Beloved - What's In a Name?

Om pria, y'all.


Holy mother of ganesha...is Patti freakin' amazing, or what?! "Now for the heavy, deep and real." Who says shit like that and gets away with it...seriously?

One take away for me is the beauty of seeing dharana as a practice of "becoming aware of the gaps between thought"...that is, experiencing dharana as the practice of focusing all thought on one "object" - the failure of which is to lose the thought stream and its object of concentration...not allowing the thought stream to carry us to its ocean, if you will.

Dhyana would appear to be the reciprocal practice - not allowing any single thought stream to carry us away AT ALL - that is, dhyana is (in part!) the practice of sitting in stillness and witnessing action (fluttering thoughts), whereas dharana is more the practice of sitting in active concentration and witnessing the breaks in that intense action of concentration (also, fluttering thoughts!).

They offer two polar avenues to mastering the mechanics of the mind. Not unlike how abhyasa (effort/discipline) and vairagya (renunciation/non-attached awareness) - Patti's "two pillars of yoga" - are practiced by the master yogin to create a dynamic balance. Skillful living always dances between inhale and exhale, between giving and receiving, between trying and letting go.
It's riding the wave of Katey's "spandha" - the in/out pulse of the universe.

Anyway, Patti's a babe and has me mesmerized continuously.

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Thank you Meagan (sp?) for being such a stoic yet welcoming mirror in the eye-to-eye meditation we did. There was a gentle moment of dissolving that - for lack of verbal artistry - had our colors bleeding together. I sensed myself pondering myself even while I pondered you. Gratzi.

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Did anybody write down the 7 (?) internal gaze points that Patti outlined. (e.g. third eye, navel chakra, nose bone thing, etc)? Can you shoot them to me? I wonder if those are the technical drishtis of yoga? I thought there were nine.


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Chrissy turned me on to this video about getting into padmasana (padma = lotus). Though I've never been comfortable even just crossing my legs "native american style", within 3 minutes of watching this video I was in full lotus floating 6" off the ground with white light shooting out of my butt.

Not exaggerating, nope.

Also of great worth is the work of Erich Schiffmann - .


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An exercise in devolution:

Tolle speaks of the name - that is, our individual names (Kevin, Heidi, Sharon) - as a basket into which we toss the stuff of our lives...experiences, objects of possession, beliefs, dreams, etc... We do this, or rather the unfettered ego does this, in an effort to have a greater sense of self.

The more I fill the basket of my name with material goods, with bitter or with sweet memories, with accomplishments and failures, with stories I tell myself about the "cruel and beautiful world", the more my ego feels confident in its continued existence.

And the more I lose contact with my deeper self - my atman. Reuniting with (or remembering) atman is the realization of yoga, the source of enlightenment we all contain within us. Egoism is allowing the world of form to distract us from that realization.

Of course, upon examination, we realize we are never satisfied with the contents of our basket. We continually feel the need to throw things out out and toss things in the basket as we seek fulfillment from the fleeting world of form.

One of the great processes of initiation in many spiritual practices is to be "renamed" by a guru or through some ceremony. Called "now names" or "spirit names" in some traditions, the devotee forgoes the basket of name that defined his/her previous ego and is reborn with a new name, ususally one that invokes powers outside of the individual (Rainbow Walker or Lama Surya Das or Madonna).

I offer two seeds to your garden:

Who would you be today, in this moment, without your name? Imagine, here and now, that you have no name. How would you then answer the eternal question "who are you?"

What might your spirit name or nom de plume be for this chapter of your life? Without attachment, it's safe to play with new names a bit. Try Talks With Rain. Or Stirring Tiger. Or Tender Heart Bear. Or Ziji Boom-freakin-basa.

Someday, I hope to meet each of you again outside the basket of our names.


Aho.
K