Pearls and Reflections

I am here looking at mounds of notes from two weekends with Manorama this last month. She joined us in Tucson for the program there and then again, just recently here in San Marcos. This last time was the sixth time I have studied with her and the  fourth time I have taken the Introductory Sanskrit course and I have to say every time the course  is both the same and wonderfully different.  The teachings are so multi-faced and multi-dimensional that even the same stories grow in their scope and move into new places within my understanding every time.

There are so many things I love about studying with Manorama but one of my favorite things about being around her is that a very lovely part of myself "stands up" when I am in her presence. Many of you have heard me mention that idea that "man is legion" which comes from The Fourth Way School founded by Russian mystic, G. Gurjieff He talks about how there are multiple "I's" that live inside us. This can explain why it is so easy to make resolutions and so hard to keep them. Many times, the "I" that makes the resolution is not the same "I" that has to carry it out. Most of us have an "I" that wants to practice and an "I " that wants to stay asleep in some way.  Part of The Fourth Way had to do with unifying those aspects of self so that all of us was in on the game of awakening.

Anyway, one of the reasons that I think its great to hang out with people who are strong practitioners and who have experienced deeper aspects of consciousness and who are seated in unitive awareness is that they can help my practice/sadhana "I" come forward. It's really an entrainment process and over the years, I have had the great fortune to be around several of those people which has given me a certain radar and ability to recognize opportunity for such darshan. It is not about personality worship, bizarre childish transference or anything outer at all.  The radar I am talking about is grounded in a felt sense from within me about who I become in certain people's presence and in certain heightened circumstances around them. The radar comes from observing my own state of consciousness and recognizing what and who effects it and how.

After years around Lee, it became really obvious who he was- not because his outer form and behavior was always so guru-like. Honestly, it wasn't like that at all. He liked to go to the movies, he sang in a blues band, he had a very scatalogical  sense of humor (think Mike Myers and Eddie Izzard) and his humanness was there in full sight for all to see. It was not him in his humanness that was the entraining factor.  He had all kinds of human preferences- like he liked ice cream super hard and cold. He like his tea boiling hot. And so on. None of that is what I am talking about- all that is personality preference.  (And sure, people got confused and made that stuff into myth and religion around him which is a huge part of the guru-trap, but I digress. That is a post for another time, I suppose.)

But in the same way that the air at the ocean has a certain charge, the air around people of practice and attainment (for lack of a better word because the attainment is not a static thing but is an ongoing process, evolution and so forth because the Force with which we are aligning is not a fixed thing. But I digress. Another post for another day.) has a certain charge or a certain energetic quality and therefore provides a certain kind of access to the Field of Energy in which they reside. And so to me, having a radar for this kind of thing is important and seeing it as a function of Consciousness, not of personality is also key. Once again we circle around to discernment, I suppose. (Another post for another day. Wow, they are piling up!)

Anyway, I like being around Manorama because my sadhana/practice "I" comes very far forward and my fear-based "I" is pacified. It's a lovely state with which to entrain and a very generous gift Manorama makes available to her students. Of course, it may be a bit different for different people  in terms of what comes forward from within them when they are around her or other teachers.

It was different for different people with Lee, too. In a way, he reflected things back so effectively that it wasn't always the "love bhav" that came forward. Being around clear channels means that sometimes our  anger is reflected, our despair and so forth. It's a lot like meditation- So often  someone starts meditation and claims, "That meditation made me angry" when in fact, the meditation allowed just enough quiet and just enough space free of distraction  that the practitioner could see they have been angry all along.

So anyway, like that.

My notes are not exactly organized but I thought I might dive into them and post a few of her "pearls of wisdom." Each one of these "pearls" needs a thorough exploration and could be explored in great depth and perhaps as the months go on I will continue with some of that integrative work.  At any rate, here is a download.

From Tucson:

Sanskrit is the language of yoga. It is the language of language. It should increase your awareness of language. What is not a language?

Sanskrit is the meeting point between the scholarly and the juicy.

Sanskrit The verbal root "kr"-- to do or to make is joined with the intensifying prefix "sam" which means whole perfect, total, nothing missing.

You have to study the translation as much as you study the subject.

You are learning the thing and how to learn the thing.

Take a little of your prana and put it on the subject of knowing yourself.

This is not gymnastics. Do not try to "stick the landing."

Instead, figure out how to thread it (the teachings). You will thread it from where you are standing and yoga teaches you not to have a partial perspective.

Guru- in its highest sense, the guru is a force of energy that moves into your life that elevates you beyond what you are not. In India, the term is prevalent and can mean "someone who helps you understanding something."

gu- darkness, ignorance (on any subject)
ru- the remover, the ascension, that which elevates

The guru is that which helps you elevate beyond darkness and ignorance. Ultimately it means "Light" for how can the darkness ever bring suit when the Light is there?

Letters  (in Sanskrit) are like people. And just like people:
they need space,
they don't always get along,
they are indifferent
and they are able to blend.

Anytime we can be disunited. Yoga is about the union of myself with my Self.

Sanskrit language is a reflection of this union. Everything in the manifest world is the vibration of atoms and molecules. To come into the language of Sanskrit is to come into a language that reflects Reality.

No language is as successful at conveying Rock n'Roll as English. And there is no language as successful at conveying the unitive meditative reality as Sanskrit.

The sounds change the way we relate to ourselves at the most essential level.

Feeling IS the transformation. The feeling is the entry point.

I love you= I love who I am when I am with you. I love who I become in your presence.

Yoga is trying to put us into the vast Field within us.

asana-- as= sit; to be established in. What are you standing in?

We hang out with teachers to borrow their glasses. We entrain in that way.


All right- so that was like from the first hour or so!  Seriously, talk about drinking from a fire hydrant. Anyway, more pearls soon.