Asana, your first spiritual responsibility and the Eros of God.

The soul’s relationship to God is described in religious traditions as an erotic play between male and female divine personalities. There are many examples. Sita and Ram, Radha and Krishna, Shiva and Shakti. These human stories do not by pass the extreme sensual pleasure of a love relationship. The ‘erotic’ quality is of course in the most positive use of the word. It is the eros or utter connection; the connection of the soul to the Lord, the individual to the universe. This Eros quality is ‘eros ive’ to the soul’s obstructions (heavy like rock or soil) and allows the soul’s reunion with its source. My personal research with the dying showed me that in death there is an utter pleasure for the person merging back to their Source. They describe it in terms like delicious, exquisite, utter peace. This religious, ‘re linking’ point of view is clearly the opposite of other religious methodologies that teach the transcendence of desire as THE way. So we need to figure this out and take a personal position on what works for us.
Believe it or not, the participation with the obvious union of opposites in our own life, as simple as left to right, front to back, above to below, inhalation to exhalation, strength to receptivity, male to female, within and without IS your ancient religious, re linking, Eros, participation in the universe, you and source reality that is nothing other than nurturing, abundance, regeneration, continuity and healing. It is the soul’s relationship to God (if that language is ok for you) and it is erotic and delightful. So what is the implication? “Do your Yoga,” not just any Yoga but your Yoga, your participation in your own opposites. Elevate asana to the extreme religious priority, non-obsessive spiritual responsibility and practical means that it is. This exquisite participation in the opposites already in erotic union as your own life may very well result in the same Eros wonder, strength receiving in the outer polarity (that is with some one you love!) although it does not need to. But it will result in the certainty of your utter connection, absorption in the nurturing wonder of this total universe, arising as the sheer regenerative perfection and extreme intelligence of life that is YOU.

Esalen Talk 8/13/09

Mark speaks recently at Esalen, California. His friend John Patrick was visiting. He had moved in his life from praticing as a monk in a religious order to become a yogi. Mark discusses the dissociation of meditation (as if it it is something you can do as a separate practice) from its Yoga context. “The Buddha was a Yogi, not a meditator” The pervasive doctrinal social influence to abide as witness consciousness diminishes the value of experience and creates conflict with ordinary experience including and especially sex, the the extreme intelligence of ordinary Life. The Buddhist, Vedantic or Christian monastic life, going within, has destroyed the value of the individual and all natural relationship. “It is intimacy we want, not enlightenment.” The very concept of enlightenment is only a power mechanism, a hoax that has destroyed humanity’s inherent intimacy with life. Yoga is a the return to intimacy for everyOne. Yoga is direct embrace of reality, which is only nurturing, abundance and continuity. Yoga is the embrace of all ordinary experience, not merely to be aware or witness experience. Then we spontaneously feel the Source of all experience.

REMINDER.. What is Yoga. AND you can do it. Actual and Natural, Daily. Not obsessively

Hello everyOne. Have a peace full 2009. Do this for yourself and our suffering world. It will catch on. I like R.E.M. last album Accelerate… full of 2 minute songs like the early days of pop. First track is… Living Well is the best Defense.
I am so glad Michelle and Barack will be in the White House. You could not have made it up. Would have been a good movie. A black couple with a Islamic name ruling America. It is the worst of times and the best of times.
I just wanted to remind everyone of the basic stuff. Here it is…
Yoga is the natural means of every person’s direct participation in the nurturing source of life. Through intimate relationships of every kind we realize this healing force, because life is about relationships. In Hatha Yoga,  ha is masculine and tha is feminine.

Hatha Yoga has come out of the vast ancient tradition of Tantra, which is non-dual in its philosophy and based on the understanding that the source of life cannot be separate from the ordinary seen conditions of life. An asana practice is participation in the union of all opposites: left/right, above/below, front/back, inhalation/exhalation, inner/outer, spirit/form. All these opposites contain the male/female equation of life already in perfect union. Hatha Yoga is strength that is receiving.

Three of the most important relationships in my life have been with my teachers, U.G. Krishnamurti, Krishnamacharya and my mother. They were perfect examples of the complete mutuality of male and female character, absolutely strong yet totally receptive at the same time.

Krishnamurti used to tell me, “A yogi is genderless.” He believed that both genders are entirely active and neither one is dominant. Krishnamacharya’s view was that the non-dual practice of yoga is necessary to be intimate with life in every way. My mother taught me that we are all loved and cared for, and we love and care even if the limitations of our circumstances seem to be suggesting otherwise. She had a caring tangible emotional connection to all things.

All of my teachers helped me understand that in our culture, the feminine aspect has been devalued, due to the prevailing social patterns of male control. Men lose out too because it is as much a denial of men as it is of women. Motherhood and intimacy have suffered, and we have very little sexual wisdom in contemporary life. Yoga philosophy is totally the opposite. By embracing experience, we will know the source of experience.

If we really practice Hatha Yoga in all its aspects, we become more interested and able to receive life. The whole body is where opposites have perfectly merged. Sometimes it is felt as a measureless depth, an actual location to the right of the physical heart, the portal between source and seen conditions. It is the first cell of life where spirit took form as the union of male and female, and from which the whole spine and cakras flower.

The left/right, above/below, within/without, male/female qualities of life are already in union. I saw this in all of my teachers, but especially in U.G. Krishnamurti. He was a living example of how spiritual transmission can only occur in equal and mutually chosen friendship, not in the more common social dynamic of teacher/student power inequity. This mutuality is one of the vital transforming functions of yoga.

When we understand that we do not have to look for god or truth, yoga begins. The substance of reality comes bubbling through, and the current of life flows through us. We find this nurturing force in our natural state and all our relationships. We do not have to sacrifice our own health and pleasure to save this world. In fact, it gives us the kind of energy we need to work tirelessly to ease the needless suffering everywhere.

2 Useless Guys

and I say this with completely irreverent reverence. (UG used to say that ‘U’ ‘G’ stood for Useless Guy). love to you both.

Mark and UG circa 2002 in Palm Springs, California