Not Enlightened Yet

I can’t be good no more...
honey because the world gone wrong...
The Mississippi Sheiks

...John Milton said they also serve who only stand and wait...but how ‘bout they who sit around getting in utterly needless nasty arguments with complete strangers in the comments under youtube videos?....

...had a bit o' road rage on the way to yoga class today...yeah, it’s happened before...this time in a car...somebody making it nearly impossible for me to merge, and I, quite unmindfully, flipped her the bird....then noticed she was driving a hybrid with all kinds of mellow, socially conscious bumper stickers, like that one with COEXIST made up of symbols representing the world’s major religions...and she seemed to be taking all the turns I was...occurred to me she could be heading to yoga class...possibly even the same yoga class I was...which could be uncomfortable....figured maybe I’d break the ice with something like actually, sister, the middle finger is an ancient Hopi symbol that means “the radiant earth crystals of my heart imbue you with their healing love energy"...and maybe she’d be really moved by that and we’d go out for herbal tea, vegan stir-fry, and the latest documentary about drinking water...

I had read everything I could find about enlightenment. But the more I read, the more despair I went into because these texts had nothing to do with me and my problems. Enlightenment? I just wanted to wake up without wanting to kill myself.
Ana Forrest

...some yogis have a real problem with that particularly potent and aromatic form of prana known as coffee....I point out that they didn't have it in ancient India...if they had, Yoga Sutra 1.1...atha yoga nushasanam...translated into the English dialect unique to Philly and Jersey as: yo, let’s do some fuckin’ yoga...would most likely be preceded by Yoga Sutra 1.0...first we drink coffee...

Waiting for the Hurricane

...once saw a personal ad specifying, among other things, no baggage...obviously not looking for me....which is okay, since, I suspect, a person with no emotional baggage would have be either perfectly enlightened or boring...

...or both....once, talking to a shrink, expressed concerns about possible ill effects of overcoming depression...particularly on musical taste...asked if I could end up trading in Miles Davis and Lou Reed for Britney Spears and Mandy Moore...(this was ten years ago...insert appropriate poppy upbeat 2011 equivalents if you please)....he laughed, but didn’t exactly say no...

...had a version of that high school anxiety dream it seems everybody has...(y’know, walking the halls during finals week, realizing I’ve somehow forgotten to go to class all semester, and, in fact, am not even sure what rooms my classes are in...meaning that, even after all that higher education, I’m still in danger of failing high school)...

...(I’ve never had the showing-up-at-school-naked dream, but suspect that, metaphorically, it’s the same thing)...(like the dreams a friend said she was having, in which it turned out her divorce papers never got properly filed and she’s still married to her ex-)...(anyway...)...

...in this one, though, I’m at some kind of office job, realizing I haven't the slightest idea what I’m supposed to be doing, and getting a bit panicked about it...but, then, realizing I really don’t want the job, anyway...

...got an e-mail (in my spam folder) this morning reading Congratulations you have been chosen for Registry of Distinguished Women...(sic)....don't think I'm being overly humble in saying this honor was unexpected...

It Ain't Easy

These times of meltdown are precious.
Stephen Cope

...but it ain’t easy to write about it when yer in ‘em...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 31:922

...a woman at the rehab said she wanted to write her life story, send it in and get it published as a book...I said for now, let’s just write...and, in the last fifteen minutes before I went home, she came up with a good page and a half or so about age five, approximately, to age eight, stopping every sentence or so with questions...how to spell addict and dealer to describe her mom and the guy who moved in, respectively, whether she needed to write out Kentucky Fried Chicken or if k.f.c. was good enough to describe the place where she rooted through the dumpster for food, whether rape or molest was the best word to describe what happened when she was eight...I shrugged, glancing at simple sentences without punctuation or paragraph breaks, said either works, I guess...

...(when someone like Maya Angelou writes about this kinda stuff, the punch in the gut's devastating but lyrical...a resounding song of the phoenix....the cruder tune of someone struggling with everything she’s got to get above the flames is something else entirely...a view of an apocalypse that’s always right now)...

Mature in yoga, impartial
everywhere he looks,
he sees himself in all beings
and all beings in himself.
Bhagavad Gita

...tomorrow I'm supposed to teach a free yoga class to some friends...told 'em it's guaranteed...reach enlightenment or your money back...

Whelk Procession

...a line of broken whelks placed like some holy procession the day before Thanksgiving...where, a couple weeks ago, water whooshing back to sea created a kind of sand ridge intersecting the shoreline....some say anything can be a sacred object....I don’t know, but see no particular reason to disagree...

...too cold to go barefoot...battered hiking books press down in wet cold sand...some seepage through worn out soles...but hardly more than the idea of wetness and cold... though that might change if I don’t keep moving....barely anybody else out but the metal detector guys...one in Bermuda shorts, though I’m wearing three layers, and the strong icy wind makes me doubt I’ll get anywhere near the point...but no worn out soul, as yet...still walking... dark tumultuous, thoroughly ominous cloud roof looming above yet ending in a straight but bumpy line just a foot or so above the horizon, where there’s no blue but an odd species of luminescence...clouds, still...but glowing...bare gilded outlines in white light....rotten wooden pilings so dark against the water lapping down below...all that light and dark in sharp distinction but what lines are in between gradually fading...

...had a deep sad thought last night...like someone wrapping me in a chilly, damp quilt...but then watched it dissipate, like a winter rainstorm...

...in better moments I think I’m on the road to enlightenment...then drop the pretense, think maybe I’m just not depressed...though, really, at this point, I can’t say the distinction matters to me much...

Autumn Rivulet #1

I’m in the here and now and I’m meditating, and
still I’m sufferin’, but that’s my problem...
Van Morrison

...as long as you’re breathing, there’s more right with you than wrong with you...
Jon Kabat-Zinn

felt a cool autumn
breeze upon waking, though no
window was open

Bernie the Enlightened Yoga Master Speaks!

The following is the first entry in this blog’s long awaited Yogic Perspectives guest blogger series, made possible by the generous support of the Worldwide Yoga Merchandisers Association Inc. and the Words of the Profit Spiritual Center of Marin County. Our first guest blogger is Bernie the Enlightened Yoga Master, founder of the Samadhi or Death! chain of yoga studios.

Yo! This is Bernie the Enlightened Yoga Master from Samadhi or Death! Yoga and I’m feelin’ good! That’s cuz I just came outta yoga class, and maaaaaan did I kick some ass! These mellow yoga freaks come in with their cosmic attitudes and I tell ‘em you call that shit downward facin’ dog? I call it frickin’ pathetic...and then I show ‘em how a real Yoga Master does it! If they can’t handle it, it ain’t my frickin’ problem!

Let's face it, for most people, just lookin’ at somebody as physically and spiritually advanced as me crushes their frickin' big egos! And that’s the first step toward showin’ ‘em what enlightenment’s all about! Yeah, I hear what some of these lame-ass so-called yogis say about my style of yoga! They’re like duuude it’s not about bein’ all competitive and shit...and I’m like yeah, I’d probably tell myself that too if couldn’t do a frickin’ chattaranga for more than ten frickin' seconds! And I’m sure I’d have no problem with different body types if I was walkin’ around with a frickin’ spare tire and a saggy ass instead of the perfect six-pack abs and buns of steel I got from doin' the patented asana routines of Samadhi or Death! Yoga!

Now don't get me wrong: yoga’s not just about kickin’ everybody’s ass at sun salutations and scorin’ on all the hot yoga babes...tho that shit ain’t bad, believe me! It’s also about clearin’ out your mind and gettin’ to a more spiritual place and shit! And that’s why these people are soooo frickin’ jealous, cuz they know I’m totally awake and they’re too caught up in their frickin’ egos to see it! But I’m totally past that bullshit! I’m all about bein’ positive and in tune with the universe and shit, and if people wanna get all negative cuz I show ‘em how much they suck at yoga, that’s their own frickin’ bad karma, and I got no frickin’ time for that! When you got rock hard yoga abs like mine, you don’t frickin’ need an ego!

If you think you can handle the real shit, come check us out at Samadhi or Death! Yoga! And be sure to buy a copy of my new book, Restorative Poses are for Pussies! And don’t even think I’m gonna end with any of that namaste crap—you want me to honor the light inside you, you better be prepared to frickin’ earn it!

Yoga for Cynics takes no responsibility, legal, ethical, or otherwise, for the content of this series...really—we’re just in it for the corporate sponsorship money....