“There is only one pathway to Peace, Love and Joy, and that is reunion with the Divine. This pathway is indeed the journey Home and the gateway is your own heart!”
—Sri Ram Kaa from 2012 Atlantean Revelations (p. 237)
It is a cloudy, rainy Monday. I walked 20-minutes to my new yoga teaching gig at the martial arts school, New York San Da, in which I have been affiliated with for about ten years. No one showed up. I waited for 40-minutes and then walked back home in the light rain. The drizzle would have felt like God taking a piss on me if I hadn’t been walking with Jesus and by “Jesus” I don’t mean the Hispanic guy who sells me fruit on 52nd & 8th.
I had recently decided to read the New Testament, mostly to grab pieces from it to form into a metaphoric bat in which to club the heads of the stupid Christians who read everything in the Bible literally. Not that I wouldn’t want to take this out of the “metaphoric” realm, mind you, only, for now, I prefer my liberty outside of a prison cell. I pray for a land, like the Great Muslim Plains, where you don’t have to tolerate others, you can instead beat and kill them—and then pass the buck to God, stating your claim that this is what He wants. But until I find a beautiful country life like this, the best I can do is beat people with logic and humor. Weak.
The other reason for my newfound interest in the New Testament is because of a newfound love for Jesus that occurred years ago after I cut the last chain of identification with being a Jew by declaring that I would only work on the Sabbath. In truth, my love for Jesus actually occurred lifetimes ago, not from frauds like “Saint” Paul or the ignorant apostles but from the J-man himself.
I once got a free New Testament that was so small I could shove it all the way into my ass. I tried this with a Koran but this resulted in not only a ripped sphincter but also sixteen people being killed over a shitty book in the name of Islam, which translates as “peace.” I also tried this with an Old Testament but those cheap Jews, always trying to save a penny, use only single-ply paper in their publications that doesn’t absorb anything and leaves you spending the rest of the day like a mother gorilla picking fleas out of her child’s ass.
So I’ve been carrying around my little New Testament and started to even read it. And I’m diggin’ it! I am amazed that despite the telephone game of translations from Aramaic to Latin to German to Greek that occurred, and all the manipulations from the people in power to keep down the people without, that still the beauty of Jesus finds its way into that book…for those with the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
The reason why most don’t get as much out of “reading” Jesus is because reading Jesus is like thinking you can know someone by looking at the outside of his house. It is not “only in my name” that you will get to “Heaven,” it is through his energy—which is your energy of love and unity—that you will get to the inner sanctum of yourself and there you will find the most Holy of Holies in your own personal temple. In Hebrew the word translated as “name” in the New Testament is Shem, which can also mean “energy pattern; signature; fullness; abundance” Instead we look at the paintjob of the house and pretend we know its resident. I would prefer a blowjob.
So I’m reading St. Matthew and got to Chapter 5 where located are the Beatitudes, you know, all those “Blessed are the…” lines as well as many that don’t start with those three words. And my heart was flooded. And the tears flowed. And the pain of separation was washed away.
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if though bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
—Matthew 5:21-24
To be right with our brothers and sisters—in the hippie sense of the word meaning we are all one family (clarified so you Christian robots don’t just think that if you are right with your nuclear family to hell with the rest)—it is more “holy,” “God’s work,” “devotional,” a faster “path to Heaven” than putting some flowers on an altar, or bowing down to some book or man or imaginary being sitting on a throne somewhere.
The Christian robot will run to their brother and hug him and then run right back to the church, thinking that they were just unclean to enter and the reconciliation was like a shower of purification so now they are “worthy.” The Christian robot tries to become worthy of God’s love; the New Age yoga poser tries to become worthy of enlightenment. Both these ideas are praying to false idols.
You are not reconciling with your brother in order to get somewhere else. In the reconciliation itself you have created a temple and don’t need to run in search of one made of brick and mortar.
Trapped in the mind, we seek love and union through logic. “He makes a good living; he is moderately good-looking; his breath smells good, like spearmint; he is a good partner for me.” But in practice we see that logic seems to play no role in love. If someone asks you, “Why do you love him?” and you answer, “He’s very wealthy,” it is not love but leisure. If someone asks you, “Why do you love her?” and you answer, “Look at that ass! How could I not love her?” it is not love but lust. If someone asks you, “Why do you love him?” and you answer, “I don’t know, I just do,” it may be love. Then again, you may just be an inexpressive idiot.
The Jewish girl brought a boy to her home and told the family the great news, that he had proposed to her and that they were engaged to be married. The father said that he’d like to speak to the boy alone and went in the other room with her fiancé.
“So, what do you do for a living?” asked the father.
“I don’t have a job right now,” said the young man.
“So how are you going to support my daughter?”
“God will provide.”
“Do you have a house where you will live?” asked the father.
“Ever since my parents kicked me out of their house, I have been wandering the streets for awhile and rest my head in the alley ways between stores after hours,” answered the young man.
“Is this any way for my daughter to live?” asked the father.
“Of course not! She will live in a big house with a beautiful garden and a white picket fence,” said the young man.
“And who will pay for this big house and garden and picket fence?”
“God will provide.”
“And what about children? Do you plan to have children with my daughter?”
Oh yes, sir, many, many children! We will have at least a dozen, maybe more.”
“And who is going to feed and clothe these children?” asked the father.
“God will provide,” said the young man.
“Okay, I’ve heard enough. Please leave the room and tell my daughter to come in here,” said the father.
The young man left and the daughter entered.
“So what do you think? He’s great, isn’t he, father?” beamed the daughter.
“He’s a nice enough boy,” said the father. “My only issue with him is that he thinks I am God.”
Logic has a use but when you take the heart out of the matter—not just as a tool to feel what your mind has logisticated but acting as the interpreter as well—your reading of anything is going to be heartless and dead. And when that happens, you fit the words of the Masters into your own philosophy and chisel away what doesn’t appeal to you. You have taken in a Botero, pulled out your paintbrush and changed the big fat white woman into a petite Asian, because you don’t appreciate art or an artist, you are instead attached to an ideal of what you think art is. I may not want to fuck a fatty but this doesn’t stop me from seeing them as masterpieces of the Artist.
This is also why someone like my friend Dizzy got completely offended when after she told me how she was too busy to come to my yoga classes because any free time not working or acting, she was supporting her actor friends by seeing them in plays I responded was an acknowledgement that she is strung out, not just on heroine but on busy-ness, but also pointed out that my teachings are my “plays.”
She told me, “When I come to your yoga class, I focus on myself. I’m not there to watch you teach. I don’t ask you to come to one of my plays and get up onstage and act!” She sees me as a “good” yoga teacher because my sequencing is “good” and my instructions are “good” and through the intellectual mind that seeks to divide and conquer into “good” and “bad” one will never grasp that what I teach has little to do with yoga postures and how I guide you through them—even if that were all I was to talk about in a given class. My teaching is really just a platform for me to try out my dirty jokes, likened to an out of town preview for a Broadway show. [See “Duck Concedes To Anal!” http://rebelyogi.com/duck-concedes-to-anal.html]
And so when she takes beef with my interpretation of Jesus or the Catholic Church, such as her comments on Ash Holes [http://rebelyogi.com/ash-heads.html] and even her snotty (incorrect) “correction” to my poem The Warrior [http://rebelyogi.com/the-warrior.html], it is partly because she takes herself and her religion too seriously but mostly because she hasn’t gotten past the words to the heart of the teachings. For if she had she would be able to see to the real message that lies in a spring of pure energy beyond my crudeness and that this message is the same one that Jesus shares, only he does so with “these” and “thou’s” and I do so with “pussy” and “douchebags.” Maybe she was just on the rag that day.
We’ve lost the eyes to see and the ears to hear and so we rely on words as our sole way to interpret another’s message, be it Jesus or me or your brother, instead of the heart as the “soul” way to really know another. Jesus wasn’t giving us more Commandments to imprison us into a new moral code; he was giving us technology to open our hearts as not just a pump, but as a sense organ of understanding. The “Truth” that would “set us free” was not Jesus or his words…but our own hearts.
After connecting to the energy of Jesus, I put my prayer hands to my forehead and said, “Fill me.”
Jesus said, “I am always pouring; you just have to open your vessel and you will be filled.”
I lowered my prayer hands to my lips and said, “Bless me.”
Jesus said, “I cannot bless you for you are already a blessing.” And in these words I knew he meant that all of my brothers and sisters were blessings as well.
I lowered my prayer hands to my heart and said, “Love me.”
Jesus said, “Whether you murder your brother or feed the poor, whether you are successful in business or busy with sickness, whether you become famous and remembered forever or your name disappears with your body, all I can do is love you. For my love makes no decisions, points in no particular direction and is always available to all who are open to it.”
And with this I wasn’t “born again,” I had just carved away the scale of judgment and worry and doubt that had formed on my pipe and created a space inside for my natural love to fill and flow. And as I stood up and went about my day, I didn’t leave Jesus, for he was in that space inside of me. And he wasn’t even a “he”…he was a blessing.
“The spiritual master expresses what he is in his silence, in his gaze, in his gestures, in his very presence. The disciples who gather around him absorb his silence, become lost in his presence and discover the presence of what they really are, their authenticity…”
—Swami Ramakrishnananda
I love you, Swami X, because you are authentic and unashamed of it. Because you are present in the moment, regardless of the outcome. Because you understand that it’s ALL yoga, and all Jesus, and none of that matters. Because you are powerful enough to create a vortex without even realizing it. Because you stand up for those who have no voice, and live your truth regardless of what any so-called “responsible” person thinks of you. Because you try to honor your deluded old parents regardless of how they torture you with their unconscious living, and regardless of how you slam them on your blog. Because you do care about sharing, through your silence and your presence, your authenticity.
The angst and let-down that you feel with this world, this blog, these yogis, reflect your willingness to look at the real world rather than hide from it, and your willingness to feel feelings whether they are pleasant or not. One cannot look at this world with eyes open and not feel heartbroken. And one cannot look at this world with eyes open and not feel inspired.
I too feel this constant cycle of feelings because I walk with eyes open. I am glad to have the company of other warriors on the path because it reminds me that I’m not just swimming in an infinite sea of the unconscious-ones. It reminds me to stop being such a fucking whiner woosy girl and keep on surrendering to this path.
You, Swami X, are like a muscly life-preserver in this infinite sea of douche.
And yes, you can quote me on that.
It doesn’t matter if you write anything. And it doesn’t matter if that writing is divine, or derogatory.
Or not. I may not love every word of it, but I take it for what it is.
I do not idolize you, but I truly appreciate you! Thanks for sharing your grace. As long as I’m hanging around, you’ve got a place here in Delray (I mean besides your Momma’s titty).
Your long comment reminds me of when I write a letter (email to you youngin’s) and the “P.S.” is longer than the body of the letter. The proper thing to do would be to make the “P.S.” the letter and call the letter the “prescript.”
Your words are very nice. Thank you. I am probably not as great as you give me credit for, as it would take much more of my energy to keep my mouth shut than to spew my venom—so I’m really taking the easy way out! Do remember that most of my poison is really just nectar in disguise and that I am not really attached to the emotional “tone” of the pieces.
One CAN look at the world with open eyes and not feel heartbroken. There are two ways to accomplish this. One is to be dead but that’s really no fun for anyone, your corpsy ass or the people around you who have to deal with the smell of you rotting. The other way is hinted at in the second half of your statement: to feel inspired.
How we view ANYTHING, be it a little girl handing a freshly-picked flower to a little boy and telling him, “I love you,” or someone in slavery because the people in power want to maximize their money selling shiny rocks, can be seen from a more expansive view…of souls…and growth…and an eternal consciousness…and then the limited perspective due to a lack of awareness and understanding blurs and the anger and fear surrounding your narrowed view also dissipates.
But, while we are all not fully conscious, someone suffering—real or Memorex, Zion or The Matrix—is still “real” suffering and if you can relieve it, without torturing yourself in the process, then why not, if that is the world you want to create. By “not torturing yourself,” I don’t mean there will be no tears or struggle involved; just that the tears will be of gratitude and the struggle will be one of service to a Higher Principle.
And to have one’s “eyes open” doesn’t mean that the visual cortex is able to process the visual stimuli but that one can see beyond the surface of another, themselves and reality to the very core.
I am not anyone’s life-preserver; I tell others to stop splashing and bobbing and start swimming themselves. The only reason I would do a cross-chest carry on anyone is to get a little tit.
And now the original piece has become the “prescript” to our two long commentaries
Blessings, sister.
I love you guys.
Love is cheap.
Sex is not—I should know, I’ve spent enough on it to feed a Third World country!