Since late last year I have been investigating Kundalini Yoga. My gut told me I needed to and I listened as is my practice now, listening. Kundalini has opened up tremendous spaces in me, vast and formless places where I meet a much larger version of myself. This me, the big one, is pretty terrific, able to navigate dicey situations with immense grace. She is quiet, humble and incredibly strong, in a balanced, get-shit-taken-care-of way. I like her and am finding my way into loving her. It's a pretty cool engagement, one I am happily willing to invest my precious time in. My primary teacher is Guru Jagat of Rama Institute of Applied Technology in Venice. She kicks ass, period. Her primary teacher is Yogi Bhajan, who is no longer on this earth embodied. A few weeks ago she gave a teaching about the resonance of glyph languages, like Gurmukhi (a form like Sanskrit) and ancient Egyptian. (I believe Hebrew is also resonant in its presentation.) She included in the lecture the powerful vibrational resonance of looking into your guru's eyes, in this case a photo of Yogi Bhajan that is hung prominently in her studio. For whatever reason, this stuck with me. I have heard of this before obviously; many yogi's have photos of their gurus for this same download/transmission. Gugu Jagat is definitely downloading something; it is obvious in the caliber of her teachings and what they transmit to her students, namely myself. So I've been with this idea of Yogi Bhajan's image. So I google him and read his biography - impressive stuff about how he was essentially an awakened spirit from early boyhood. I loved the idea that he had brought these secret teachings of Kundalini Yoga (at the risk of death no less!) to the west so that people like me could become part of this ancient lineage, the so-called Golden Chain of devotees who purify their bodies and auras, who chant the ancient names of God, who tune in and become their highest selves. Sign me up, I'M ALL IN...
A few weeks ago I was in Rome. I didn't even want to go to Rome; Geoffrey and I had been there 17 years ago on our way to and from Africa. I felt I had seen it and had no desire to go back and I planned it anyway so that Nikki could see it. Fast forward to when Nikki doesn't go on the trip because she wants to go to Cheer camp and I end up spending four days in Rome that ABSOLUTELY BLOW ME OPEN. I am shown a deeper layer of 'reality' and 'truth' that obliterates all that I have stood on with regards to history. I discover there is really no such thing. Reality is so unrelentingly subjective, there is no way to know what actually happened, even if there are eye-witness accounts. Which, when you're talking ancient Rome, do not exist. All that exists in most cases are what's ground into the dust beneath 'current reality'. Now that's big for my brain. Me, with my hard-won degree in Journalism, my idealistic journalist-self who was obsessed with reporting things "as they actually happened" with as much objectivity as I could muster. What a joke. Years later I revisited all those stories I wrote and discovered right there in plain sight my own viewpoint that I then proved with just the right interviews and quotes. Anything can be spun to look like whatever we want. (Reality is essentially a squirrelly mother fucker.)
So I come home from Italy with the understanding that there really is no ground to stand on, no tried and true answers. Truth cannot be found out there in the world. I must feel it from within. And I get to start fashioning a world view where I must ask myself, "Are you ok with not having the ground to stand on? In your seemingly never-ending quest to understand yourself within the context of humanity and human evolution, do you get that the library just burned to the ground? That there is no external place to go to get answers?" Ah, except that there is a place to go- my yoga mat. My practice. Therein lies many answers.
And so. Guru Jagat offers a six-month course for women called Immense Grace. Even the name fits. Except that when I left my last teacher situation, I SWORE to myself that I was taking a very long break from courses of any kind, except self-directed, which is what my kundalini involvement has been thus far. Friends exert gentle pressure for me to lift my ban and take the course. And so the question begins rolling around in my head - is this for me to take? Is it right for me? And whenever I ask the question, the answer always comes... and this time the Universe decides to open yet another black hole beneath me...
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