I could never get through the book. Everyone raves about it. It has hidden itself in my piles of books and when I listened to Autobiography of a Yogi on tape, I suddenly began to crave reading it. Where could it be?
The post-Subagh Kriya Post
Well, each section brings up it’s own shit. I see how restless my mind has gotten without the sadhana practice; forever trying to squirm out of where I’m at, trying to search for something better I could be doing. I should do the other meditation instead; no the other, no the other…
It used to be that I would just get fed up with staring at my resentments for the duration of sadhana. When I do sadhana at home, it get restless; I want to do other things. It’s like piling up ten books next to the bed to read before going to sleep. Yogi Bhajan said somewhere that people expect meditation to be constant bliss, but often it’s hell on earth.
The ego jumps in and decides maybe I should do 100 yoga sets in a row; THAT will fix me! I exaggerate, but only slightly.
This WordPress editor is really unreliable. Line breaks may or may not work. Google docs does the same thing. Whassup with that shit? Text editors are like the oldest software programs around now.
Gradual realization that there may be a birthday party for Nicole this eve, and how will I sleep, get up, see if Joy’s check will show up today or not.
The nice thing about Pilates is that it doesn’t require you to question whether you’re making any spiritual connection. You do the exercise; your body gets in better shape, you look better, you feel better. With yoga you have to give your faith a whirl. You can do the exercise and see what happens, but all the esoteric claims for all the sets are unprovable and could be utter horse-shit. I’ve become so cynical lately in every spiritual dimension of my life. Or maybe I’ve always been, but there was a limerence period with it when I bought, hook, line, and sinker, every claim YB made for every set. Eventually when life didn’t go my way, and the time spent doing prosperity sets seemed like it would be better applied to finding a decent job like a rational human being, the infatuation faded.
Shakti Pad. The Shakti Pad people. Disillusionment. Brilliant; build in a path around doubt to keep the fold in the cult.
Why do I see it as a cult? Why do I keep trying to fix my problems with it?
Subagh Kriya: Full 55 minute version
Well, I ended up working all night, right through sadhana time. Haven’t done a full sadhana in quite some time. I got fed up with it. My expectation is that if I get up at 3AM and do two hours of yoga and meditation I’m entitled to have financial prosperity and career stability in my life. But it never happened. I’d always end up sleeping through my lunchtime commitments too; that doesn’t do too much to convince me that it’s working wonders in my life. I’d be too exhausted to follow-through on the realizations I had during meditation. What good is that?
Well, I suppose I could go to bed earlier. It seemed like an empty promise; your circle of friends may be smaller, but your relationship with God will make your life richer and more meaningful.
So before I keel over and collapse, I’m going to dive in and see if I can at least make it through the challenging Subagh Kriya 55 minute set. It’s not too bad at 15 minutes, but when you do each of the 5 sections for eleven minutes each, boredom sets in, and later my chest and neck end up sore and I get cranky. Well… let’s see what happens.
Furthermore, the “Har” chants I’d found eventually bored me to tears. That’s because I did them every day for 119 days… while my dad was dying. When I got back to LA from NYC, the depression set in, and I said, “fuck it.” Whenever I commit to a set for 40 days, or try to get to that point, the last days become the most challenging. No longer because the set is hard, but because the challenge of showing up for it gets stronger with boredom and distraction and disillusionment. Well, I recorded my own “Har” chant, with the word chanted on 2 and 4 instead of 1 and 3. It makes it a little easier to ride the energy of the chant physically. But it’s not terribly exciting either.
Enough talking… down to practice. Couldn’t I eat first? Or maybe sleep… or or or…
They said only do the 55 minute version if you’re out of work. I guess it’s time, huh?
The Practice
Lately, every time I do a yoga set, I end up thinking I should start keeping a journal of my practice. So it’s about time I get started.