You are promised that the powers and states of well being idealized in the traditions will spontaneously be given to you. This is not an idol promise or some shtick in the marketing of some spiritual brand. It is a promise based on the logic and observation of religious scholarship. It is a technical matter. It is not poetry or spiritual speak.
A sublimity of human intimacy almost unknown in our time and the certainty that all life is supported by an extreme nurturing force you will feel. You will know it not through difficult self-improvements or heroic meditation, contemplation or pondering but by a simple moving and breathing practice designed exactly for you. It is your easy and direct intimacy with all ordinary conditions of your life the fundamental power of life that supports you and is you.
The Buddha was a Yogi. And “Love thy neighbor as thy self” is Yoga instruction from a Jewish Yoga master.
There is a right yoga for everyOne, easily learned. Yoga practice designed correctly for each person results in profound intimacy with every aspect of life. It is intimacy that is the point not meditation, not consciousness, not awareness, not enlightenment, not God realization. But all these arise spontaneously, naturally and unpredictably as “siddhi” or result of Yogic intimacy.
With the invention of the written word and doctrine the idealisms of meditation, enlightenment, God, compassion became abstractions. Practices were developed for the attainment of these abstract goals dissociated from their yoga context. Before this happened Yoga was the practical means developed in ancient wisdom culture (and still is) for every person to enjoy direct intimacy with Reality, which is nothing but a nurturing force, abundance, healing and regeneration.
Historically Buddha and Christ appeared in Yogic culture. Their realization spontaneously resulted from intimacy with all ordinary life, the natural state. We all have this already. It is not to be attained but merely and sherely enjoyed. Now we return to the ancient religious participation in our own time, in our own wonder before the search for the ideas of text seem to separate us from what we already have been given.
The abstractions of text are only descriptions of what is already true, not ideas for you to attain. The looking creates the imagined absence of what we are looking for. The looking is the problem and has been assertively put in us for many generations by unconscious social duplication, charm or threat. However nurturing source is appearing as the extreme intelligence of life, as all individuality. EveryOne is blooming in his or her own garden and that is not a poetic or spiritual statement. It is math. Source and seen are one. Therefore the seen is full and sufficient. By merging with all ordinary conditions the nurturing source is felt as the real and only reality. The compassion valued by all traditions flows. It is felt and shared. Love flows. Compassion is an action. It is touch and connection. It is attachment. Not detachment. It is the natural giving and receiving of life’s nurturing flow. And the source is full and sufficient and does not need to be realized. God has realized you and that is the end of the story. Indeed the universal religious method that developed in the name of Buddha and Christ, the monastic life, residing as witness consciousness to all experience turned experience into “other.” Doctrine formed the social mind and put us in conflict with our own experience, including and especially sex, which we then deny or manipulate in the attempt to feel better. This issue must be resolved to proceed in personal and public spiritual evolution and to bring peace and healing on earth.
Technically you cannot meditate or get enlightened. Meditation arises as siddhi, naturally when the conditions are right. Yoga is intimacy with all conditions. Sensitivity to your own inbodiment (excuse the pun) particularly Exhale / inhalation gives sensitivity to life, to yourself and others in life’s equation: strength receiving within and without… By this means nurturing source and force of all life is felt. Buddha’s realization that there was no problem to existence and the essential unifying nature of nurturing and compassion was realized not as meditative effort but as yogic connection. It arises as siddhi; spontaneous understanding arising from yogic intimacy with all ordinary conditions including of course male female polarity. The all male Buddhist orders and the idea that you can get to a future state called meditation or enlightenment by moving away from women or residing as the observer only created a problem for mankind we still suffer. This trying to take heaven by storm by reducing experience came 200 years after the actual Buddha as male doctrine. Meditation creates the very problems that it is trying to fix. That is the dissociation from the natural state and the pain of denying intimacy and sex. Where it is just a little intimate connection that calms the emotion and brings sharp clarity to mind. It was the early denial of the feminine not yet resolved. Yoga is participation in the given reality, not a looking for anything what so ever.
All human problems come from a lack of intimacy and there are many sincere teachers offering the calming meditation of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Vedanta and Jewish that dissociate the practitioner although temporarily relieving, like Prozac. They unsuspectingly pass on this cultural mistake. Through the generations it has caused the dysfunction we now must fix. This is not discing the sincerity of practitioners, just pointing out the limitation and the fact that a Yoga is required as the practical means to realize the ideals of religion. Or if the idealism of religion has been validly rejected in the secular world of beer, sport, media and the discourse from scholars such as Hitchins, Hawkins or Bill Marr, I assert that the people still want intimacy, profound sex, feeling and health. Popular atheism is only an argument with dualism, religious abstraction and systems and we must go further. It is a hard pill to stomach that what we actually want and need for our spiritual evolution is breath sex and embodiment. Once we take the medicine however it is very sweet and nurturing force flows. Love flows. Moving and breathing and relating are our religious prerogative. This needs to be explained to everyOne and all the men who are legitimately put off by the gross way Yoga is being taught and merchandized.
Our spiritual growth depends on resolving the real need for connection / intimacy including sex. Then we spontaneously unpredictably fall into meditative realization of nurturing source reality in which everything is appearing.
This we got from the Vedic scholarship of Krishnamacharya: that the “higher” limbs of yoga realization cannot be practiced but arise as spontaneous siddhi. You cannot willfully self realize but meditation arises in intimate connection. As with sleep: you cannot put yourself to sleep but sleep surely and naturally come when the conditions are right. Further yoga meditation is the movement of attention in a direction of choice, a tangible object or interest that one can merge with. Desire is implied. Then we know the knower, the one who sees, consciousness, awareness, source Shakti. This cannot be realized with effort, a good idea, or ideal of future attainment. “It arises naturally through yogic intimacy with all ordinary conditions.” And it is intimacy that is the point in which enlightenment or meditation is not set up as a desire or goal. It is intimacy that is the point and that is all.
Yoga is the mastery of desire. To know your real desire and move on it with continuity is Yoga. Then the heart prana moves. In fact prana is another word for heart, or, the hearts movement, the flow of nurturing energy from the heart nurturing source, the first cell of life. We must discriminate what are the socially constructed desires that are not really our own, like the desire for God enlightenment, meditation or stimulants of all kinds, bad food and pornography and participate in our own reality.
I know this is not understood and is even going against the grain. “It is intimacy we want: not enlightenment” and there IS a practical means of Intimacy that is in your hands, your own Yoga. So “stop looking start living!” Move breath and connect with some one who is doing the same.
Now here is a vexed question. Don’t be naive. There is dreadful dysfunction in our societies due to the imposition of sex negative, object less doctrine. You must make an intention to do your yoga and have a relationship. If you know what your real desires are rather than socially contrived no power in this world will stop you from having what you want. You can control where you go. You can steer your own life because the desire for relationship is real not fake. It is available. You have to know it is allowed. So you can have it because it is simply the movement of life. So Promise it for yourself and know that it is natural; so likely to happen. Just like the direction of breath and posture that you choose use your desire to intend the action required. The great classical definition of Yoga is to choose your direction and go in it with continuity. Then the mind becomes clear. Then you know the knower. You know consciousness. It is not the suppression of mind or desire. Your real desire and attachment is the point.
So when you find someone make a promise with him or her, the promise to do your Yoga. Try to give him or her their practice. Educate, explain what it is and why the need. It makes all the difference in the world to your intimate relationship. Strength receiving within allows for strength receiving without. We allow each other’s strength to come out. We receive each other’s strength. Only the prior promise of moving and breathing allows for this. There is no chance of being sensitive to another prior to being sensitive to ourselves. So make the promise turn up to your promise and promise to be there for each other with continuity in a frequency of intimate occasion, which you decide together. Love thy neighbor as thy self. It is just as relevant to same sex intimacy as opposite sex intimacy. We are all strength receiving, male female.
I make a joke and about making this vow at the alter, to do your promise. It is a serious joke though! To do your Yoga is the best thing you can do for each other. It creates intimacy all round and when there are children the best thing you can do for them is give them the model of adult intimacy, which they will then be able to do in their lives. This is a re generation. A new generation. Ending the pain of the past for yourself and society. It is the Promise!
We cannot take heaven by storm either by the denial of sex or by its exploitation. Just as troubling are the teachings around sacred sex or “tantric sex” that do not include a personal yoga practice of connection to life prior to any movement to another. They build expectation and failure usually in the conventional guru model of trying to get to a superior state that the guru is presumed to be in. This whole set up denies the individuality and wonder of each person. There must be a practical means of empowerment. That’s all.
In summary we have had enough of Buddhist Christian Islamic “residing as witness consciousness” to our problems. Committing to “God” and not each other. Controlling the feminine, not surrendering to the feminine. Here God flows. The actual Buddha and Christ bore no resemblance to what followed as hierarchy in their name. I was just in Rome. It was shocking to see hundreds of statues of proud glamorous men. I could not see one woman. And then I did. Only one. Saint Catherine but she was bent over looking miserable. I rest my case. This is what we have inherited and must clean up for future generations. I also saw in Rome Bruno, the 12th century a priest who declared that each person had his or her own relationship to God. The Pope burned him! Humans became so cruel because they were denied sex and motherhood.
The public need, deserve instruction on intimacy in practical ways. We need to make this available to everyOne everywhere. There must be a broad public education. It is this that heals and gives personal and public peace. It gives meditative clarity and resolves the minds problems powerfully and immediately. “It IS the return to the ancient practicum of religious inspiration before God, enlightenment and meditation became abstracted by text and dissociated from its Yoga base, its context”
The mindfulness of the Buddha is exactly that… mind fullness. The mind completely absorbs / digest experience. That is what the mind is for: to connect the body to its environment in every way. Just as the Christ said, “love thy neighbor as thy self” a yogic instruction to value the embodiment of another as much as you value your own. “Compassion is an action.” Not a mood, ideal or idea.
So take action. Move and breath, strength receiving within and without with someone special to you. You will become a Buddha, an “ordinary Buddha”. You will know the love of Christ. It is easier to meditate and be detached than have sex. Take on the real spiritual challenge and not merely the grotesque duplication of culture.
Please be clear too that this Yoga of strength receiving is an easy yet specific technology easily learned. It is not in brands derived from Brahmin males, merchandised in America. Curiously these left out the essential technology in the confusion of fitness, gymnastics and fashion.
THE BLOOM OF LIFE: THE HEART
“I am from the womb of my mother and I am here to spread her love. And so are you”. When your mother and father before they were your mother and father surrendered to each other one cell of life appeared. The means was desire. Spirit took form. From the nurturing source to the seen we came. Then within days your beautiful whole life bloomed. The extreme intelligence and beauty of each individual literally bloomed into life just like an exquisite intricate flower shimmers into form and bloom. In fact in ancient times this poignant comparison between a lotus bloom and a human life was made. Now you are obvious not a flower blooming. You are a human blooming. But to visualize a flower in bloom reminds us that we are indeed the wonder, beauty and intelligence of life just as is a flower. Further, there are energy structures in our bodies just like flowers blooming in all directions. It is said that a nine pedaled lotus blooms from the first cell of life as the perfectly nurtured form of our own life unfolding in all directions as our ordinary extraordinary life. The source of this bloom is the heart or hridaya an ancient word meaning giving and receiving, the male female qualities of life. When we rest enjoy the flower the bloom of our own life, when we rest in the tips of the petals, our skin and the intimacy with all our ordinary conditions the nurturing source energy moves through the whole body into all relationships. This prana, another word for heart or “the movement of the heart” is the nurturing substance of reality moving through everything. We are completely loved and cared for all the way through this pro creation, birth, this life, this pain, this death. Everything about reality is nurturing including pain, which is the healing and death, which is a profound need sooner or later. The heart or hridaya is known as the seat or source of our mind and the whole body. It is like the portal between the unseen source, the nurturing force and our bodily life, “from where the lotus blooms” Our moving and breathing of The Promise is our commitment to the heart and a life of love, of nurturing of our own life and everyOne else.
When we move and breath the base and strength of the body lifts in and up literally closer to the heart in cooperation with the heart the nurturing source of life. Then spontaneously in all relationships in life with others we become committed to giving, to serving them and this nurturing force with our strength and action.
Similarly in our Promise the head surrenders to its source, the heart literally lowering to the lifting chest in acknowledgement that without the heart, the nurturing source, and the first cell of life there would be no mind. We finish with imaging that mind can have imaginary identity of its own. The mind becomes committed to acknowledging and serving its source in all relationships in complete heart connectedness and clear connection or as we said “mind fullness” one to another. Again we understand this does not happen willfully like a good idea that we try to do but arises naturally as siddhi from our sadhana, an ancient word “that which we CAN do”. That is: to move and breath as strength receiving in the way that is right for us. This process is called bandha, the intelligence cooperation of muscle groups in the movement and breath in a seamless design. It results in this clarity and meditation in life and the certainty of the one nurturing force of all life.
Strength receiving within and without is Yoga. Asana is Hatha Yoga the non dual practice of direct intimacy, whole body prayer with reality that is ONLY nurturing, abundant, regenerating, healing. Hatha, “strength receiving” reveals the hryd, the absolute reality, nurturing source appearing as the extreme intelligence of your own life. Hryd, a word like hatha, that means, “giving receiving” source reality appearing as the qualities of reality.
