Jivamukti Yoga 2011 teacher training graduates posing in front of the Sanctuary at the Omega Institute

it was a short, strange trip to get to the 2011 Jivamukti Yoga Teacher Training at Omega. i started with no money only a few months before it was to begin. it cost quite a bit, but it was the path I knew i belonged on. these things choose you, and what are you to do? you put your faith in the wisdom of the ocean that holds you until you become the waves and the water. otherwise you slowly sink out of the light into some unknown depths.

the time between deciding to go and somehow actually being there was spent trying to change my relationship to money, by changing my perception of money. magic, i learned, is a change of perception. i followed the advice found in the diamond cutter, and gave generously of what i had. i tried being kind to everyone i met. i tried my best to see everyone as holy.

as the due date for paying for the course approached, new orleans seemed increasingly otherworldly to me. a necklace of special significance to me exploded on mardi gras day, while i was hula hooping, with a crowd of people watching me dancing to the pounding pulse of african drummers beating their animal skins. I bought the string of beads and skulls on my 39th birthday in san francisco, spun out to infinity on some tainted molly. i had to have my friend translate my desire for the object to the woman selling it, who i perceived in that moment as a voodoo priestess. i think i freaked her out a bit. as the necklace burst into pieces it all came back to me, how two years after haggling for the necklace i fell in love , got my heart broken, and ended up in the big easy. i remembered lying on my back in my first jivamukti class with tears pouring from my shavasana bespeckled eyes, pain and happiness intricately intertwined.

after that, on the day of the supermoon this march, my jivamukti teacher had a baby girl. i had a vision of a girl coming into the world, sometime before the necklace broke. the mississippi river kept getting higher and covered the beach in the bywater we called ‘the world’s end’. i would walk with my roommate aviva’s dog and do yoga by the missing sand, playing my ukulele as she ran beside me, unleashed. i took lots of pictures and met lots of people, and grew ever closer to my teachers and the teachings. I made and lost a beautiful friend, held faith strong and close for weeks and months, and then thought for a long moment that i had failed. i let all go. as soon as i did it all happened.

Jeffrey Cohen and Sharon Gannon teach us about yoga assists

when i think now of the following month spent at omega, with my jivamukti class, it is like another dream. the teachings were so deep and profound. we got them day after day and hour after hour and still wanted more. we would practice asana and meditation and chanting every day, which gave us the stamina to absorb the yogic philosophy. we were blessed to be taught by jivamukti founders david life & sharon gannon, advanced jivamukti teacher jeffrey cohen and seven amazing mentors. everything was thought through and put together with so much care. the course was professional and prestigious, but more importantly transcendent.

Jivamukti teacher training graduates helida, chelsea, karina and leenda

every night we would all dress in white, 125 ethereal angels trying to relish such perfect impermanence. i smiled and smiled and everyone smiled back. i remember at burning man feeling a similar feeling. “oh, the world can be like this!”  it does not need to be the way that we perceive it, in fact it isn’t. together we agree upon the world that seems to be. there is always the possibility of other worlds based upon other agreements.

Since there were nearly 120 students we were broken into groups that worked closely with a mentor. This is my group with our wonderful mentor Jules Febre

we studied sanskrit with the saintly manorama, who inspired the light of this ancient language in our beings. she taught with such spiritual wisdom and compassion. the first night she sang us sanskrit chants and i cracked open. it hit me at once how this was all given to me. i felt so blessed to be there. such gratitude. so humbled i could not begin to describe the intensity of it with my native tongue. through the kindness of my friends, family, and teachers i was here, experiencing this. the only way to repay such generosity is to spend my life giving to others.

this year has placed me at the lotus feet of the divine mother. it was my beautiful birth mother who gave me the last amount i needed to get to the training. my mother who is a devout christian and believes in only one religion, but still has love for me as her yogi son. i offer my heart to sharonji, the divinely inspired co-founder of jivamukti, who guided me through the process of applying for a scholarship and encouraged me even when i faltered. and to my beloved jivamukti teachers in new orleans, keith, michele, and libby, who believed in me so much that it was easy to believe in myself, seeing myself through their eyes. this self i perceive, ever changing, genderless beneath this life i was born into. or perhaps genderful. i have given birth to this new me. pashupa.

Jeffrey Cohen, David Life and Sharon Gannon with what was once the world's largest uneaten vegan cupcake

i write these prose to honor all of you in my satsang. i am remembering the sound of our voices as we sang. we were one for that month, and we will be one for always. now we know that the changeless part of us can only be known by observing what changes. what doesn’t change is what we are, all of us as one. we have been given some foothold in the mountain of this understanding. we have experienced something together beyond the ordinary. i miss you all so much.

the pictures in the following slide show are the special posed pictures i took on the omega campus of some of you. i hope you will love them. i wish i could have photographed everyone this way. perhaps i will travel around the world to finish that project. or perhaps you will come visit me. or perhaps we can be reminded of one another through this familiar vedic prayer:

sarve bhavantu sukhinah
sarve santu niramayah
sarve bhadrani pashyantu,
ma kaschid duhkha-bhag bhavet

may all be happy
may all be free from sickness
may all look to the good of others
may none suffer from sorrow

My Jivamukti 2011 graduation photo

Swan River Jivamukti teacher Keith Porteous poses in lotus position at the Marigny studio ten days before her baby is due

Today I woke up in a state of bliss. The sun was shining as I walked to the Green Project to get some hardware for my Mardi Gras costume (The Human Photo Booth). I had the new Radiohead album playing on my iPod, Thom Yorke’s sweet familiar voice soothing my soul. As I walked balanced on the railroad tracks alongside of Press Street I slowly waved my arms up and down as if they were wings, feeling the strong winds blowing on my bare skin from the Mississippi River.

This thought occurred to me; “I am exactly who I was meant to be.” I felt goosebumps move across my skin. It was a feeling of pure love, of being held in the arms of the universe. One verse, one love, one me.

The second deep blessing of the day came during my thursday Jivamukti class, held at the Swan River studio in the Marigny and taught by my dear teacher Keith Porteous. Keith is 10 days from her pregnancy due date, and it was one of the last classes she will be teaching for a while. I asked to accompany her on ukulele for the kirtan (sacred chant) before class and she happily obliged me. I suggested we sing Bhajamana Ma, a chant for the Divine Mother, in honor of her pregnancy.

The chant in Sanskrit is “Bhajamana Ma Ma Ma Ma. Ananda mayi Ma Ma. Ananda rupa Ma Ma.” ~ translated by Swan River co-owner Michele Baker, in English it means “I give all of my love to the Divine Mother. Take from me all that is not free, and allow me to experience eternal bliss, dearest Mother.”

It is beautiful that the word “Ma” means the same in modern English as in ancient Sanskrit. A sound as simple and profound as Aum. In western religions the mother is downplayed and the father is the ultimate expression of divinity. I believe that this imbalance has led us down a destructive path. We all need the compassion and nurturing nature that comes from the feminine aspect of divinity to heal the toxicity and war that we have wreaked upon the Earth.

I have been blessed in my life to be surrounded by strong and beautiful women. They are all my teachers in their various roles in my life; Some as friends, some lovers, some strangers who share a moment, some mothers and grandmothers who have brought life through their bodies into the world. They are all manifestations of the divine.

As a photographer I get to ask people to do silly things and they often do them. This makes us both happy.

As I practice yoga asanas I strengthen my connection to the Earth, the mother of all life as we experience it. Asana means “seat”, and somehow these postures that we work on day after day connect us to the Earth. The illusion of separation from the source of life slowly fades as our hearts open and we learn to “sit” in alignment with the divine.

To see my beloved teacher Keith with her mamma’s belly so big and round fills my heart with love. What a blessed child to be born with her as a mother. What a blessed soul I am to have her as a teacher. How blessed we all are to have each other. Share your gratitude with the mothers in your life, and you will find the blessings returning to you, the flowers of wisdom blossoming all around you, and your connection to the Earth becoming stronger.

Please visit my NOLA Yoga Photography Project to see more photos of I have taken of yogis and yoginis, and to find out how you can help me on my path to becoming a yoga teacher.

I can still remember the day I met Dave DelloRusso. It was a day of connections that branched out into many adventures and opportunities for me. I imagine Dave & Maggie don’t even know the full story, so I will relate it here fas a little wedding gift to them and to you, my readers, who I am married to through this thing called life…

It must have been 2006 and it started with the Virginias. I have a friend Virginia, who is in her golden years and who has traveled the world and done many wondrous things. She has a daughter, Virginia Jr, who is my age and also very worldly and wise. They are quite a pair, telling quirky stories of their travels and the people of different cultures and times. They are both quite fond of me, I am something of a wonder to them with my interests and adventures. On this particular day they took me and my friend Scott to Ashfield Lake, about 45 minutes from Northampton. What they didn’t know was that Scott and I had dropped some LSD on the way and were experiencing quite a strange reality by the time we arrived.

There is a boathouse/bar on Ashfield Lake, and that is where Scott and I set up with a guitar and some drinks. We proceeded to entertain the locals with song and story while the Virginias donned flippers and went off to swim around the lake, as is their ritual. The medicine was quite potent, and the summer heat was creating waves of mirage around me. The people on the deck of the boathouse all seemed strange and fascinating, as if I was in a scene from The Naked Lunch. After some amount of endlessly blissful time the Virginias returned to retrieve us. We took a quick jump in the lake, a sensation not unlike being baptized in a cold refreshing pool of divinity.

Upon returning to Northampton we were still peaking. I had an office downtown at the time, and we retrieved my hula hoops from it and crossed Main St. to join some hoopers that were in Pulaski Park. Megan LaBonte, aka Hoopmaster Sass, was there with her boom box and a small group of her devotees. I had been drawn to this beautiful woman for quite some time. She was known for her flamboyant costumes and her hula hooping skills, her amazing artistry and her exquisite beauty. I had always thought to myself that if she got to know me we would be lovers, and this was to be the day that that thought began to manifest into reality.

Megan LaBonte hooping at the Primate Fiasco 'Happy Pill Circus'

Scott and I began hula hooping, which I had recently become good at. Megan noticed me in her sassy but anxious way, and the waves of strange reality washing over me vibrated with a high frequency of intensity. I danced and pranced out of sheer joy, a courtship ritual that humans have been doing since long before we were tree monkeys.

For me tripping on LSD has never been so intense I hallucinate visions that are not there. It is more of a distortion of the visual world accompanied by an opening to synchronicities and deeper levels of understanding as to the nature of the real. So when the saints came marching in playing ragtime on banjo, tuba, clarinet and trombone, I knew it wasn’t a dream but rather a gift from the universe. Further waves of pleasure swept through my being and there we all were, perfect expressions of the divine, the cosmic giggle, the mystery of Shiva and Shakti. Inside of me that summer day has blossomed.

Dave DelloRusso playing banjo with Megan LaBonte hooping

The man playing the banjo turned out to be Dave DelloRusso, who has led his band the Primate Fiasco through several incarnations since then and up and up to be one of the best known acts in western Massachusetts. For some time I was their primary primate photographer, and I am sure I will document them again in the future. Megan LaBonte and I became lovers for nearly a year, hula hooping and creating art together in a whirlwind of chaos until the forces of nature sent us spiraling outward into unpredictable directions. Still we are best of friends and I am blessed to be so close to her mystery. Through the two of them I met the wonderful Maggie Antill, who is one of the sweetest and warmest of people in Northampton, always making me feel at home in her presence.

Dave and Maggie, I hope your love will burn bright and long, and keep giving to our community the vibrance that makes the valley such a special place. In a recent yoga class I was given the thought that the divine has chosen to manifest itself as each of us. It has chosen to wrap us all together even though we have never been separate but in our own limited understandings. Relationships are subject to constant change, just as everything that exists is. We are molecules in a constant state of rearrangement. We are dreamers pretending to be awake. All is full of love. May you always be reminded, and always be able to share in it. Namaste.

Maggie and Dave Kiss at their second ceremony. The wedding had two parts, one for family and then one for friends. I love the effect when someone else's flash goes off at the same moment my shutter does, in this case at 1/60th of a second. what are the odds?

I believe that this is the part where Dave dropped the ring and then had to make a joke to recover. I love to capture these moments.

Dave and Maggie cut the cake. This is how to cut a non-vegan cake, BTW.

The LaBonte sisters with their father, Richard Richardson. They all disappeared soon afterwards, as LaBontes are known to do.

Dave and Maggie under a tree. Love the backlighting.

A photograph I took at COSM Fire 2007

i was already there before i took the mushroom. the soft hairs on my skin were bristling to the invisible pull of the future, there was a subtle energy running through me. i could not see the future but i could feel it, that something was about to come over me. like watching a storm move across the ocean, perched on a column of stones being misted by waves that thrust against the shore.

i had always imagined that i would have to memorize thousands of pages of my own writings to understand myself. the universe whispers, it leaves signs and traces. i have known for some time that i am more than me. i have waited for the manifestation of my higher self. thoughts flow through me like water, from a spring eternal. i have read and forgotten scriptures, buried them in me like dead sea scrolls. the god that can be remembered is not the true one. there is nothing we can hold on to.

i find the trouble with writing any miracle down is i. i is ego. where to put i in the midst of the miraculous? i wants to be the miracle. i wants to say “i am the one who manifests this!” yet the miracle dissolves as soon as it is described. i believe that last night i channeled the divine. i ingested a hearty dose of medicine and the universe poured into my being. or perhaps i just imagined it did.

the COSM fire was beautiful, with mushroom sculptures burning inside of a perfect sheath of flames, beckoning the autumnul equinox. it was a fire that drew me to it before it was lit. when i was unable to find a ride i decided to rent a zipcar so that i could be beside it. i drove two and a half hours bristling with energy. something deep was running through me.

for some time i just sat with the flame, a little closer than anyone else present. where normally i would have been extremely uncomfortable from the heat i instead felt nourished by it. i heard people around me talking about me, and realized they were talking about themselves. they projected onto me who they thought i was. or perhaps i projected onto them who i thought they thought i was. crossing my legs i moved closer to the flames.

fire ritual new years eve 2006

soon the asanas began to work through my body. mudras shaped my hands and fingers. i began to sing. this sound that has come to me before. deya. deya. i found that i could stare into the intensity of the fire without blinking. i could feel my eyes healing themselves. my shoulders that had been aching and damaged for years began to heal. i twisted myself into shapes that helped me heal. i sang for everyone there, to heal them too.

i had a bottle of water next to me but felt no thirst. i found that i could breathe or not breathe for long moments as i chose. the circle of souls around the fire were watching me, enraptured in whatever it was that was coming through me. i sat beside myself, feeling the divine. i closed my eyes and sang. i could feel the entire universe. i could hear the voices speculating about my condition.

i feel the path has chosen me. the years of practicing hot yoga. the years of purification through veganism and whole foods. the fearlessness i have for ingesting quantities of medicine that most people don’t trust their consciousness to endure. the fire sign, aries, that i was born unto. emerging theories of evolution cycling through my mind in daily epiphanies. the practice of ahimsa, so strong and deep.

fire ritual new years eve 2006

COSM is a sanctuary on a sacred ground. nearby there are other sacred sites. the woodstock farm animal sanctuary. right down the road from there is the home and ashram of jivamukti founders sharon gannon and david life, who i was recently blessed to meet. this trinity of places and people, my heart and destiny belongs to all three. i feel a purpose to build the connection between them.

there are really no words. words just grasp at truth. i am often dissolving, feeling things i can not quite comprehend or describe. i feel a unity between all creation. beyond all our fear there is something profound that binds us.

i cherish this divine in the other. this spark we all share. felicia, who came to offer me water and suggest that perhaps i was too close to the flames. another man came to draw me away, and i hugged him and told him it was ok. when i was ready to retreat from the fire the universe brought jason to escort me. my face today is as red as if i was in the sun all night. my eyes today glow like embers. the spark is everything.

there is of course the possibility i dreamed the whole thing. in this dream i move a bit closer to believing some of those stories of the sages and gurus of india, pulling jewelry from thin air, infusing objects with fragrances, walking over coals. yet i resonate more with thic nhat hanh’s quote “the miracle is not to walk on water. the miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.” that we are here, breathing and conscious, is so beautiful and strange.

fire ritual new years eve 2006

our consciousness and our biology are  rooted in the dream we dream. they evolve by the will of our whims. we can all find the way to dissolve the boundaries that limit our imaginations. there are sacred plants all around us. there is wisdom in the soil. we are woven into the fabric of an everything reacting to even the fluttering wings of a butterfly. how delicious the mango that we let ripen. how wonderful are the teachers all around us. with merely our minds we can turn particles to waves in an endless sea of possibility.

just as the everyday is truly miraculous, so the miraculous is the everyday. there are those who doubt that the human race will ever lose our violence. there are those who doubt that the world can ever know ahimsa. they chant mantras of “free range” and “humane meat” to keep truth at bay. deep in our hearts we know these words are illusions attempting to conceal violence. this is the time for us to evolve beyond the i and towards the we. we can share a vision of the future . abhaya. anicca. ahimsa. a deya!

108 sun salutations under a sacred oak tree in City Park, New Orleans

At City Park in New Orleans there is a giant oak tree with oversize wind chimes hanging from its branches. The sun shone on the tree this morning, with strong winds blowing the chimes into a cacophony of sound. A group of yogis and yoginis gathered beneath the sun and the tree, their mats forming a loose circle facing inward. I rode my bike up to join them, feeling a reverence for the life so vibrant all around me.

In this circle we were joining a community of yoga practitioners all around the world who were taking a stand against human trafficking in India by offering up monetary donations and 108 sun salutations. The money will go to an Indian-based  organization called Odanadi, which means ‘soul mate’. The Odanandi web site Yoga Stops Traffic claims that “over the past 20 years Odanadi Seva Trust has rescued and rehabilitated more than 1850 children, carried out 57 brothel raids and brought 137 traffickers to justice.“

The New Orleans event was organized by Jessica Blanchard, who feels that India has given the west so much, and this is a way for us to give back. I came by way of my yoga school, Swan River. Several of my teachers were there, taking turns with teachers from other schools leading us in the sequence of asanas that make up the standard sun salutation.

The number 108 is sacred in many traditions and mythologies. For instance, the chakras are intersections of energy lines, and the heart chakra has 108 energy lines converging into it. I have been living from my heart lately, or at least striving to. This morning my heart was full, nourished by the sun, the wind, the beautiful people gathered around in the circle, and by the sound of the chimes mingling with the voices of the teachers.

I reached my hands up to the sky over and over again, and each time the sun had risen a little closer to being in my palms. There was a dog sitting in the grass behind me, and each time I bent down into downward dog and looked out between my legs I saw her sitting there enjoying the day. To my left was a new friend, who later went out to tea with me at Fair Grinds Coffeehouse, where we shared little pieces of our lives.

I am in love. In love with this city, with this life. I felt tears welling up inside me thinking about the people sold into slavery as I practiced my asanas. Are we all just manifestations of the same spiritual matter? Could I be them, could they be me, could any one of us be anyone else? What is the veil of ignorance that makes us forget such an obvious truth, exponentiating the suffering in the world? Every day I spend trying to understand and to weave the understanding into the fabric of my being so I won’t forget.

Namaste. Ahimsa. May all be free from suffering. May all feel the sunshine of a perfect spring day in New Orleans, shining upon them as they raise their hands up in prayer, and lower their faces to the ground to honor the earth. We are one.

photo i took on my iphone through a gallery window in the French Quarter

In my last post I spoke of giving selflessly and building community as paths that can lead us out of our own drama and suffering and into a better future. After writing it I felt an awkwardness, wondering if my thoughts and actions really measured up to the things I had written. It is great to be able to write and perhaps inspire people with words, but it is in the realm of action where we are truly tested. I heard a small voice in my head telling me that perhaps I was promoting ideals that I wasn’t quite living up to.

I have been in New Orleans less than two weeks and I am sure nobody expects me to be a community leader or the patron saint of reaching out to neighbors at this point. However for the first time in about 15 years I am a minority in my neighborhood, a pale white face in a sea of darker skinned people. Coming from a far less diverse community in Northampton, MA I find myself plagued with white guilt. Our culture is the operating system that runs in our minds, and even after years of disk maintenance, software upgrades and attempts to understand the problems that cause racial divide it is difficult to transcend it. I feel a bit unsettled when I walk out my door, as if my neighbors all distrust me and perhaps I should distrust them. It is a fear I knew I would have when I moved here and one I wanted to confront in my life so that I can evolve my being.

David Hammond with his snowballs in NYC

There is an artist named David Hammond who I learned about while studying Fine Art Photography at RIT back in the mid nineties and the lesson of his performance piece has stuck with me since then. In the middle of winter in New York City with snow on the ground free for the taking, he set up a spot on the sidewalk and began selling snowballs. In googling the work now I find that the concept behind his piece was to mock the commodification of the art world. But what I remember is a deeper lesson. In selling snowballs Hammond was able to connect with people that would normally walk by him with eyes averted, who now were curious and ready to strike up a conversation. He said something like “two strangers are naturally going to be uncomfortable around each other, but given a common object they can make a connection”. I wish I could find his actual quote about that now, because I am sure he said it more eloquently than that.

At any rate, yesterday proved to be a turning point in my evolvement. I brought a small toy guitar here with me because I wanted to reignite my passion for playing but could not fit a full sized guitar in my luggage. I am typically quite shy about playing publicly, but yesterday I wanted to play and it was too stuffy in my apartment. I somehow overcame my fear of being the cracker playing folk songs in the hood and went out onto my front steps to play. Within a couple of minutes the kids across the street took notice and came closer to watch me. I had assumed that street musicians were so prevalent here that no one would care much, but something magical happened for me. People were noticing. An old black woman came over and stood next to me with her eyes closed and her heart totally open to my music. The kids across the street were now dancing and a few more people had come out. I realized then that this talent was one of my gifts, something that can make people happy. I realized that all the street musicians are down in the French Quarter trying to get money in their hats, but there is no money in my neighborhood, so this was more unique. The shared experience of the music turned me from stranger into a new member of our community.

Later that night I went out to the Hukah Club with my landlord and his partner. It was Hip Hop night and once again I found myself a grain of salt in a pepper shaker. Perhaps because of my earlier experience I did not feel the usual discomfort. The music was like a steam engine propelling my bootie barge into motion. My inhibitions dropped once again and I lost myself into dancing. I hopped around and shook my hips and all the while looking people in the eyes and smiling. I think that it moved people to see this white boy unafraid even though I don’t have the requisite moves usually performed in the hip hop genre. The men started giving me various secret handshakes and teaching me little shoulder pops and hip thrusts. People were smiling with me.

I ended up at the edge of the dance floor near a raised platform where some women were sitting and dancing. They started taking pictures of me and then dancing with me, posing with me, laughing and letting loose. They even started doing that grind thing where they would bend over and put their fine booties into my groin area and move it them all around. Jump up jump up and jump down. So I started doing it too. All the yoga I have been doing has gotten my quite limber and flexible, and these girls loved dancing with me. I was dancing with the guys around me too. It was some of the most fun I have had in a long time. I was aware of the difference in our skin tones, but the dancing and celebrating transcended the cultural baggage in my mind and set me free. We are all one people after all, with many variations and flavors.

I feel like time is speeding up for me, like there is some great force propelling me onward. There is no more profound spiritual fulfillment than to be finding ones purpose in this life. I am so grateful to have these epiphanies coming more and more frequently, like I have opened up some channel for the universe and it is starting to flow more easily through me. I keep getting this deeper and deeper sense that we are all on the cusp of some great change. I also have a sense that I am meant to play some small roll in bringing it about. I believe we all are, if we can open up and let it in. At night I walk through this beautiful city and I can feel the trees speaking to me, I can hear the voice of the Earth, feel her warm breath in the air. She is my lover and my friend, who sustains me as I go. I make my promises to her, that whatever it is and whenever that time comes I will be ready. She in turn brings to me the experiences I need in order to grow. All the while she cultivates this love in my heart, shimmering and effervescent, that flows out from me to all sentient beings

———————————-

At the end of the night I came home and recorded The House of The Rising Sun on my guitar with my new Samson USB mic, it is one of my favorite songs about New Orleans and I would love to share it with you:

House of The Rising Sun

Dukkha – “the Buddhist concept of suffering, a Pali term roughly corresponding to a number of terms in English including suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness, sorrow, affliction, anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, and frustration.”  ~Wikipedia

I got on a train to come to New Orleans on that same day that Haiti was devastated by a terrible earthquake. The news came to me in broken bits as I traveled, passing through the landscapes of small American towns, sleeping and awake, checking the Internet on my iPhone in those places where I could get reception. World events seem surreal while moving through time like this, ungrounded and alone. Still the death toll seemed unimaginable, and reminded me of the destruction that nature had inflicted on New Orleans five years ago.

My journey to this strange city I now inhabit was brought on by a personal disaster, one that rocked my inner world and has caused me to feel the deaths of many of my hopes and dreams. I had spent the previous nine months or so of my life in a state of bliss, in love with a woman who I thought I would grow much older with, who embodied so much of what I had been seeking in a relationship. Then one morning I woke up and she had torn herself from my life, for reasons that did not make sense to me. I pleaded and begged her to change her mind but she would not even respond to me at all, leaving my heart devastated and all the plans I had made of moving to New Orleans to be with her in ruins. In the absence of her ability to communicate with me I decided to come here anyway, because I felt the city calling, because I needed an adventure, because I had some small hope she would change her mind.

Swan River Yoga on Chartres St

Upon arriving here I bought an unlimited month of yoga at the Swan River Yoga Studio in order to keep my practice going and to ground myself. New Orleans is where she lives and where we spent some of the best moments of our relationship, so I knew that I would have memories haunting me that I would have to deal with. I knew the yoga would help. In the first class I attended the teacher began by speaking of Haiti, and how disasters of such magnitude are humbling to us. How they make our own troubles seem smaller, and how they give us pause to be thankful for what we have. I had thought of this myself of course, but the mind is so adept at keeping our own drama in the forefront and the greater dramas at bay that it was good to be reminded by someone else.

It is difficult to internalize the suffering of people in other countries who we have little physical connection to. The news is constantly full of stories of death and tragedy, and we necessarily numb ourselves to them in order to be present in our own lives. Yet in our own suffering we can understand the suffering of others. If I did not feel the loss of this relationship so poignantly it would be harder for me to imagine any loss.

One of the reasons I decided to come to New Orleans was because of the loss suffered here. I knew there were many people still recovering from Katrina, and that there was lots of volunteer work to be done still. I had a realization that by helping with this rebuilding I could also help rebuild my own heart. We are all connected in this way, through our ability to hurt so deeply and to long for transcendence.

As I planned my move I connected with Burners Without Borders, an organization related to the Burning Man festival and its concept of a gift economy. At Burning Man there is no exchange of money, people survive in the harsh desert climate by giving and sharing. This opens people’s hearts and builds community. In the aftermath of Katrina the Burners Without Borders formed to help out along the Gulf Coast, applying lessons learned at the festival to devastated communities in need. Since then the organization has spread throughout the world and is involved in many projects. There is still one woman here, an amazing soul named Summer, who is organizing volunteers to help in the Lower Ninth Ward. She is working with a community organization called Lower Ninth Ward Village. I have connected with them and will be volunteering as much as I can while I am here. While I have barely begun, I already feel a sense of being part of something larger than myself. I can already see that this will help to heal me.

We all wish to stem the flow of suffering in our own lives. Some of us deal with it by trying to shut the world out with anger, drugs, television, or feigned indifference. Some turn to organized religion, hoping that there is an afterlife reward for humbling oneself to the proper deity. I believe the true spiritual path calls us to be present in this moment, to experience the sadness of life and to transform it into action. Human civilization’s greatest flaw is our hoarding tendency, our inability to share resources and compassion. We walk around daily looking for compliments or understanding from others, yet are reluctant to give it. We need to overcome our fears of others and the cultural baggage that gives us excuses to turn away from those in need, in order to make ourselves whole and fully human.

If our greatest flaw is greed, then our greatest evolvement is compassion. With the tragedies in Haiti still being revealed, there are fund raising efforts going on everywhere.  It is helpful to give money, it makes us feel good about ourselves. Money is very impersonal though, it builds no connection between the giver and receiver. It is easily redirected into the pockets of the greedy. Since most of us can not go to Haiti to volunteer it is still better than doing nothing. If you want to donate I would recommend researching the organizations you are giving to, and trying to ensure your money goes to an honorable organization. Two that I recommend are Food For Life Global (A vegetarian/vegan food relief program) and Doctors Without Borders.

Beyond that I encourage you to help Haiti from within your own community. The beauty of practicing compassion is that it is a renewable energy source. Helping others plants seeds of gratitude that grow compassion in the hearts we have helped. You can start by reaching out to your friends and neighbors, and once you have the strength of community you can organize people into action. Collect clothing or other goods to send to Haiti instead of money. Use your creative energy to imagine ways to help that middlemen will not be able to diminish. Or join with others who have already begun.

We need to move away from the crumbling paradigm of governments and corporations and towards reliance on the people around us. It all starts with each of us, learning to be giving. All the accumulation of material goods and wealth is just building walls around us. It is freeing to take all the things you don’t use and give them away. To give whenever you can, as much as you can. Wether it be time or service, art or love, food or hugs. Build your community, support your neighbors. When the empires fall we will need our communities in order to survive.

The next time you step in dukkha, realize that it is the same dukkha we are all stepping in. Honor your heart and spend a moment with your own sadness. Then breathe in the air that we all share, the air that has been cycled through the lungs of all of the animals and the plants and the oceans. Take a vow to find a way to make the world a better place, to reduce the suffering around you. You are a stone cast into the pond of being, and your actions will ripple out into the world around you. As we build empathy and compassion our own sorrows will diminish, because our lives will serve a greater purpose. It is the true path to liberation.

I'm getting toasted

It has been a surreal time for me. An asteroid slammed the firmament of my psyche, knocking me out of my orbit, into some parallel universe. I have always been drawn toward celestial bodies, galaxies, the distant light of stars. I am at my core just a mystery unto myself, unexplainable by modern physics or ancient psychics. I have gotten to know myself better over the years but I have no good explanation as to why I am now sitting in a cafe in New Orleans blogging instead of amongst my dearest friends and community in Northampton, MA. My heart got broken for no apparent reason, and there has been no apparent reason for anything since then. What is just is. Yet there is this feeling there is something more…

the two Megans. Need I say more?

All that is clear to me is that after the asteroid hit and my dinosaurs died off there was a new life on my surface. Perhaps born from some sort of mushroom that stowed itself away in the craters of that mythical rock. Perhaps evolutionary. It took me a while to get my bearings and when I did there were these two words like drumbeats from alternating palms. New. Orleans. New. Orleans. I was in mourning but I knew there was something deeper going on. A new vision of the future forming in my third eye, inaccessible to the other two.

I found myself burning photographs and love letters. Purging my life of all the things I lugged around for years and decades. Selling stuff on Ebay, then on Craigslist, and finally just giving it away on Freecycle. It felt amazingly right. Quitting my jobs, giving up my office and apartment. I put all of my remaining belongings into a 5′x10′ storage space. I found it disheartening that I could still fill that. So much crap one can accumulate in a lifetime!

It is hard to leave such amazing people behind…

I found a sobriety too, cleansed myself of lingering bad habits. Delved further into yoga, started reading mystical literature again. Clouds cleared from my atmosphere, encouraging growth. My oceans became deeper, my valleys more fertile, and my peaks more radiant. From this new clarity I began to understand why this path has chosen me. I have long felt some deeper purpose for my life. Each decade I have grown towards it, and the fourth one seems to be the most profound. I am here in New Orleans to build a base for the Evolvegan project, a home in the south, the most inhospitable of places for veganism and sustainability. What better place to bring the evolutionary imperative of compassion? A city needing to be rebuilt the same as my heart. Here I will work on them together.

On the eve of my departure over forty of my dearest friends came out to share a final meal with me. It was so moving, so sweet. I am so grateful for such a community, and I promise I will not leave you behind. These times are moving more quickly, there is rapid change ahead of us. The Earth is calling forth the spiritual warriors and we must heed the call, who have ears and hearts. I cannot pretend to be someone less than who I am. I am here to fight for the survival of all the misguided monkey race, and all the species we think even less of. I have a vision coming through me, of unity. A song I must sing before my voice dries up and my bones turn to dust. I follow my muse and pray she is not just another siren singing me to shipwreck. But even if she is, tonight I am blazing bright as I shoot across the sky and into the unknown future. One thousand miles away from everyone I love, still connected through our hearts.

………………………………

I made a music mix in the wee hours of the night on the train that brought me here (a train they call The City of New Orleans). I made it to share with my friends, feel free to download. I added little voice intros to the songs with my new podcasting mic, to make it more special. It is in enhanced podcast format, with photos embedded and so you can skip from track to track on ipods or itunes…

Train To New Orleans Mix (AAC format – 55MB)

And here is a slideshow of my going away party… after clicking the play button click on the little “four arrows” icon to get fullscreen mode. You can also visit the photoset on flickr. As always, please leave some comments below to help my google ratings!

the sacred path

I spent New Year’s Eve at a ceremony of letting go and welcoming in. Just where I needed to be. Burned a pile of old old letters in the bonfire at midnight. Howled at the beautiful blue moon, shrouded in fog. 2 lunar months since my heart got broken. 12 days before my journey into the south begins. oh one oh one one oh. numbers are sometimes poetry.

Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Make room for the new by exhaling the old. Let go of judgement. Be in the moment. Community. Emptiness. Endless cats and one armed beavers.

I cannot fathom what it is that speaks to me. Grandfather spirits, ancestors, drumming, singing, togetherness in our aloneness. Shedding possessions feels like stretching my wings. Ready to fly. Passion into obsession, compassion into love. Flowing with the water, burning in the fire, reflecting in the moon. A collision sends my spirit into orbit, shifts my magnetic north, humbles me completely. Suddenly it is a new decade. Suddenly it is just the present moment over and over again.

I would like to share with you the list of spiritual goals we were given at the ceremony. They are well conceived and relevant. This is the time to evolve again. Evolvegan.

2010 Sacred Reminders

• work together to make a better world
• honor the light in all beings
• take turns leading
• be grateful for the wisdom you receive
• celebrate the wonders of nature
• take care of the children
• laugh, sing and have fun
• have faith in the higher plan
• bring in the magic
• revitalize your life with healthy food
• rejoice in the passion of love
• dance with all of creation
• remember our celestial home

May you all have a meaningful new year, centered in the now, with your hearts open. This is a strange and important time to be alive. Make it count.

Spiritual twine

It is usually in times of crisis that one reaches for their spiritual grounding, as is true for me now. Because my life is so full of amazing people and meaningful work up until recently I have felt that I was aligned with the universe and on a good path. I had found a woman who was everything I wanted; beautiful, talented, artistic, vegan, tattooed, a healthy eater who is athletic, runs, plays roller derby, dances with fire, and so much more. The hard part was she lives in New Orleans, but I was preparing to move to be with her early in December. Meanwhile we spent countless hours on the phone and emailing and had visited each other several times.

Back in January as we were falling for each other over the wires I saw a shaman who did medicine work with Ayahuasca, a medicinal brew created from plants that grow in the Amazon rain forest. It is often referred to as the “spirit vine” because it is made partly from a vine that blocks the body’s natural DMT inhibitors and lets the DMT from other plant sources have a psychoactive effect on our consciousness. On another level the brew puts one in touch with the spirit world and reveals to us buried parts of our personalities as well as otherworldly mysteries and visions. I was told to ask the brew a question in the ritual leading up to its ingestion, and because this new relationship seemed so special I asked how I should proceed.

Ayahuasca preparation

While the others I was with were struggling with their demons I “took to the medicine” in the words of the shaman. I received a download of jungle visions and heard the drumbeats of an ancient civilization mingling with the Gregorian chants drifting from the shamans stereo. I got an intensely strong good feeling about the relationship I was about to get into. But there was one warning, and that was “work on your honesty”.

We fell deeply in love over the next few months, with little stumbles here and there, but overall the relationship was wonderful and I felt truly blessed. This was what I had been waiting for in my life, this goddess of a woman with all her mysteries, tenderness and sweet love.

In early August I went to the Farm Sanctuary Hoe Down and I really wanted her to go with me but because of financial struggles she couldn’t. I was disappointed but went ahead without her since I was the photographer and it is one of my favorite vegan events, with camping, speakers, food, farm animals and community. At the end of the evening I got a little tipsy and was too flirty with some of the women there, as is sometimes my nature. Thinking that I was living in the moment and being free, I was in actuality creating karma that would later unravel the relationship that mattered most to me.

On the way home I was riding in the back of a friend’s car and started going chronologically backwards through the hundreds of pictures on my phone to pass the time. First were all the pictures on my girlfriend and I, and I felt a longing for her well up inside of me. I sent her a text message telling her I was thinking of her. As I continued into the past on the phone I got into the photos from my last relationship and there were two naked ones of my ex from when we were together. I had forgotten they were there and realized I had to get rid of them. The only reason they were there at all was that there was no way to offload them except to send them to myself and/or delete them one at a time. Unfortunately I am not good at destroying mementos of old relationships and I decided to send them to my email address so as to save them on my computer. I then deleted them from my phone. Once I got home I filed them into a folder and forgot about them.

As time progressed the incident faded from my mind and my thoughts revolved constantly around my girlfriend and my imminent move to New Orleans. In late October she had broken her phone so I offered to send her my old one. I had gotten a new iPhone and didn’t need it anymore I had deleted all the pictures from the phone I didn’t feel I had anything to hide. I had a care package all set for her and I wanted to send it as quickly as possible so she could have a phone. I put the phone in the box without checking it. As fate would have it he texts I had sent to myself were still on the phone, along with the embedded photos. When she found them she called me up all enraged, broke up with me, and hasn’t spoken to me since.

For all we had together and against the backdrop of all the heart and soul we poured into the relationship the fact that I had naked pictures of an ex girlfriend on my cellphone does not seem to me or anyone I have told a worthwhile reason for her to break up with me. Definitely a reason to put me in the doghouse and to slap me upside the head a few times, maybe even not talk to me for a while. But there were other small things I hid from her. My dishonesty typically takes the form of omission. I knew she did not feel comfortable with me having a friendship with my ex and so I did not tell her if I went in to have coffee where she worked or about the time I photographed her in costume at a hair salon.

In these weeks since I lost her I have had to face myself and the dark side of my psyche. I did not believe in her enough to tell her all the details of my life. I did not give her fully of myself, and that was a form of dishonesty I did not recognize as such in myself. The laws of Karma are what the Ayahuasca spirits had warned me of. What is in our hearts manifests in our reality. My love was true and deep, but what I could not share became the karmic brick tied to my soul that dragged me downwards.

Yet this is not a tale of total loss. Out of a sadness as deep as any I have ever known, the losing of this woman who I love so much, I have found my spiritual bearing. The day after the breakup I immediately quit smoking pot and drinking coffee. For most of the last few years I have been smoking regularly and it has blunted my mind (no pun intended). I forget things and lose focus in phone conversations and make bad decisions. I was stoned when I sent the phone. If I wasn’t I would have surely checked it. While that is going to constantly haunt me, I see it now as a great lesson. I cannot live like my actions will not have consequences. They do.

Brandon teaching yoga at the Shiva Shakti studio

In January after the Ayahuasca ritual I also did an intense 30 day yoga “challenge”, taking 30 classes in 30 days at Shiva Shakti Yoga in Northampton, which is a hot Vinyasa style of yoga that is tremendously challenging. Because of the pain in my spirit and the need to return to the true path I have gotten heavily into this practice again, and am currently taking about four classes a week. I consider my teacher Brandon to be one of my spiritual guides in this life. He waxes poetic in every class while we sweat and suffer, relating lifetimes of spiritual wisdom filtered through a heavy Boston accent into every class. The breakup has reduced my appetite but what I do eat is mainly whole foods that nourish me. I feel the need to respect my body. I feel it transforming, giving me a sense of spiritual and physical well-being that helps me cope with the pain I feel.

In spite of the hard lessons being taught the spirit world is looking out for me. Last weekend I was invited to another sacred ceremony led by  shamans from the Native American Church. This time the sacrament was Peyote and the ritual was held to help a couple having relationship troubles. I did not know about that part until I arrived. That is how the spirit world works, if you are open to it, it gives you what you need. I struggled through the first half of the ceremony with stomach cramps and sleepiness and a voice in my head being upset because the medicine was not giving me visions or voices like the Ayahuasca. At a certain point after the drumming and singing and the thoughtful words of participants the couple broke down and love poured into the teepee. I heard the fire crackling as if on que to the loving words that were being uttered. Like a miracle we watched as their relationship and love was restored. It was then that I too felt the spirits return to me.

the magical Peyote button

The next morning after the ritual had ended I was in the teepee talking to some of the people there, and as they asked me about my experience my story came out. One of the fire tenders hugged me and gave me some tobacco to offer to the fire. He said “The spirits are still here and they will hear your prayers. Pray for your partner and don’t be afraid to ask for what you need or to be selfish.” I immediately thought of a quote I had just read in the Tao Te Ching. In my sadness I had been reaching for spiritual guidance and looked up the verse that coincided with the day in February that she had been born.

13.

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don’t see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.

To nourish myself is to care for the world. My yoga teacher says the same, “When you come to yoga you start to be more caring for those around you. Doing yoga is a gift for everyone you love”. In this context my soul began to light up. I started to pray for my girlfriend and her healing, for her fogiveness, for her heart to open up again. I prayed that we would be together again and that I would never again betray her trust. I began to cry and the tears flowed out of me, pouring into the earth around the fire. It was the first time I had really cried since the breakup, I had been too distraught to allow myself tears. I felt arms around me and the universe move inside of me, and in that moment I was reborn. I cast the tobacco into the fire and watched the flames carry it up into the sky, out into the winds that blow down towards the bayou.

A young woman came over and offered me some sawdust from an Amazonian tree that smelled sweet and ancient. She hugged me and gave me comfort. I walked out and stood by the rushing stream outside the teepee and cried some more. A feeling of well-being flowed through my entire body. My spiritual compass reset itself and I now felt truly aligned with the universe. I knew in my heart I would not stray from the path again. All of this terrible loss and suffering had led me to this moment, had taught me to live with sobriety and integrity.

I find it interesting that these two visionary journeys, as well as the yoga, bookended my relationship. It gives me a real sense of meaning. I still have work to do. In my heart I know that things will get better but I must keep my promise to myself and to the universe. I have to live with honesty.  I post this story as the first step of my practice. I want to be the highest expression of my personal beliefs, of the good in me, of the infinite love I have in my heart for life and friends and for the incredible woman i let down. I will accept what comes next with grace and understanding. I will go forward on this spiritual path that combines the ancient practices of yoga, meditation, self-reflection and shamanistic journeying. I will honor and cherish the gifts that the universe offers me. I will care for myself and my loved ones to improve the world around me. And so today, right here and now, the journey towards wholeness begins.