Ritual and Patience

Ritual and Patience

Thank you-Thank you everyone, all my friends, family, and sangha for your support, emails and love. I have time just for one email.

Patience-India is about extremes and patience. Wait hour to use the internet and do one email, wait an hour on line for breakfast, lunch, and dinner w/ couple hundred, or couple thousand hungry yogis and yoginis, wait several hours on line for Amma to give Dharshan- blessing, wait another couple hours for Amma to appear or not appear for talk or led meditation.

Ritual- I begin each morning at around 6 or 7 am. I sleep on a cot on the floor and take cold showers, again this is a place for practice and not “vacation w/ wine and women.”

My roommate is a serious yogi and a guru buster from Los Angeles. I lived in L.A. for a year and met my teacher in Boulder there. L.A. is the city of glitz, but under the glitz is a undercurrent of hellish realm. My roommate is a serious yogi, he did over 8 hours of meditation yesterday and is preparing to do a Shiva, Vishnu, and Divine Mother tour over the next year or so, he will do this sadhu style w/ little possessions. I have had roommates in the past and he is respectful of the space as am I. He is usually doing advanced breath work, chanting mantras, mediating and so forth around 6 or 7 in the morning. I with .50 cent yoga pants, or .75 cent eccentric blue and pink flower baggy yogi pants start off with breath work, then chanting outloud from my root chakra the invocation to Patajali, I do sun signs, standing series, mediation learned here, corpse pose, and more chants. If you took a middle American walmart mcdonald’s suburban man threw out his television and placed him in our rooom he would have quite a culture shock. It is nice to be with a yogi who understands my path, I know Astanga yoga teacher friends from Texas who were arrested in Houston for doing yoga. The people who come here for wine and women, and the creature comforts of the United States are gone within the day like logs moving down the river.

Culture- With all the thousands of Indians from all over India who come here to see a master of Bhakti yoga, there are plenty of opportunities to talk with others from around the globe. Lately it has been people from France, now it has been Germans, Switerzland, Israel, and Holland. The “Divided States” of America is not the center of the world, some have an attititude and see U.S. and George W. as a bully, but most all are friendly and know that it is the person and the heart of the person and not the country, Bhakti is a path of love to realization despite creed, race, culture, country, and how much a person looks or doesn’t look like Brad Pitt or a model.

Om Namah Shivaya
Gopala Shane