Dear Yogis,

Sometimes when I sit down in the morning to write to you, I have to hear in a different way.  I have to trust the guys upstairs because their understanding is way different and way ahead of my understanding.  There is quite a gap.   Sometimes I think, “where are we going with this”, but I have to trust enough to keep going.  To listen very intently.  This morning is a case in point.   They spoke about the inter-school cricket I played when I was in primary school.  What’s that got to do with yoga I thought as I bumbled onwards?  As it turns out – everything!

Have you ever played cricket?  In my early years I wasn’t good at team sport – I couldn’t see the ball coming at me, and most of the sport we did involved a ball. I wasn’t even any good in the outfield where I felt abandoned in “space”  and couldn’t see the team or the balls. As my sight improved and I began to see again (however badly) I found that I was a very, very good bowler in the game of cricket.  I couldn’t yet see the ball well enough to actually hit it when it was coming at me with speed, but I could bowl amazingly well.  So I did.  I had found a game I could be good at, practised,  and got even better.

I had my own little ways of holding the ball, doing the run up, bowling in ways  that worked for me, and as long as the person about to hit it wasn’t used to my method, I could bowl them out… I got into the A Grade at school based on this and they assigned me a coach (just a parent perhaps) who was an awesome bowler. The first thing the coach needed to see was how I bowled, just to see what he was working with.  What was the first thing he did? He changed my grip, then my run up! I got confused, frustrated, and my game went down the drain.  I wanted to go back to the old way.

I was young.  What I didn’t know in the beginning was sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards. If you want to grow at anything FIRST you have to get into an uncomfortable place,  trust the teacher, and practice the new way.  You have to get uncomfortable, and practice the new way, not long for and hang onto the old way..  “Better” depends on purpose.  If at the bottom of it you don’t care about anything other than people’s image of you, if it means nothing other than ego, then you will quit rather than go backwards.

If I am just bowling (doing/teaching yoga) to a closed group, just for the ego strokes, and I am not confident enough to get uncomfortable, make some wrong decisions, grow and change, at some point I will know I am faking it and drop the game, or I will make some less than honest decisions in order to keep in front of the group.  This applies to anything, and is as relevant in the game of yoga, or the game of family, or the game of work.  

This painting will be available for purchase after 28th June….

The photo is of a new painting of the Medicine Buddha I am in the process of completing.  Every time I sit in front of  blank canvas,  I have to be in the position of trust.  I cannot do it on my own. Once I think it is all about me I am lost, and might as well put the painting in the bin, because it will be rubbish.

At various points along the way it looks as if nothing is happening, or feels like it is useless to keep going.  If I got into my mind and only trusted that,  I would get nowhere.   I would quit.

 

What if BETTER is a foundation?

What if BETTER is coming through you?

What if BETTER is right in front of you, but because it is too challenging to allow BETTER into your life you don’t recognise it, and therefore you don’t receive it?

If you want to change your life, your mind must change first, and you can only do that with  trust and with knowledge.  Not just reading the morning messages, but acting on them, reading more, doing more.  MEDITATING MORE.  Remember, when you switch your grip in order to go forwards, in the beginning you may seem to go backwards.  It’s OK.  It’s necessary.  Trust the process.

 

ENJOY THE SUNSHINE.

NAMASTE JAHNE

 

 

Dear Yogis..

We in the West want to be Enlightened, but we want it NOW.  Tantra, being the quickest of the paths should appeal.  The path of Tantra is the path of TRANSFORMATION.  Whilst the explosion of desire, of the more, more, more point of view is considered to be a serious obstacle to most spiritual paths, in Tantra, we can use this as fuel to drive us to our highest destination.

Tantra is a path of acceptance, not blind acceptance or self-mortification, and it is in this way that it can bring us out of our self destructive patterns and at the same time give us the opportunity for complete fulfilment.  However, if we are going to derive satisfaction from this path there are certain points we cannot overlook..

Firstly: Our Motivation must be pure.  We will not be able to achieve the wonderful benefits that Tantra can provide if we are mired in our own self centred nature, and are doing it for our own benefit.

Secondly: We must engage in the practices in an ordered manner.  We cannot start at the top and believe it is OK “for us”.  This attitude is foolish, arrogant, and dangerous.

Thirdly: and this is a point I think we must bring into all our disciplines – there is no benefit in pretending to look or act like a Tibetan, or any other Oriental for that matter.  Neither is learning the discipline, or practising prayers in another language.  There is nothing transcendental to be gained from substituting one set of cultural conventions for another.  Pretending we are something other than who we are, or where we are on the path.

People whose practice relies on this superficial level of learning,  end up not knowing who they are or what they should do. There is always a value to be had in learning another language, Sanskrit for instance, but we must always keep in mind that the yoga we are considering is a discipline far deeper than language or custom.   With Tantra, we are trying to BREAK AWAY FROM CONDITIONING which limits our understanding of what we are and what we can become.

Tantra transforms the grasping at pleasures which results in suffering,  into transcendental awareness free from the delusions that normally contaminate our pursuit of pleasure.  This discipline channels these energies into a powerful path which leads us to acceptance, and the ability to skilfully use our precious human potential.

With proper understanding of Tantric Transformation, whatever we do, where ever we do it, in whatever time frame,  can bring us closer to our goal of self-fulfilment.  All of  our actions (even sleep) can be turned into clear, penetrating wisdom in the same way that poisonous plants can be distilled into life giving medicine.

The image of Vajradhara, the male and female dieties in sexual embrace is a symbol of the inner unification of our own male and female energies, and the very highest of Tantric practices, representing great bliss, and a totally integrated state of blissful wisdom that completely transcends ordinary sense desire.

 

 

HAVE A LOVELY DAY.

NAMATE – JAHNE

 

 

Dear Yogis,

What do you WANT?  We are living in a world governed by DESIRE.  From the moment we wake up we are thinking of the next thing – food, clothing, house, sounds.  Our ears want to hear lovely sounds, our eyes want to see beautiful colours, even our nose want to smell expensive beautiful perfumes and aromas.  This sense desire is so strong that if we are deprived for any length of time we begin to imagine them.

Our desire is not limited to the physical.  We can desire knowledge, security, contentment and we do.  We run after them as if we can catch them.  It is desire that drives us to achieve success.  Most people would consider life without desire to be a living death.

Behind each of our desires is our wish to be happy and if only in this regard we are all equal.  We all want to be happy, but in spite of this our life is full of unhappiness, pain and dissatisfaction.  Buddha called this cycle SAMSARA.

We have been taught that liberation or NIRVANA is achieved by completely uprooting cravings from the heart. However, if the only way we know how to deal with the objects of desire is to avoid them, there will be a severe limit as to how far our spiritual practice will take us.

TANTRA moves in a different way.  In Tantra, instead of viewing desires as things to be avoided at all costs, Tantra recognises that the energy stirred by desire can be transformed into a resource for the spiritual path, and seeks to change every experience in this way , even if the doing seems to others to be “unreligious”.

It is because our present life is so rooted in desire that we must learn to use desire’s amazing energy in order to transform our life into the transcendental.  Tantra recognises that we can’t reach our heart’s desire by becoming more and more miserable as we squash one desire after the other.

TANTRA teaches that is only by cultivating SMALL experiences of calm and satisfaction where we are now, that we will have any hope at all of achieving pace and contentment in the future.

SPEAKING OF DESIRE… Ever since I started teaching I have lived for my students remembering some famous words “…I am a river to my people”.  When the candle is burning at both ends, I remember those words and keep going.  During covid my students have been a river to me.  Vegetables, and small gifts left on the porch, cards, letters  and yesterday KNITTED HOUSE SOCKS (in the photo).  Thank you all.  Mostly I don’t know where the gifts originate, who has left them, but I do know who posted the sox, and I have to say they are beautiful – thank you.

Have a beautiful, colourful, SOX’Y DAY

NAMASTE –  JAHNE