Hello again!

Well!
That was a bit of a mad period!
The last practice session I completed was in Madrid in May!

Ever since coming back, work has been crazy. I've been working absolutely insane hours, and I haven't completed a single practice session.

It's difficult to get up at 5AM to practice when you've been working until 2AM, and are expected back in the office (an hours drive away) by 8AM!

However, fingers crossed, it seems that things have calmed down a little, so I'm going to try starting again.

And I do mean starting again. In the two months I've had away from practice, I have regained about one of the three stones in weight that I had lost, and have lost a lot of the flexibility I was painstakingly building up.

So, starting 'soon', maybe tomorrow morning, it's back to Lesson 1 in the Systematic Course. I'm going to do Lesson 1 at least until Sunday, at which point I will decide whether I can fast track to Lesson 2, or whether I need to stay on Lesson 1. To be honest, I think  I'll need to stay with Lesson 1 for at least another week whilst I also get my diet back on track. The reason I think this is that several of the postures in Lesson 1 are concerned with the digestive system, and I recall that I didn't start to feel the full benefit of them until I was practicing with a fairly clear system in the morning, and this didn't happen until I'd been eating a lot less for a few weeks. So I think I need to reduce my food intake considerably right away, and that will take at least a week or two to work through my system, to the point where things are in much better balance.

You know, although I've been working a lot, and it really would have been very difficult to practice on the vast majority of days, I think there's also an element of the fact that stuff was starting to come out. I was starting to remember stuff from childhood. Some if it good, some of it - well, what a lot of people might consider odd - some of it really awful. It didn't come to me during my meditation practice. In fact, most of it came in my drives home from work - a time that I find oddly reflective.

I think maybe I fell for the 'somethings happening, it's scary, make it stop' story that a lot of people who really delve into themselves come across. I'm really surprised, and a little disappointed at this. I mean, I've been seriously pursuing self investigation since I was a teenager, and some of the stuff I did in my youth was incredibly powerful, stirring up a lot more than this recent stuff. Maybe I thought I'd got it all out, and that I was now going to sail into sainthood without any further ado. Probably. One of the things I'm most proud of is having no ego...get it?

Of course, when you think you have no ego, it just means it's grown so large you can't see the edges anymore.

Anyway, in case you are interested, here's one of the strange things I recall from childhood. This is a good one, because it definitely feeds my ego, and makes me think I'm special, so beter get it out there.

It's something I'd forgotten, and just came back to me on one drive home.

I used to sit at my parents feet at night, after my younger sister had gone to bed, waiting for them to tell me. You know, tell me all that stuff that they must know: the purpose of life, the real meaning of God and religion, the secret rituals that grown-ups do. No not sex. I don't remember being aware of sex. I was about 8, and this was nearly 40 years ago. 8 year olds really didn't have any clue about sex in the seventies.

I have no idea how long this carried on. They sat where they still sit today, although there was no coffee table then. 40 years ago, coffee wasn't invented. Not in our house anyway. So I used to sit on the floor, between the settee with my mum on it, and the armchair with my dad on it, by their feet, waiting. They were watching telly, but I was actively waiting. 'When are they going to tell me?', 'Why are they not telling me?'.

Eventually, I clearly remember one night, and I must have been about twelve by now, so this must have gone on some time, I was going to bed, and I left the living room, pulling the door shut behind me, and as I stood there in the dark, it finally hit me. It wasn't a gradual realisation, a slow dawning of acceptance. It was a thunderbolt out of nowhere: They don't know!

How can they not know?

How can any grown up not know the answers? Not know the secrets? I was really shaken to the core. If they don't know, then how on earth am I ever going to find out?! No point asking teachers. They are the dumbest of grown ups. The church won't help. They threw me out of Sunday school years before for 'being disruptive'...aka 'asking questions'.

I don't recall anything further. I can't say it sparked my search for truth. That search was already going on. That's why I wanted the answers from them. I can't say it left me devastated for days. Maybe it did. I don't remember. I just remember standing with my right hand on the living room doorknob, my left shoulder leaning against the louvre door to the kitchen, forhead against the doorframe, in the darkness, aghast, hollow and slightly dizzy, thinking, "They don't know."

Perhaps that's why I get so emotional about my Guru. And about Neem Karoli Baba, and those few others: They know. And their knowing fills the gap in me. Not the gap of my own knowingness, or lack thereof. That's a gap I can live with. But that awful, dreadful gap of shattering doubt: Maybe there is nothing to know!

At risk of sounding like Donald Rumsfeld: I may not know for myself, but at least I now know there is something to know!

By the way: that was a great quote by Don, and it was absolutely correct. The media lambasted it because it required about six seconds of thought to figure out what he was saying, and that's about 5.5 seconds more thought than your average journalist can manage in any one incarnation. If you want to know about known unknowns, look it up.

Anyway, that was one thing that came back to me in the days before going to Madrid. Here's another.

For one of my school essays for my CSE English (my school wouldn't enter people for GCE. I had to enter it myself), I wrote about an initiation ceremony.

I have no idea where it came from, and again, I had completely forgotten about it. It was quite Masonic in nature - and I wouldn't have known that until just a few years ago when my curiosity got the better of me. No, I didn't join, but a lot of the so called secrets are published by the Masons themselves, and if you want to know what happens in their ceremonies, you can go to their online bookshop and buy the scripts for the ceremonies.

Even when I bought a few of these books out of curiosity, and read them, I still didn't remember the essay I wrote at 14 years old. Again, that came back to me on one of my journeys home just a few weeks ago. I can't remember any great details about the essay, just that it was an initiation ceremony. I don't think I used the word initiation. Maybe 'induction', because I think the cubs had an induction? But the ceremony, whilst I'm sure it wasn't in any way an accurate description of a Lodge Working, I definitely remember now that it had that feel. I also remember Mr. Croft being very puzzled and slightly disturbed. But he did give me an 'A'.

So, that's a couple of the weird things that came back to me. Very few nice things have come back, but then I suppose they don't have any power. Nice things don't tend to build neuroses, so there's no point having them resurface.

One day I might tell you some of the awful things.

But I doubt it.

Swami Satsangi in Madrid

We were fortunate to be able to attend the Satyananda gathering in Madrid last week, which was graced by the presence of Swami Satsangi.

I have to say it was quite a remarkable experience. They managed to squeeze an lot in during a short time - Friday Afternoon to Sunday morning.

We had several Satsangs with Swami-ji, where she spoke on the topics that were the title of the event - Gyana, Bhakti and Karma yogas. She talked with her usual clarity and charm, and made the relationship between the three seem somehow obvious and natural.

The two morning hatha sessions were both absolutely amazing. Both were very, very simple, but were incredibly profound, with the usual Satyananda emphasis on awareness, rather than gymnastics. The second day, in particular was almost a full hour spent doing just TTK - bracketed with mantra and pranayama - with absolute focus, lead by Acharya Swami Anandananda, and was one of the most profound experiences I've ever had!

Overall, an excellent weekend.

Confused about OM

So how does this work... Brahman is the one non-dualistic basis of all existence. It is timeless, featureless and unchanging. Om is called Shabda Brahman - the representation of Brahman in sound. But OM is O-M, or even A-U-M. How can something with two, or even three parts represent the single Brahman?

The Best Gita Transalation...

In my humble opinion, the very best Gita translation - certainly that I've come across - is a new translation by George Feurstein.
Dr Feurstein has written many books about yoga, from the perspective of an academic and a practitioner. It tends to make his books very well written, well structured and accurate, as well as being very sympathetic to the true nature of Yoga. Many other academics have written about Yoga, and it tends to make the subject seemstale and clinical. It also leds them to favour a rigorous interpretation of texts, or to attempt interpretations that they see fit, but that they formulate poorly, due to not having the 'insider knowledge' that comes from being a practicing yogi.
None of this is true of Dr. Feursteins works. He knows the real meaning of the subject matter, and is able to present a proper interpretation in a clear manner. Neither is his writing dryly academic. What I've read of him is good reading. Perhaps his biggest and best known work is 'The Yoga Tradition', which is packed with excellent information about a very wide range of yoga subjects.
His new interpretation of the Gita, however, is really excellent. Despite what I said earlier about some academics being too literal, Dr. Feursteins approach to the Gita is to be absolutely literal - nut with his excellent knowledge, on those times where he has to maek a choice of how to interpret a word or phrase, his choice - which he often explains - is always superb. The problem with many Gita transalations is that the interpreter usually has an angle that they want to convey. Thus, some interpretations make the Gita sound almost Christian (Mascaro, for exampel), whereas others heavily promote a particular aspect of Hindu theology (Prabhupada, for example).
Dr. Feurseins approach is completely agnostic in this regard. He presents his interpretation opposite the Sanskrit test - Devanagari and Romanised - but includes a large section after this that shows his word-for-word interpretation of the Sanskrit. This allows the reader to see how he has arrived at his rendering of each sloka, and makes it very clear that he has made just a bout as literal a transaltion as is possible.
This doesn't lead to a particularly poetic presentation (like Eswaran, for example), but it has given me, at least, a completely new view of many verses. My previous favourite translation was Mascaro, but it becomes very clear from this translation that Mascaro actually added quite a lot of phrases that simply don't exist in the original, and usually serve to enhance parallelisms with Christian ideas.
The book also includes a set of essays that introduce the characters and setting of the Gita, and make for very clear and enjoyable reading.
Overall, for me, this is a revolutionary transaltion. It's what I've been waiting and hoping for ever since I first read the Gita over 30 years ago.

Last Nights Mrityunjaya

Thanks to everyone who came to our Mrityunjaya session last night. It was a small group, but it was very pleasant.
In fact, it was quite remarkable. At the end of Mrityunjaya, I think we all had noticed that around three quarters of the way through the 108 repetitions, it somehow changed. For me it was quite dramatic, and I think it was also very noticeable to a few others. It seemed to suddenly become more focussed and intense. A few people were quite moved.
We followed it with a very low, slow Gayatri, which was also very intense.
All in all a wonderful session, and lot's of thanks to everyone who helped to make it very memorable!

The Yoga I Do Now

Something happened.
I don't think I've talked about this before on my blog, just in my own journal.
For years, decades actually, I've been justifying to myself my lack of a rigorous Yoga sadhana. I've been saying, 'but I practice Karma yoga as much as I can', and 'I always have my Guru in mind', and I've been trying to convince myself that this was adequate. The main means I've used in this effort at justification is, of course, to pretend that I'm trying to convince others. To attempt to present myself as 'yes, I am a yogi too - different to your type of yoga, but a yogi nevertheless', and using this as an excuse to do nothing.
Only a few months ago I in fact posted on this very subject.
For some people, this may all be true. So if this is your path - to practice karma yoga and bhakti yoga, without also practicing the more, perhaps, tangible aspect of sadhana - what I'm about to say is not aimed at you. If that's your path, then that's absolutely great, I respect it, and I have no issue with what you choose to do.
But, for me, it was bullshit.
At the back of my mind, I always knew it was bullshit, but of course, that gets suppressed, and instead the justification mechanisms kick in.
This has been bubbling under since going to Munger and Rikhia, and sometime just before Christmas, the bubble burst, and I suddenly had a really strong urge to begin a proper regime of sadhana. It took me a while to decide what to do, and of course, Christmas is a bad time to begin anything.
So, on my first day back to work after New Year, I began on page 1 of 'A Systematic Course in the Ancient Techniques of Yoga and Kriya'.
This is a thick book from the Satyananda stable. It is, rightly, credited to Swami Satyananda, but was actually penned by Swami Nishchalananda (as was at least one other of the prominent Bihar books). It is basically an account of the contents of a course that Paramahamsa Satyananda-ji used to instruct some of the very early Swamis, including Swami Nishchalananda. This is my understanding. Please correct me if I am wrong.
It is made up of three 'books' - all bound in one volume - and each book is made up of twelve lessons. The idea is to practice each lesson for a month, thus making it a three year course. Each lesson in the book includes some theory, and the description of one or more of the following: shatkarmas, asanas, pranayama, relaxation, meditation, and, in the last book, the kriyas. Each lesson ends with three suggested daily practice routines. At the beginning, these are scheduled to last 60 minutes, 30 minutes and 15 minutes. The idea is to pick one that you can practice every day. So even if you can only spare 15 minutes a day, you can progress through the book.
I made the decision that I would attempt to practice the longer schedule. This is fine whilst it is one hour. Later on, I may need to review, as the longest routine by the end of the book requires three hours.
In order to fit the 60 minutes into my day, I have been rising at 5AM during the week, and 6AM at weekends. This gives me the time to do my ablutions, do the 60 minute routine, and still leave the house before 7AM - which I need to do to arrive at work in good time.
This I have been doing in conjunction with eating using the so-called 'Fast 5' routine. This is, basically, fast for 19 hours a day, and eat during the remaining 5 hours. So, I take my lunch at around 2PM, and try to get my dinner before 7PM. I do this 5 days a week, eating normally at weekend. By combining this with what I like to refer to as 'eating like a human', I have lost around 25 pounds since New Year.
By 'eating like a human', I basically mean not having the following typical weekday food intake:

• Breakfast: 2 ham and cheese croissants and 2 pain au chocolat, a flapjack, double espresso, half a litre of Pepsi Max (sugar free)
• Mid morning: Flapjack, double espresso, half a litre of Pepsi Max
• Lunch: two large, fat, sugar and salt laden pre-packaged sandwiches, flapjack and chocolate brownie, half a litre of Pepsi Max
• Mid afternoon: another brownie and a packet or two of crisps, double espresso, half a litre of Pepsi Max 
• Late afternoon: double espresso, half a litre of Pepsi Max, and perhaps another packet of crisps
• Snack on arriving home: because I "can't wait an hour for dinner" - e.g. peanut butter sandwich
• Evening meal: something relatively healthy cooked by either Poornamurti or myself, so I can pretend I actually eat quite well, and only weigh 23 stone because of some mysterious alien intervention
• One or two fancy chocolate truffles "as a little indulgence"

This interspersed with a few biscuits from the office 'handy biscuit stash', and a few more bottles of Pepsi Max.

Now, that's not eating like a human! That's eating like some kind of weird obsessive nutcase. Or maybe an American.

This has been replaced with:

• 2PM: Home made soup or dahl with one home made chapati and a tangerine or orange
• 3PM: An apple and another tangerine, sometimes a low fat yoghurt
• 6-7PM: Something really quite healthy cooked by myself or Poornamurti, one or two fancy chocolate truffles, or maybe a 'Shivananda cookie' as a little indulgence
• All of the Pepsi Max has been replaced by water sipped throughout the day

At weekends, this is preceded by a couple of toasted teacakes at breakfast time. I find it much more difficult to wait until 2PM to eat at weekend. I don't have the distraction of being tied to a computer, stuck in meetings etc., as when at work.

That's what I would describe as being closer to eating like a human!

The best thing about this is that it's not a 'diet' in the popular sense. The problem with 'diets' is that as soon as you start them, you have the idea that at some point, you will finish the diet, and start 'eating normally'. As you can see, returning to 'eating normally' for me would be an unmitigated disaster!

So, this is not a diet, this is how I intend to eat from now to eternity. There will not be a time when this diet ends. This is it, forever. And you know what? It's a darned relief. I'm sure you think you can imagine how utterly awful it makes you feel to eat like I was doing, but I would contest that unless you've done it, you probably can't. And the thing is, it's only now, ten weeks or so in, that I'm really starting to realise how truly awful I felt, all the time. And I can't tell you how good I'm starting to feel.

Eating like I am now, I'm loosing about 2 pounds per week. A little less on average, as the first couple of weeks I lost almost a stone. This happens because of being so far out of equilibrium at first. As I loose weight, the rate will gradually lessen, until I reach an equilibrium point for this amount of food, which I think will be somewhere around thirteen stone. This will take about two years.

The plan for the sadhana is to spend one month on each lesson of book 1. However, I am not practicing the crow walking, and the asanas I am practicing are not terribly good, in terms of final position. This is because of my physical shape. If you imagine trying to do, for example, saithalyasana or shashankasana with very large, solid ball strapped to your abdomen, you can imagine it would be difficult achieve a decent final posture, regardless of your flexibility: the ball simply gets in the way. That's where I am with my excess weight: it is a physical obstruction. Also, I am not practicing 'crow walking', as with my current weight and shape, it places far too much stress on my knees.

So, when I get to the end of book 1, I should, in theory, be almost another four stone lighter. I intend at that point to return to lesson 1, and spend one week on each lesson, attempting to get better final positions, and including the crow walking. This will take around three months. It will also mean, due to the crow walking, I wil be better prepared for the postures of shankaprakshalana, which is presented in lesson 13. It also means that lesson 13 will roughly coincide with the shankaprakshalana days at the London Satyananda Centre, in 2013 (assuming they keep to the same routine as the previous couple of years).

So, there you have it: a confession and a plan. And hopefully some motivation for people to realise that you really can rise at 5AM and get some really good quality practice time, as long as you are in bed for around 10PM. Once you get into the routine, it won't make you more tired, rather it will make you more energised, more alert, more calm, and more able to face the day!

The Truth About Lies

The purpose of lying is to obscure the truth from someone in order to make them act from a position of false knowledge, or avidya. It must, therefore be one of the most disrespectful things you can do to someone, as you are deliberately leading them from true knowledge into false knowledge. Mostly, lying involves constructing a false image of reality that will induce the person to act in a way that is beneficial to ourselves. This clearly a bad thing. Not only are we trying to avoid the reality of the situation ourselves, but we are deliberately leading our victims astray. A double dose of bad karma! With a so called 'white lie' we construct a false version of reality that we believe will reduce the suffering of the person we are lying to. But of necessity, even in a white lie, we lead the victim from vidya to avidya. This can never help them, and reflects poorly on us. This is why the yama of satya is so crucial. The ultimate goal of all souls is to gain vidya - true knowledge - and lying, by definition always leads to avidya - false knowledge. It is,mtherefore, one of the worst things one can do for ones own spiritual well being.