah had indicated raw sesame oil instead of toasted! If only I had taken her up on the soup! Clearly, it was time to get metaphysical. Only which direction-- east to Ayurveda, the sister science of yoga with her Five Elements, or west to Empedocles and his Four Humours? The latter certainly worked for Shakespeare. Then I thought of Hamlet, the indecision, the torment, the melancholia... True, being out of balance makes for interesting conflicts, thus theatre, novels and rock ballads, yet where are the solutions? Is the quest for perfect balance paradoxically causing greater imbalance? And how do we find the fulcrum if we already standing on it?

In the physical realm, IE the world as we know and perceive it, we are often encountering roadblocks to a quality of being we have deemed "balance." (Often, we provide our own roadblocks.) The seasons change, we feel out of whack. We move, someone leaves us or the weather shifts, we feel out of whack. Thus, the deep longing to smash ourselves back into balance like a cosmic whack-a-mole at the county unfair of the universe. It's all lila, I suppose. Only here's the dilemma: no matter how many times we slam, that deranged mole keeps popping up somewhere else. In fact, the very concept of motion is imbalance. The second you pick up your foot to take a step in any direction, the body reflexively counteracts this motion so you don't fall flat on your face.  If the physical body is able to rebound and move forward all day long, so too the mind-body and eventually, one hopes, the soul-body. You may or may not need the oil of five thousand non-toasted sesame seeds. Indeed you may not need anything at all. Because you already are. In balance.

The other night my friend Fred announced he didn't believe in God, that religion and spirituality were just an opiate imposed on the suffering masses. Clearly Fred had never seen Godspell. That said, even though it rankles me when people make such sweeping pronouncements, I decided not to argue in favor of the Divine. Instead, I simply asked, "How's that goin' for ya?" And Fred shrugged and replied, "Not so good."

The following day, a dreary one, I was pondering what it means and doesn't mean to be bound to a set of pre-ordained structures that define the way we eat, drink, pray, have sex and wear clothes. Was horror progenitor H.P. Lovecraft correct in his assertion that the universe is fundamentally monstrous or did I just need a yoga class and a sundae? Is the monster inside or out? And whatever happened to metaphor?

I took these and other questions to Adi Shakti, AKA Kali: the demonic yet benevolent mother goddess, the incarnation of Maya and the destroyer of egos. Talk about on the rag: homegirl is covered in blood and wears a necklace of oozing, bloody skulls. 108 to be exact. And they're all kvetching non-stop about everything under the moon. Moreover, she's got four arms one of which is holding a sword and the other your severed head/ego. Meantime, she's flashing the abhaya--fearlessness-- and varada--blessings--mudra while she's stomping on Lord Shiva's chest; and she breastfed and possibly birthed the guy. Just another family dinner, I guess. Or rather, the mind is a terrible thing to taste.

"What kind of mother are you?" I asked. "What's did I do to deserve this?" Only I couldn't quite catch Kali's response over the chatter of the 108 blathering heads, which were either my maya--illusion--or my own ego--dissolution--raveling and unraveling my self with every crushing step. For this I went to Hebrew school?

Unnerved, I pondered further. Surely our beliefs, whatever our opinion of the Great Equalizer and his/her existence, are a manifestation of our ego and Kali has to stomp those suckers too. That's just part of her dance. But here's the deal: revolution's a bloodbath. Could it be that Kali is time itself--kala--simultaneously dancing, procreating and wreaking havoc in my blessed wrecking ball of a head just before she rips it off and wears it as an earring? Though a scenario we may justly seek to avoid, in the Cosmic Reality Kali's actions are merely monstrous in the word's most literal form: from the Latin monstrare- to show, reveal. As in, show me the monster.

"Oh my Goddess," I thought. "Fred's right. And wrong. I have to call my mother."