Life in the Agama Bubble

Recently caught my ego requesting that ‘I should write something worthy to be read’, so I decided to take a break. I always had this graphomania; this urge to tickle the curiosity to read/write something private that many of us have within, so I developed this trend of ‘notebook’ way back. First I was the sole author of my chosen notebook; either very fancy or a simple one punked-up by some hip posters from trendy youth magazines. Then I ‘allowed’ some ‘chosen’ friends to spend time with the notebook; first they would satisfy their thirst for peeking into the privacy of another, which we partially satisfy with facebook right now. Then they would write in their stories. I had these notebooks since early teenage years and when I recently went through them I found some very remarkable pieces by some masterminds. In those teenage years, boys share their passion for sci-fi and philosophy whereas girls are lost in their emotional world trying to find where the rabbit hole goes. Then there was the most special notebooks; the ones I only shared with my Reflection; reaching the peak of refinement in an intimacy between two souls. A level called Vishudda consciousness in yoga, referring to our center of pure and divine expression hardly reached during the daily course of events.

It is time to share the word again.

There is a flow within the Agama community. A jargon full of yogic terminology specific to Agama teachings used in expressing opinion; interactions at some weekly events or our social hotspot, the restaurant on the campus;  experiences, practices where everyone is searching for some clues on how to find peace and harmony in life (even beyond). Then there are the intense retreats for giving a break to the daily requirements and diving even deeper within.

I was just out of the retreat-mood of my puja and Rishikesh experiences, so I decided to dive in again joining the Kashmiri Shaivism retreat. Kashmiri Shaivism is a monistic teaching from as-the-name-goes Kashmir, having lots of commonalities with Sufism and being the core source of inspiration of Agama’s head teacher. Last year Swami offered a 5-day workshop on the theory of these teachings and now we are moving on with an 8-day retreat. An Agama retreat usually lasts for 8 days and covers lots of meditation, some hatha, few discourses with a special focus and offers a space to stay with the self. Full silence (mauna) throughout the retreat is recommended but for this one I decided to be less strict with myself. In my understanding mauna means no writing, no watching, no connection with the outside world. I naturally felt like staying on my own, riding to my home right after the retreat hours are over. It is pathetic really how short the actual duration of silencing of the mind happens during the retreat. On the contrary the mind can be in total frenzy and chatting with itself constantly. Emotions like fear, anxiety, lust, envy, frustration can pop up out of nowhere. If they insist to lurk around, it is highly likely that more is hiding underneath. I didn’t yet reach that state of self-inquiry. Emotions, thoughts come and go gently. I am just concerned about my joy; it seems to have abandoned me these days. I am waiting for its return.

Swami is giving a series of discourses on spiritual tests, which are basically states and acts preventing us from reaching our goals in life. The main trap of a mind under the root chakra vibe is pointless fear. Fear of expressing your thoughts, finding excuses such as age, lacking skills, luck etc. for not accomplishing something. One can even develop phobias if the roots of our being is not harmonious. Last year when I felt all over the place I developed this fear of something happening to my family when I am away. Whenever I thought about them that meaningless fear sneaked in. I started becoming afraid of taking a flight, fearing accidents; many little anxieties I didn’t experience before popped out of nowhere. Slowly with practice they left me. Swami’s way encourages using the will and power of the mind to overcome them. It is obvious that it doesn’t make sense to be afraid, so stop the bullshit. Well, if you are a war photographer and you walk determined into a bombarding without any fear that may indicate a pathology. So there is a limit called common sense. Other typical root chakra-muladhara traps are laziness, inertia and greed. Lack of ability to initiate anything that may create change or keeping oneself busy searching for a false security of life while continuously postponing your heart’s true desire.

The factory of emotions, imagination and impulses; svadistana tests one with confusion. There is the overall lack of clarity of what one needs to be doing in a larger sense. But also the mini moments of confusion about the rightful action. Instead of sitting to meditate after waking up (for others that action may be writing a thesis, report, finishing a composition etc) suddenly being carried away by the urge of cleaning the house, then allowing a long phone talk and all of a sudden many other mini and ‘vital’ actions get on the way and you end up finding yourself getting ready for going to bed without having a single moment of peace and silence for your mind. Svadistana’s best friend is therefore a smart-phone! A typical state accompanying this confusion is to be overwhelmed with hand-made dramas and allowing them to become patterns in life. Other than that there is the overindulgence in comfort, pleasure. Just a memory from long time ago; we were all preparing for the university entrance exam. My friend would take a bowl full of pistachios before starting her study session. She starts with solving the problems while eating the pistachios until she got one which was difficult to peal. And all of a sudden the studying of the test turns into an even more concentrated study and enjoyment of pistachio. Over the years the space of pleasure in one’s life expands and a bowl of nuts is replaced by long party nights, countless hours of bad TV or computer games, shopping; whichever choice of drug. Dissatisfaction of any of these indulgences may lead one to the destructive void of depression as another hotspot of this chakra. And on top of all, the crown of svadistana; the lust! Overindulgence in lust, having the fulfillment of lust as the underlying motive for most of your actions without being even aware of it; being owned by that constant effort of seducing everyone around you through different ways to get what you want. That is the hell of svadistana.

During his latest discourse Swami covered tests of manipura; the navel chakra which is slightly more refined than the other two underneath. When manipura is running well hail to the noble samurai states with courage, willpower, strength, leadership and all. Me like! I was obsessed with all these Japanese martial art movies; especially the parts where the master trains his disciple in most painful ways. I dig the mosquito fascination of Miyagi San in Karate Kid as much as the super-spin in the air of Beatrice Kiddo’s master – whatever his name was- landing on her sword. However when the shit hits the fan at the level of manipura it is not so much fun. There is this insatiable ego and tendency to aggression to deal with. The mind is subconsciously looking for a confrontation using an unnecessary sharpness in speech. The big test of manipura is the fear of transformation. Ironically the fire of manipura is the very source of transformation. When this fire is lit and life as one knows it starts changing then the ego suddenly is challenged because of the lost control. These days that is my challenge exactly. As I am struggling with such challenge around the manipura puja of Gurudji while listening to Swami’s discourse I find myself in most of the examples he gives.

So the everlasting question of the spiritual seeker, is it a synchronicity or apophenia?

Ayurveda in Rishikesh

I just met a very kind and interesting Ayurveda doctor. I was already thinking that I couldn’t miss out on an ayurvedic consultation being the perfect spiritual tourist in Rishikesh. Our paths just crossed naturally and I went for it. According to Ayurveda; the healing sister of Yoga, our bodies are just perfect creations and there is no reason for any disease. However our life styles, thought patterns, past traumas cause some deviations in this perfect machine. Our body and soul is composed of the five elements creating the nature; earth, water, fire, air and ether. Ayurveda defines three main constitutions which are basically these elements combined acting upon us. Vatha constitution derives from air and ether, pitta from fire and kapha from earth and water. If all these elements are in balance we are doing great; whenever one or the other gets out of balance diseases and disharmony manifest. Actually we are all born with an imbalance, call it genetics or karma. Then along the life we develop another imbalance due to external conditions, our life styles and experiences. If a person is kapha dominated they enjoy a solid, strong body, calmness of the mind bordering laziness but suffer from annoying amounts of mucus production. Pitta constitution is typically fiery full of life, focus and willpower bordering aggression; whereas vatha are the airy fairies with lots of movement in the body and the mind.

When I was first introduced to these doshas I was certain with all that mucus production during a cold disproportional to my tiny nose I am of kapha constitution. However this doctor clarified the picture; I am born pitta suffering from kapha detoxification throughout the course of my life. That’s what I needed to purify to reach some balance in my system. When I think back of my childhood it actually made sense. I was different back then; very focused and even more fiery. I clearly remember questioning why grown-ups would walk instead of running; it was so much more fun and reasonable to run! However now I can stay in bed the whole day watching n-number of episodes of bad tv-series.

This medical science of ages value spirituality, metaphysics, emotions and thoughts big time. I cannot really take all comments about me from various experts/healers as facts but they still give me a fresh perspective; a new understanding of my life. I can generate more options about why I chose certain courses of actions, what is really happening in the bigger picture. This Ayurveda doctor provided me with some good insights. He suggested that I lived my life like an eagle in a chicken cage from 6 till 17 years old causing these kapha problems. It would probably make great sense as all my friends knowing that I basically escaped to a university in another city to get out of my cage. May that be my choice to be born into a situation like that as the followers of these though systems believe, I have no idea yet why I made that choice. Dr Ram suggested a special treatment called shirodhara during our next meeting. The treatment aims to balance the two main energy channels along the spine; ida and pingala representing the feminine and masculine aspects of our being. Practically I enjoyed lying on a heated bed after overexposure to the mean cold of Rishikesh for an hour listening to some recordings while the healer was pouring some oil on my forehead. The process took me into such a trance leading me all the way back to my birth when I was bombarded by every single sound in the room. These foreign sounds unlike the ones I was used in the womb of my mother were so frightening causing an immediate contraction in me. Spooky process indeed being born in to this world!

Following the session I got my zillion of ayurvedic pills from the doctor before heading home. Dr. Ram wanted to accompany me saying that he goes to visit his ‘lover’ every night. Apparently he is in love with Ganga! Feeling very comfortable with each other as if we were friends for a long time we walked together down the river. I couldn’t attend to his kind dinner invitation with his family some day that week as I was about to travel away from Rishikesh.

And concluding my first Rishikesh adventure; I finally celebrated the new year of 2013 exactly as I always wanted. Every year I have the same dilemma. Acting cool, self-suggesting that intelligent people don’t give a crap about new year, while questioning this attitude while millions of people obviously are in a celebration mood; wanting to do something special but ending up with nothing special at all! This year I was blessed with a soft transition to a fresh breath with Prem Baba, singing and meditating along with hundreds of people in the sangha (spiritual community). Yessss! Conclusion: New Year celebration matters!

Connecting to Prem Baba

Once getting used to greeting the baba’s situated in various spots around the Ganga with a ‘Hariom’ I decided I am finally settled. Now I have a cozy room with a heater, candles and all, Baba’s I greet, some friends with whom I exchange a few words and some little routines. So I may as well stay here for months. However I could only extend my stay for one more week and even that was difficult. I stressed about the tickets I burn, doubts about my intentions for wishing to stay longer while the whole trip is pre-organized. Do I want to stay with Prem Baba longer, do I want to enjoy this feeling of being settled, am I lured by the muscular arms of a beautiful man or do I just want to enjoy having the possibility and freedom to make this change in plans? Eventually one more week of Rishikesh. (Don’t get too hung up on the muscular arms, the story is not getting erotic; just looking, not touching…)

My affection to Prem Baba continues. The strong effects of the first encounter mellowed down; at some moments I spaced out during his satsang but I don’t bother much about all these shifts. According to him the story is pretty simple and straight forward; ‘connect your heart to my heart’ and I formally connected my heart to his. For the ones who are not familiar with this type of spiritual initiation; it is a ritual where you surrender to a Guru. In Ottoman culture, parents used to give their kids to a master, an artisan to be trained using the expression ‘his flesh is yours and his bones are mine’. In a way you do the same yourself towards your master by taking a deeksha.  I didn’t necessarily have a divine feeling of surrender in me; I just wanted to connect to the amazing heart opening I have experienced through this bond I create with the master. At the final stage of this little ritual the master was about to put a string to my left wrist, which he had blessed. I already had many white strings put by Swami during the monthly final ceremonies we have at the school concluding a cycle of teaching. Before putting the string on, Swami usually checks in with you asking ‘this is for protecting you from obstacles on your path, do you want it?’ Prem Baba, without a moment of hesitation just cut all the strings, put his red string on instead and handed me the old ones to give to Ganga. I loved the clarity in his action. This whole string story is quite interesting; when I first started with Agama years ago I received the white string from Swami after the completion of my level 1 intensive training, which stayed on my wrist for three years. I’d go to posh parties and dinners totally dressed up with a worn out, dirty string on my left wrist. When I was about to head back to the island to receive the teacher training; just one week before my arrival the string got lose by itself. And now again one week before going back to the island I separated from it.

The monkey situation in Rishikesh is pretty intense. They lurk around the bridge connecting both sides of the Ganga and whenever they see any piece of food in a by-passers’ hand or bag they jump on it. A few days ago I saw one by the fountain at the end of the bridge. He approached the fountain, turned the tap on, drank and then turned it back off! I get it, monkeys are smart animals and all but turning the tap off?! My human fellows hardly do it in public bathrooms.  

Of course days do not pass by in a rose garden; I have been through many internal turbulences. I even started to write down ‘reporting from the darkness the sequel’ but I realized that throughout the whole piece I was making fun of my situation rather than expressing my suffering so I decided that my suffering bits were out of order at that moment and turned off my computer.

Let me tell you a bit more about Prem Baba’s satsang that he gave on the occasion of the 21^st of December; the supposed end of the world as we know it according to Mayan calendar. In short he explained that we are moving from the sexual revolution to the phase of spiritual revolution. The sexual revolution starting in the 60’s improved the space of women, this high energy became a bit more free but didn’t yet reach its ultimate target; the heart. So actually that revolution still continues. At that time the spiritual seekers were excited by the sexual revolution and the seekers of the now are thrilled with the current one which will result in ‘law of minimum effort’. According to this law humanity will be able to have better access to using their gifts and talents; progress faster and with more ease. Use of gifts and talents is the dilemma of my life. My job as a trained race horse was to focus on what needs to be done. The gifts and talents that I am born with was more of a secondary issue for a breed like me who has a certain level of intelligence. I call this state ignorance of a bright mind. Therefore throughout my college years I strayed from my career and success-oriented path for impulses towards dancing, climbing mountains or travelling to unknown lands. This episode was followed by a stressful effort to compromise between what is in the heart and what is in the mind. Only when reaching the thirties a middle path starts showing its traces. On this occasion I decided to visit a famous astrologer here to find out more about what lies on my path. As you can read I am a very active, dynamic, enthusiastic spiritual tourist; I put my nose into everything offered. Out of blue this astrologer started telling me that I should dance; that I used to be a mystical dancer in Egypt in my past life and that my painful compromise will reach an end from mid 2013 on. Once I got these good news I immediately rushed to get the yellow sapphire ring he recommended me to wear. Why to resist such a sweet temptation; I am spiritual and have a beautiful ring now to go with it!

Prem Baba dives into many issues; stresses how the internal changes are getting faster and faster in this phase. This intensity also brings along some suffering and the only way to progress is surrendering to this change. He talks about relationships, the fight between the idealist mind and the heart, the inner negotiations we have with ourselves and our insistence to relive certain dramas in our lives again and again. Some of his words find their echo in my mind and I note them down, whereas others lead me to day dreaming.

Today I met my puja friends by the Ganga. Lorraine said that her mother stopped going to the church when she was a child once she found out that the donations collected were spent on buying a new org. She didn’t consider that as a valid way of spending the donations. Now after all those decades she started to go to church again, because only there she could meet people who are kind to each other. We are banging our heads against each other all the time in offices, streets, restaurants, bars… If there is a revolution happening with the 21^st of December impetus then one of its symptoms may be this collective obnoxiousness I am afraid. I hope that we are indeed at a breaking point and I wish lots of light, love, harmony and kindness for us all in 2013.

From Mahamaya to Baba

After the warm embrace of Kamakhya we headed towards Tarapith where we will do the concluding work to fix the energies we have been working with in ourselves (whatever that means?!). Tarapith is the city of Tara; the Goddess of knowledge and compassion among the ten cosmic powers representing different phenomena of the great mother nature. As much as she may represent compassion, there wasn’t really an atmosphere invoking compassion in this town. To begin with, this time the rituals took place in cremation grounds rather than temples. It is quite common in tantric tradition to have spiritual practices in such places which reminds us how thin the line between life and death is and makes us confront our fear of death. There were many weird looking baba’s mostly wearing red, color of Shakti; the feminine energy with huge rasta hairs full of all kinds of beads and appearing half crazy half spooky. In Kamakhya it was common to see baba’s smoking weed in front of the temples as such drugs are also used by some tantrikas. Here alcohol seemed to be the preferred choice of vessel towards communion with divinity! In the midst of all these half-baked people of course one starts questioning again; ‘what the f. am I doing here?!’

Despite all the facade around, it’s obvious that we can transform the space we enter. Our group all in red dhouti’s (a piece of cloth the men wrap around their waists) and saris (that may be more familiar to the reader) somehow created our own sacred temple in a way. Huge yantra drawings Manu prepared were put on the ground and women started decorating these yantras with colored rice. Perfect entertainment for someone like me who is obsessed with bright colors. Gurudji prepared additional yantras on the spot with a mix of colored rice and sand and connected all these yantras to each other with a thread. There were many locals gathering around us wondering what this huge group of foreigners are doing, so he also surrounded our space with rice. As if that border made of rice was an electric fence no one entered our space.

So we started with our practice without even any breakfast until the evening and opened our fast with the food prepared by Gurudji’s guru-sister (means that they shared a guru) Ma. We kept practicing in the same space for two more days from 9 in the morning until 8 in the evening, but somehow it felt like just a couple of hours. After a very strong closure Gurudji gave us the mantras to prepare for the next puja and it was OVER. Some members of the group couldn’t get enough and headed back to Gurudji’s house while others including me were on our way to Rishikesh right that evening.

It still doesn’t feel like it’s over though. According to Gurudji the effects of the puja will last for at least one more month, more purification reactions will come up and then the energy will be fixed. Honestly, I have no clue what the hell happened but I hope eventually we all will process this experience in our own way and see the effects.

Initially I was thinking about a bit of touristy fun heading towards Varanasi or Nepal but Manu told me that most of the puja people would go to Rishikesh to join the satsang[1] of a master called Prem Baba. Why not, let’s see what this famous Prem Baba is about. I heard many times that seekers in Agama who may get tired or challenged of the tough discipline, methodology and other aspects of the teaching end up going to Prem Baba. In Agama there is a methodic approach to tackle problems and blockages in certain levels of consciousness commonly referred to as chakras in order to move them to higher, more refined levels. By moving the energy up you don’t necessarily resolve your problem but you gain a new perspective by stepping out of the state of mind/emotions which created that problem. This way you generate the capacity to evolve in a way. This is a very valuable technology. Some however were looking for another approach and their paths crossed at Prem Baba’s sangha[2]. I heard about him from people whom I resonated with in Agama, but all I really knew was that he is Brazilian and focuses on working with the heart. I am not really a seeker for a Guru; I had many amazingly valuable teachers in life and I continue meeting new ones. I also experienced moments of surrender but I never had the need to look for a master ‘under whose wings I would hide and who would free me from my suffering’.  I mostly followed the flow of encounters. And that’s how I reached this day, the day I met Prem Baba.

                      

After a looooooong but relatively comfortable train ride I was exhausted of carrying my by now 30 kg bag pack, so I just settled for the first semi-decent hostel room that we could find. It is so cheap here that Joceline and I decided to go wild and stay in single rooms for the first time during this trip. The bathroom is common but clean. There are for sure many other options in Rishikesh but we are just weary of moving from one place to another. Besides, in Tarapith we enjoyed a super luxurious hotel room for a ridiculous price, satiated with comfort. At least we are in a very central location, in a cozy setting and very close to the ashram hosting Prem Baba’s satsang.

Without even having a look around Rishikesh I just jumped into my sleeping bag for a chill night and a sleep full of vivid dreams; waking up in a rather grumpy mood. Before I could stop nagging about the bathroom and all, we found ourselves in the hall already. I looked around and immediately got irritated by the neo-hippy characters around in flowery-powery cloths, shawls, long, bushy hairs, a fixed slimy smile on their faces; all the works. While they kept hugging each other I was already questioning why I decided to come here to begin with. However I should put a note here; one shouldn’t assume that only patchouli smelling rainbow community is ruling this particular spiritual realm; there are many strikingly attractive, sparkling people in the hall. I guess there are around 200 people including a part of our puja group. I also have to admit, the hall was super-clean and beautifully arranged. Not to mention your typical free-spirited kids running around. So the atmosphere is full on spiritual in a new-age western style. Then started the bhajan. Not the type of bhajan where some wanna-be-musicians play around with a guitar and a harmonium; a musical feast performed by competent artists. Some join in, most not but no one loses himself and overpowers the beautiful vocals. Well, when the setting is like that what else are you gonna do; I allowed myself to sink into an inner stillness beyond all the doubt and sceptism; just enjoyed the magical music. All of a sudden the group rose up to their feet and Prem Baba entered the hall. A weight was lifted off from my chest and some tears dropped before I knew what was happening. I thought I just got emotional after the long trip, the bhajan but I admitted to myself that I never saw a smile so mesmerizing.

Satsang was in Portuguese although Prem Baba speaks English, but I guess the largely Brazilian crowd is one of the reasons for that. There is consecutive translation, which complicated the process a little. What to do. Prem Baba has a background in psychology; therefore he makes many references to this western science in his teachings and highlights the importance of the transformation of our relation towards our parents as our first heroes and villains in life. Some of my friends mentioned a retreat he offers focusing on this work. I thought about our long talks with my dear friend Vivian. We went very deep into the patterns in our life defined through our relation with our parents and Vivian has been a true mentor to me in that direction. Afterwards I went even deeper and pushed my own buttons big time dwelling upon the existentialist theories of Irvin Yalom and the like. I obsessed about this confrontation with family so much that my mother-issues appeared as the reasons behind many chronic health issues. Thanks to my dear teacher Laura I came to realize that going so deep and trying to confront all the darkness within are just suffocating and one has to go step by step; treat herself gently. In short, some of what Prem Baba was saying at his satsang was familiar to me.

He briefly talked about how we will have to suffer through several confrontations until we finally manage to bow down in front of our parents and be truly grateful for bringing us into this world and showing us many mirrors along the way. He stressed the importance of witnessing all kinds of bitter-sweet emotions without judging, reacting to or identifying with. While valuing the feeling of regret as a sacred teacher for ourselves he invited us to refrain from self-blame which carries a huge portion of hatred. It is worthwhile to contemplate on this distinction.  Another important distinction Baba referred to is the difference between understanding and comprehension on a spiritual path. I can relate to that very well right now as I have no clue what Gurudji was doing; there is no way for me to understand it with my logical mind at this moment but I may be able to comprehend the intense universal energy called Shakti.

Following some discourses on these topics and more the satsang was concluded with another round of Bhajan after two hours. Prem Baba announced that he would accept the first comers and the ones who are leaving that day. I observed how many people started queuing up next to his seat. Despite all my scepticism towards these kind of salutations I also joined the que just to feel his energy up-close. I know from my experience in Agama that if you go close to very strong meditators it may feel like entering a magnetic field. While standing in the que I kept on observing what was happening. When their turn was on people one by one kneeled down in front of him giving a namaste and bowed down to his feet; some gave him flowers, others some cards or envelops. Too much for my standards; so what am I going to do?! Some kids were giving him their drawings and what I noticed was that he was looking at every offering with great attention, not just putting them aside. To some he said a few words to others gave just a greeting with a big warm smile on his face. Then it was my turn. The lights of my mind suddenly went off. I found myself in a moment of fullness where there is no space for any observation, doubt or intention. My heart felt three times bigger suddenly and wanted to come out of my chest so I had to put my hands there to keep it in; not because that is the way to greet! Feeling seen by him, warm by his smile; an ultimate acceptance and peace. I was struck so hard that a big knot from my heart dissolved. Then and there I accepted. Maybe it is not about choosing a guru or a path; rather having a divine inspiration to move on. That is more than enough.

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[1] Literally meaning being in the company of the wise, satsang is a discourse by a Guru

[2] Spiritual community

On the way to my first big Puja: Kamakhya

A beloved old friend stopped by recently before I headed towards another continent yet again. After some desperate attempts to get some words out of me about my many adventures around the tropics he finally gave up and made fun of my inability to tell travel stories. I took a great relief in that! Finally my inner circle started to realize, I am not secretive; just incapable of telling stories! All I end up uttering is ‘ehhhmm, there was a beautiful sea, pine trees, very pretty’. Pathetic really! So I decided to put my stories into writing instead. It is an issue though to write about this specific trip as I am at a puja; a Sanskrit word used for a spiritual ceremony like a pilgrimage. No good can come out of details shared from a puja neither to the teller nor to the reader; so I will stick to our daily experiences and their reflections on me.

On the way to Mumbai I ran into Pema and Rebecca. Pema is an old friend I met first in Sundance and later at a Vipassana retreat. I got to know Rebecca on the island last year. She seemed like a quiet, introvert girl; then I got a chance to watch her dance the Hawaian Hula and was amazed by the mesmerizing, elegant goddess acting through her. I didn’t know that Hula dance is so naïve and feminine at the same time!

We had our first samosas together at the airport and took our flight to Nagpour in the center of India; a bus and a taxi trip later we were in Gurudji’s house. I prepared myself for a quiet, conservative environment with men and women in their separate corners as it is required in a vipassana retreat however where there are Agama people there is a joyful circus. Thanks to some of my fellows from the Agama Teacher Training Course, especially Joceline, I managed to find some refuge. Ironically Joceline was the only person I didn’t have any conversation with during the whole three months of the TTC. During this puja however, she turned out to be my savior. Together we stepped away from the loud and hyper-social into peaceful and reserved. She took me to a nice corner in Gurudji’s house to settle in and the journey was officially on!

I took this trip inspired by my friend and teacher Manu. I thought if this beautiful man turned out to be so angelic after working with these masters, this is the direction I am interested in. Gurudji is a right-hand Tantra master following the guidance of King of Shambala; a sacred realm of enlightened souls. White or right hand tantra can simply be described as a path of awakening going through the force of life, universal energies and powers. In practice it is a highly shamanic path involving working with mantras (sacred sounds) and yantras (sacred geometric forms), meditations on cosmic powers of manifestation called Mahavidya’s, rituals involving several elements. I don’t want to go further with details of this path; need-to-know-basis let’s say. I joined the puja following many long conversations with Manu and also due to my curiosity of right hand tantric practices. Well if I am calling myself a yoga teacher, I should know more about what I am referring to sometimes, right? Besides I haven’t been on a trip with no clear idea about where I will end up. I keep on going to restaurants to eat dishes I’ve tasted before, to stores to buy staff I can put on my shopping list in advance, to destinations I have a clear idea in what kind of setting I would find myself in…Even last year when I decided to spend some months in Thailand on an island that decision may have been radical for some, but for me it was a place I have seen and enjoyed before to study a teaching that I have experienced and deemed fit before. In the current context there is a tiny factor decreasing the surprise element; most of the 101 participants are or were students of Agama. So some of them I even know personally which of course gives a feeling of security. However I want to believe that step by step I am still increasing my tolerance to ambiguity with this choice!

Manu warned us many times in advance that our western minds may be challenged by not only the harshness of the physical conditions but also the chaotic practice. We should expect many physical and emotional purifications and the only way to make it through is to surrender to the process. For the ones who haven’t been on a spiritual journey before; let me tell you that this whole concept of purification is a nasty business! The physical and emotional purification also means equally intense reactions to whatever is happening to our being and you may find yourself in rather dark holes that you weren’t even aware they existed within you.

Saoneer was logistically very challenging for most Europeans but as I had the experience of spending many nights in my own country’s villages, nesting in sleeping bags in cold gyms at youth camps during my college years and camping on the mountains for years I wasn’t really bothered much. For five days we went into a marathon of rituals and long hours of meditation with many mantras. However that part wasn’t so easy. This puja focuses on the root of our being, the Muladhara chakra. Muladhara is the gateway between our body and the nature surrounding us. Therefore our physical wellbeing and strength, our desires, needs, fears and anxieties concerning the material world, our patterns and addictions pumping up our ego are mostly managed by this chakra. Therefore many got seriously ill and/or had to deal with strong emotions and thoughts coming up while stirring the energies at this level of our being. On my third day in Saoneer a very heavy flu took me over. Amplified by breathing constrictions my emotions got so wild I couldn’t sleep anymore and had to turn on my computer and write down all the dark thoughts passing through my mind. In my teenage years where I believe my mind had a lot more clarity and sharpness I used to heal myself by writing. If there was a sleepless night, I would just let the words flow; so I wanted to do the same. I was totally shocked by what came out. I lived the darkest, ugliest, unhappiest, loneliest loser version of myself in those moments. When I read it now I am touched by the sincerity and the purifying effect of those words. In the next days of the puja more dark thoughts and anxiety, especially about money and career popped up, but it all got a lot milder after that night.

Physically and emotionally destroyed I asked myself many times in the middle of a ritual ‘what the f. am I doing here? Did I totally lose it?!’

By the sixth day of the puja we took off for Kamakya. Imagine 101 people and Gurudji’s extended family occupying the small airport of Nagpour! My record in travelling in a group was taking four busses full of AEGEE people from all over Europe to Cappadocia with three other friends and heading to Skopje again in a bus full of youngsters; so limited to road trip. Reminiscing all these beautiful events I keep telling myself how blessed I am for having such an amazing life; feeling so much gratitude for all these adventures I was allowed to experience! And now I add and upgraded travel experience, a plane full of people in one common direction and purpose! We all enjoyed this trip and the fresh air after staying at Gurudji’s place; especially the warm showers in Calcutta. Throughout the whole trip I enjoyed staying in the flow without making any prior arrangement other than buying the flight tickets and it all worked out beautifully.

And Kamakhya! As many other tantric hotspot, this town is also wretched and intense. I’d imagine to witness some divine esthetics and artistic expression but either due do the overpowering of vedantic paths or the negative influence of the magicians following black tantra that’s hardly the experience. However these towns are indeed energetic hotspots and it is hard to miss it. In that sense Kamakhya was truly special and I felt very good in a strange way, although I didn’t recover from my mean flu. According to a myth Shiva gets too comfortable in his deep meditations and neglects his chores of destroying the universe, while His fellow God Brahma keeps on creating and Vishnu keeps on preserving. So his fellows beg the Great Mother; the divine Goddess to send Shiva a consort to keep Him in action through her feminine power. The Mother agrees on one condition; she will take a worldly form of Sati, Shiva’s consort if the men on the world remember and respect her divinity. Shiva and Sati enjoy a great love shaking mountains with their ecstasy. However as the time pass men forget the divine nature of Sati, the feminine and neglect her. When Shiva and Sati were not invited to a gathering of all deities and gods, Sati gets upset and decides to leave her body after entering a state of deep meditation. When Shiva finds her dead body he gets so furious that he tears the sacrificial body into pieces and let’s each piece drop on the earth. Each piece generates earthquakes and tornados wherever it lands. The details of the story changes according to the teller but their common point is Sati’s yoni fell on Kamakhya; therefore this town is considered as the yoni of the Great Mother; the universe. There are smaller and larger temples for different deities; each one of them with a small, dark sanctum sanctorum for the goddess full of incense. Many Bengali’s sacrifice goats for the Great Mother, making the whole scene even more dramatic with real blood running through the gates of the temples. Beyond all these experiences, I left a piece of my heart in the main temple; devoted to the Great Goddess and one of her many faces.

Kamakhya is definitely not a place for a regular tourist to visit, but if you are on the search for a connection with the feminine, the power, the source she can tell you many stories. While listening to them I kept wondering about the stories hiding in the mountains and valleys of Anatolia and my mother country beyond the Caucasus where my roots lie.

Photos: bbtomas.com

Solitude

I don’t have a place in anybody’s life.

This is the dark side of my much beloved solitude.

As many other women subjected to a high culture from their childhood on, I have a slightly longer distance between my inner world and what I project outside. High culture may sound snobbish to the reader and the reader is correct; I am a snob. However this time I use it in its scientific meaning; a culture with highly developed social norms and etiquette. They tend to be broken easily in the chaotic, hedonistic, superficial urban life; as flexibility is not one of the qualities of such a sophisticated set of values. So what I personally end up with is a deep rooted belief system shaped by highly specific norms and qualities which can only survive in their natural habitat, except I wasn’t born in that habitat!

One of the important rules is no unpleasant emotions or extremely pleasant emotions are to be displayed in public. Not because we are psychopaths, on the contrary it is out of respect to the inner worlds of everyone around. Our unpleasant moods or extreme happiness shouldn’t trigger and cause discomfort to others. So it comes from a place of respect and compassion; beautiful…

I mastered it quite well for a long time (except for my outburst of joy or anger in the confines of a much closed circle) but my quest in life brought me to a place where the inner world needs to meet and connect with the outer. The natural disasters as well as the miracles happening in the inside may as well be contained; valid choice. Turns out; it cannot be my path any longer as it is not serving me and creating diseases in my body. My path is about bringing awareness to this circus inside, value it compassionately knowing that it does not define who I am, still allow it to gently pour out of me. The latter is a challenge, still unknown territory. I am trained to be composed, as any other human being I am working my ass off to be the ideal I set for myself. Let me clarify; the ideal doesn’t only mean the achievement of certain, set social goals to be loved, respected and appreciated. It also contains the zillions of personality traits, some of which contradicting the other, however all deemed valuable and stored in the hard-drive called subconscious throughout my life. So in the different corners of my mind there is this me in her ideal form and shape that my programming strives to achieve; me as I managed to master up till now and performs in the social life, parts of me that I am totally unware of and the me who observes this play. There may be a couple of others that I miss out now but you get the picture; pretty crowded in there.

And there are moments when I am right in between the inner and the outer. Not resting peacefully in myself or performing for the outside world but just looking and trying to figure out what is real at that moment. The real, when I started with this writing was finding no place for myself. So I want to look into that. What causes that sentiment? On the surface there are several triggers. It is more difficult to find common points to even have simple conversation about with my family as our worlds seem to grow further and further apart. I feel tired of being the ‘eccentric yogini’ when I meet my old friends; that many things I do seem super interesting and also weird to them. I happened to go through several relationships recently where I felt in the periphery, like a pleasant guest who doesn’t want to overstay; afraid she won’t be welcome anymore should she wish to relax and settle in. While thinking about all this another part of me was screaming ‘bullshit, you have so much love in your life’ but I didn’t want to listen to that part. Yes there is a lot of love in my life. This doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t face the shadow making me feel like I don’t belong. I don’t only want to think that I belong to everyone and everywhere as long as I am rooted in myself; I also yearn for the full comprehension of it. There are many ways leading to such a connection and one is to be able to look into the face of the evil within. That evil may only be a part of me that I manufactured to protect myself from pain and I am grateful for it. Just; it is time to let go.

A few moments in my shadow later I received a message from a friend far away. He was explaining me about a deep connection he had with me during a meditation yesterday, how he truly experienced us both reaching bliss and how he realized that I am an anchor in his life. The controversy hidden in this synchronicity pops up as a naughty little elf in the sky pointing its fingers at me, shouting out loud ‘you silly little idiot’ and laughing.

Does that message erase all the doubts and worries? No. My work on this is too deep to be carried away with one spark. But it does show me the nature of this life; as it is called beautifully in Sanskrit Leela; the divine dance. 

Wound of the Arrow

I have thoughts about him in my mind, more often that I’d like. This state is unsettling. I was even feeling guilty for becoming obsessive. Then I remembered; this is not a coincidence; this is not just a random state. When the mind is so pre-occupied with something (someone) specific better look into it. The more I look into it the more I realize it is not about him that much; but more about a feeling of unfulfillment. I am not getting what I need.

There is something fundamentally wrong about insisting on the way I want to be loved. Not being happy when not getting the attention I’d like. That’s obvious; this is about my expectations and how I feel in control of my life. Nobody has the obligation to fulfill my expectations and being in control of my life is an illusion and a limitation of the mind. However the feeling is there; crystal clear. I am not going to cover it up with some text-book self-suggestions. I feel sad because I am not getting what I need. Not only sad, but also lonely, unworthy and contracted. I feel like a helpless baby. Or a little girl, who wants her father’s attention but he is just busy and she pretends to be OK with that not to further lose his love.

I watched a movie some time ago; about a funny and sweet chef who loses his job and had to start from scratch. While he was struggling to get back on his feet his 10 year old son was pretending to be cool with his father taking him to movies and parks but never really connecting with him. Eventually they ended up having a road trip on a food truck with the son helping his father, the father teaching him how to cook. That was the turning point for them, the father being able to share his gifts with his son. He knew how to do that and more importantly he didn't need to understand what is really going through the mind of a smart and pretentious 10 year old. Simple, direct. This sharing completely changed the dynamics of their relationships, made them a team. I was so sad to realize that my father and I couldn't find our food truck. That made me cry a lot. Then I also remembered his joy and pride the few times we could play volleyball together; a game we both love, enjoy (and kicked ass!) It felt so good to be in the same team with him. I can remember clearly how he opened up to me when we could do something together simply because we both liked it. No sense of obligation, no calculation, no life lessons to learn or teach. That made me smile a lot. I just wished we could have played more. Maybe my shell would be softer; maybe I’d try less to run inside myself and play cool, constantly attempting to be in control; not to show how hurt I am for not getting what I need. Or maybe not.

And I had to laugh really a lot when my beloved Prem Babaji said not to share such inner journeys with others, because that simply makes us a boring person. A very valid reason indeed! There is also the reason of ego games. Who in you wants to share these processes? Do you need to convince others that this is the way to go; going deep into your patterns and dissolving them? I used to get really pissed off by some friends constantly preaching me with spiritual crap, ‘showing’ how to be or do. Fuck it! So not interesting! In case you are reading these lines, the author is enjoying her journey by playing with words as she loves this toy. Nothing more, nothing less!

Here you go; the words took me from the sharp pain of the arrow to the angelic, child-face of Eros. Walking on the path, jumping up and down, picking up a flower, hiding behind a tree, up and down, up and down…