GRACE IS HERE / MALE FEMALE MEANS BY WHICH SPIRIT TAKES FORM / RAM DASS ON YOGA

My daughter is giving birth. I am deeply moved to see the natural state in her, as her, the extreme wonder, intelligence of Life appearing as Mother as new Life. I am filled with awe for this Life and all life, for me and for YOU. Male female are in union. Spirit has taken form as you and me and my daughter’s child, named Grace Dyani. Source has appeared as this ordinary seen reality.

I said that it would be very positive for humanity if the leaders of the free world were a couple in a polarized relationship where the wisdom of both male and female dynamics of nature made the crucial decisions for humanity. I suggested that Hillary and Bill would approximate this yoga equation of male / female mutuality and that it would be recognized in secular thought because they would both be known as “President”.  America would have to deal with it. For me this was a Yoga dharma consideration not a political endorsement. I think also that Barack and his wife will express this mutuality in the White House more than ever before in human history. We may see the ending of the lopsided male power structures that are not surrendered to the feminine. May this happen quickly! It would be like “what if the Pope had a wife of equal social visibility and status.” What society would that have created. Yaah!

We know yoga to be the natural and actual means of participation in the male female union by which spirit takes form within and without. Yoga is so easily practiced and is a natural healing activity that is available to anyone who has breath. It is for everyOne everyWhere including individuals who do not have normal physical movement.
My friend Ram Dass was showing me with great joy how he had adapted his Yoga to his needs. One side of his body is paralyzed. He holds one arm with his good arm and moves the whole body as breath. It makes him feel well and joyful. It brings health into his system. He wanted to know why he had not been taught this earlier in his Life when it is clearly devotion. It is bhakti yoga to which his Life has been devoted. It is the direct intimacy with our Nurturing Source. In a poignant moment he tearfully apologized for hatha Yoga being so poorly represented in the West.  He said he never had a chance to do it because all his hatha yoga teachers were show offs. They would teach him extreme exaggerated, heroic things to do in the dualistic psychology of trying to get somewhere idealistic, imaginary enlightenment. Not the direct intimacy where each person participates in the wonder of Life already Given, in us as us.
So he was crying.. so sweet. “I have it now” he said. I love this man.

Deepak Chopra, Ram Dass, Krishna Das, Shyam Das

We just finished teaching with Deepak Chopra, Ram Dass, Krishna Das, and Shyam Das in Hawaii. Many people gathered for these retreats. For me to teach Yoga in this context is very auspicious because everyOne there has a sincere spiritual inquiry going on, otherwise they would not have taken the oportunity to come and meet us. Most everyOne before the retreat was not aware of the vital role a personal physical Yoga practice plays in the spirtual intention that teachers like Deepak Chopra and the Dass Brothers are bringing forth. in fact, most of the students there had previously, and justifiably rejected yoga as not being relevant to their spiritual Life because of the gross way yoga is taught as a muscular exaggeration and egoic effort. However, once given the technology of the nondual practice of Hatha Yoga, a tantric practice in which one celebrates their direct connection to Source, rather than striving to achieve God’s grace, it becomes obvious that this is their primary bhakti. By participating in the union of all polarities already Given, they are expressing devotion to Reality or God, within and without. It is easy for each person to learn because it is about intimacy with who you are, the extreme intelligence of Life, the very visibility and expression of Source. Without this practice it is very difficult to go beyond the dualistic presumptions that seem to seperate our ordinary Seen conditions and Source. These doctrinal ideas are present everywhere and we do not even know we have them. The social concept of looking for God itself creates the belief of God’s absence. Looking for something implies it is lost! By a careful nondual understanding and the practical means of the “ha tha”, we participate in the Given and are no longer searching for what was never lost.
Gratefully Ram Dass and Deepak acknowledge this equation and are encouraging their students to learn an approriate personal Yoga and I am happy to give it.
I also want to acknowledge the enormous public work that Deepak Chopra and Ram Dass, Krishna Das and Shyam Das have done to bring the understandings of the great traditions into the public mind of the west. Thank God.
it was a joy to see them together. It was great to give Ram Dass his Yoga at the age of 76 recovering from a severe stroke. I know he felt it as his whole body prayer to the One who loves him. Krishnamacharya always said that the nurturers of the community have a special right to practice Yoga because it is direct intimacy with our nurturing Source. I said to him, “Now the great nurturer is nurtured.”