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anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
 Posted - Apr 23 2010 : 4:21:45 PM
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It's wonderful, just wonderful, how ecstatic yoga has turned most of my curses into blessings, with even better to come. I'm speaking not only of neurological disorders, but also a physical condition that most people would find a real burden - celiac disease. Here too, a sometimes grinding illness can become the most consumate wellness. Why I speak this way follows:
Blood tests indicate that I am in a chronic state of moderate malnutrition due to malabsorbtion in the small intestine. It's like being on a light fast all the time. I seem to have adapted for the moment, and am no longer haunted by hunger. (Gosh, I'm a real ascetic yogi! *laugh* ) Of course, this might change with the higher summer activity level.
Sometime small mistakes are made in the chow hall and I get sicker then usual, but it intensifies my ecstatic response, so who's complaining? (as many have observed over the millennia, "when the body is weak, the spirit is strong.") With a new cook, mistakes are more frequent now, and I know I'm eventually going to hit a real doozy. I await these big waves calmly as well, knowing that with each crushing trough comes an exhilerating crest.
I call it my Agony and Ecstasy for good reason. Because the entire lining of my small intestine gets sloughed away and infection sets in, the pain is wracking and wavelike, like a ferret gnawing me slowly to death from the inside. Hurry, ferret, hurry!
But then the miracle: sambhavi mudra and the yogic trance it commands shifts me from hell to heaven, the complete inverse of my previous state, as swiftly as a light switch. All infirmities and suffering suddenly fall away and an ecstatic orchestra strikes up in body and mind.
The ferret's frenzy becomes the bite of love - rosined bow against divine strings: each cell, nerve, and fiber tunes up beyond a fever pitch, beyond the furthest reach of heaven and earth, surpassing all understanding or description. (Tho' your intrepid reporter will always try! *laugh*) When I return - because I forget, I forget, that anything else could exist! - there is always the fathomless wonder: "How is it that a mortal man can experience that and remain alive?!" God, I've gone ecstatic here....Yes! Yes! I, sannyasi, agree with Dostoevsky that I both would and do give my entire life to these moments and not think it too much! No matter how many times I traverse the veil of billowing light, I find the impossible to be true: that these two realms do indeed exist side by side, though very few pursue the ability to experience it!
I eagerly await the final immersion, but in the meantime, this extended fast makes me who and what I am: a skater on the transparent surface between dual and non-dual worlds. So, be not satisfied with mere hearing of the dewdrop and the ocean, nor the spark and the flame - plunge yourself into that Ocean! Consume yourself in that Flame! Know beyond the philosophers knowing; become both the Journey and the Destination, and leave the mapmakers behind.
In this way, what is there to fear? You are already that which cannot be destroyed, but just need to realize it. Yogani's teachings bring that awareness. And when it comes, you will see that even when life's autumn foreshadows the path ahead, it is in this very moment that maples flame most brilliant against the fading light.
"Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy the shining hour of sun; we dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun?" Sufi
So turn away from fear and join me. May I have this dance?
Anandatandava |
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amoux
United Kingdom
266 Posts |
Posted - Apr 24 2010 : 04:41:08 AM
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Wonderfully inspiring and joyful. Thank you for this.
And I'll dance with you any time  It would be my pleasure. |
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anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - May 05 2010 : 3:21:47 PM
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Illness (Again)
Given my direct connection between suffering and spiritual ecstasy, I've naturally mined all the world's ecstatic writings I could find for echoing links. It quickly became evident that this relationship is the rule rather then the exception, going all the way back into the earliest shamanistic tradition.
So let us not begrudge our pain, for it is all to the good and happens for a reason. It deepens and ripens the soul, just as "the grape must suffer" for a stellar vintage. And in terms of ecstatic yoga it makes for excellent spiritual tinder. All that is then necessary is dedicated immersion in AYP spiritual practices: the continual throwing of divine sparks. The explosion comes, in this have no doubt.
Oh! Oh! Here it comes - from flat as a pancake (hey it's early, okay?!) my crown blossomed up like a cockatoo's crest (appropriate for a bird-brain) and the Flame burst open. Why? The bhakti flow from this satsang, and perhaps the biggest reason I bust my buns to be here and thirst for ever-greater bandwidth.
But there is more. Launched into a non-nurturing world with a damaged brain, a center never coalesced within me, a single figure I knew was "me". Countless fragmentary satellite identities emerged instead, orbiting a complete blankness. I didn't even know how I should hold my body or walk, much less interact with people. Sound like autism? Yup, plus dissociative identity disorder (DID) and sufficient additional medical acronyms to create a very muddled mosaic. Just when a portrait seemed to resolve in the confusion, everything shape-shifted and morphed into another form.
Lest you think DID just too weird, consider that it is in all of us to some degree. A simple example: upon going to bed the industrious you decides to get up early to perform a task. When the alarm rings the lazy you says, "No way!" and falls back asleep. When the industrious you awakens later, he can't believe what the lazy one did, and is pissed! In this regard, as in most others, I am just like you, only more so! *laugh*
Consider also that DID develops in response to intolerable conditions, and can eventually often be overcome or controlled. For example, while conditions allowed, I locked my "Business man" persona in place for years to run a successful software firm. When conditions changed, he got "retracted". If you think THAT too weird, consider Plato's "Allegory of the Cave": a sane man should not display his sanity in an insane world. In fact, he just might be best served acting more insane than most when he turns to the path of a sannyasi. Ergo, the Sufi fool, Taoist water, and the more radical Shaivite sects, etc.
Do you get the sense I've been leaving a lengthy logic bread-trail since arriving in your realm? If you're hungry for a novel loaf(er) or like jig-saw puzzles, keep following along.
But, back to my childhood: for better AND worse, ther was always an intelligent, suffering little boy trapped behind the wall of dysfunction. Also present, much to the eventual shock of even it's proprietor, was a heart just waiting to melt.
With no one in charge, the winds of fate blew me where they would, and I took on the traits and value system of anyone willing to let me hang around. Well, that didn't work out.
A lifetime later came the ignition point of my NDE, leading into obsessed spiritual study and the ecstatic practices of AYP. Within the ecstasy that developed there was, and is, a center to which to cling: a column, a fountain, of vibratory, fiery, melting Love, so strong there can be no doubt concerning it's Truth, or avoiding its abiding influence over my life.
And now, because of my unusual circumstances, I have directly tasted this love in Yogani and AYP devotees. Saints don't exist just in history books! Love is thick and resonant in the here and now. Here! Now!
Oh God, I'm overwhelmed, someone please take over! St. Teresa of Avila, you could speak well to the juxtaposition of suffering and ecstasy, especially in celiac: "I saw an angel close by me, in his hand a long spear of gold.....thrusting it into my heart and entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain that I could not wish to be rid of it."
And St. John of the Cross:
"O sweet burn! / O delicious wound! / .... That savors of eternal life, / And pays every debt! / In slaying you have changed death into life."
So now all my inner crosscurrents are gathered a single Rubric of Love. And AYP is the Isle of Love, with Sri Yogani at its Throne. In a little penninsula of this isle there stands a Maypole with colorfully talking streamers. As we celebrate AYP's spiritual Spring. I place each in your palm in turn. Please enjoy the Dance, for my intentions are simple and Pure.
When you wish to rest, bathe in the surrounding Sacred Waters. Surprise! I welcome you there too: a shoal of tropical fish, to nibble playfully at your toes, and blow talk bubbles in your ears. Just when you clearly distinguish an individual within the darting colors - Flick! He's gone! Bask in my close ministrations, and the Pearl of Love will grow and glow in your heart.
All of Love and AYP is this intimate to me, for both Yogani and quantum physics lead us to understand that we are not only woven into the fabric of the universe, and into each other, we are the very fabric itself!
What more perfect tantric summary than this:
"We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees... I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead, I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves." The English Patient
So, wanna juxtapose (in spiritual friendship?)
Anandatandava |
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Scott
USA
969 Posts |
Posted - May 05 2010 : 4:50:50 PM
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Dear Anandatandava,
If you are having trouble digesting nutrients, it's very good to eat papayas. It won't cure you but it might help!
Take care,
Scott |
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cl0udburst
Germany
1 Posts |
Posted - Jul 10 2018 : 6:13:59 PM
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