Dear Friends, Yogis and Yoginis,

The Beatles
We walked to the old Maharishi ashram last night, where the Beatles came to stay for 6 weeks. (And during which time they wrote 40 songs, many compiled on the White Album!)

The ashram is now in complete disrepair and absolutely overgrown. From the meditation huts to the large gathering hall to the dorms, all created from stone and cement, every building is in ruins. Ceilings, stairways, windows, and walls have crumbled into the ground where plants now grow in and around the debris. Electrical wires, sinks, toilets, and doors have been stripped by looters.

Once a thriving center for Transcendental Meditation, it went down in a scandal. I don’t know the details and they wouldn’t have made my experience here any less significant. I could feel what had once been a well-intentioned and sought after center for spiritual transcendence. (TM has been a worldwide meditation practice that has brought countless people to greater inner peace and awareness.)

What struck me the most was the feeling of tremendous quiet on the land accompanied by countless brilliant pink flowers in bloom co-existing with the obvious abandonment and disrepair of the ashram. That immense quiet is ultimately the great force of consciousness that teaches through the teacher, afterall. And that force will survive all scandal and remains unstained by the imperfections of human behavior.

I loved the irony of the multitudes of flowers in bloom over the sad destruction of the ashram and the community that had once lived here. It reminded me that, in the end, life longs to bloom and accepts the seasons of her own dissolution processes.

I was also called to reflect on the ways in which our “imperfect” behavior may seem to temporarily confuse, complicate or mar our lives. But perhaps there is a larger intelligence operating through us…even when we are clumsy? Or perhaps we’re being asked to rise above our own clumsiness, or the clumsiness of others, and stay faithful to the mystery that brings flowers to bloom in the aftermath of dissolution.

Love as the Teacher
For the first three days of my retreat here, I attended a morning yoga session led by a couple that founded their own form of yoga based on Vedic teachings, Ayurveda, healing, and the practices of asana, meditation, pranayama, and chanting.

On day one, they played recorded music in the class. The first song was entirely familiar to me as it came off of Voice of the Esraj by Benjy Wertheimer. What a small world!

I was enjoying the vinyasa of the class and the teachers’ suggestions to be in the breath and the consciousness within the breath when another entirely familiar song came up on their pre-recorded sequence. This time it was from another CD by Benjy and a friend of his who was formerly my boyfriend. As that relationship ended in dishonesty and infidelity, I was surprised that upon hearing the music from this CD, which I have chosen not to listen to over the past 3 years, I only responded with amusement for the “small world” moment arising again and with genuine enjoyment of the lyrical sounds of the song. Time does heal, as they say!

As the morning classes with these teachers went on over the next two days, the music changed from pre-recorded to live. The male teacher played the guitar and chanted. He continually told us how beautiful we were. They used lovely images of surrendering to love and Shiva, rivers of light and transformation, letting go of ego, and pouring yourself into consciousness. They had intriguing, though not always physically sound, asana sequences combined with chanting and pranayama practices. I felt renewed after class, but I didn’t feel a connection to the love they were talking about during the practice.

Perhaps I just wasn’t open enough or available enough to the Shakti?

Or, perhaps it’s because they never left the stage to come down and walk amongst us to offer support. Or it might be because the sequences seemed pre-arranged, rather than arising in response to a conversation between our practice and their observations of our practice. Or maybe it’s that when I saw them around the festival, they seemed aloof and inaccessible. Maybe it was too trendy for me.

As it was hard to discern, I applied my practice of non-judgment and non-comparison and checked within for the source of my response. Perhaps I was showing up for class with a bias or an agenda, as opposed to staying sweetly seated in gratitude for whatever would be offered.

After three days of class with them, I trusted my discernment, and the contentment with which I showed up for class. With gratitude for their teachings, I decided not to return to their class.

I went upstairs to the Iyengar yoga class where the Indian teacher clipped his phrases and gave orders to us about how to do the poses. “Stand firm.” “Feet together.” “Don’t exploit your lower back.” “Look straight ahead.” “Don’t turn your head.” “Stabilize yourself.” “Focus here. You can fold your blanket when I am finished.”

Yet with every directive, my body responded to the love behind his words. He clearly wanted us to learn yoga poses, but much more important, he emphasized that we needed to learn to be with ourselves, to study ourselves, and to concentrate on our inner life. He only used the word love once in his class, and he stumbled upon it bashfully. But his entire teaching was based on this love and radiated in the way he walked the room, firmly supported students, and pleaded with all of us to be present, here and now. This is where you will wake up.

I learned two important things in this experience. One, love is something I feel in another person’s presence, not in their performance. Two, my authentic relaxation into love will always teach more than my gathered knowledge, trendy tea bag inspirations, or flashy asana displays.

The third thing I learned… it’s okay to have to keep learning this! How long have I known this as a student and teacher of yoga?! Since the beginning…

Namaste,
Sarahjoy