Kameshvari: "lady of desire" who grants wishes...

Learning How to Love

"Learning how to love is the goal and the purpose of spiritual life~ not learning how to develop psychic powers, not learning how to bow, chant, do yoga, or even meditate, but learning to love. Love is the truth. Love is the light."  ~ Lama Surya Das

Mmmmmm....Radhe...Krishna...listening to Wah!'s album "Love Holding Love"

Touch Every Heart...

Yesterday's class was devoted to "Releasing Anger" Kriya and Tershula Kriya meditation, and one of my favorite students showed up unexpectedly...along with 11 more. I haven't seen more than 8 people in a class since January and all the New Year's resolutions! It was exciting to teach, and powerful. When class was over, that student, Danielle, asked if I had started the spiritvoyage.com latest Global Sadhana. I told her that I had meant to begin it this past weekend on Saturday, when I was in Memphis, but that it was just too long. I had meant to begin it Sunday, but did not. I had meant to begin it Monday, but did not. I started to do it yesterday, and almost stopped, with all kinds of negative thoughts running through my mind like: "You'll never finish...what are you doing?...You have too many meditations to do already...you are so selfish...you have taxes to pay, laundry to do, a car to wash, food to cook, classes to teach, a bathroom to clean...you are a slob...you are lazy...you don't deserve this...WOW!!!!

Then I thought: YOU HAD BETTER DO THIS ONE, BECAUSE IT IS SERIOUSLY PISSING OFF YOUR EGO.

And I did it.

And it was awesome. My spine tingled, my heart opened wider, and within 15 minutes I was watching a TED talk video on Radical Self Love. 

And then...I got a phone call...from my ex...the one I'd sent a clip of the upworthy.com video: The Shortest PSA On How To Handle Drunk Girls Passed Out On the Couch...the one who, the very first time I was with him, performed oral sex on me without my knowledge while I lay passed out on his sofa. It didn't matter that I liked him. It didn't matter that awake I would have loved to have been with him, what mattered that it was rape.

And I'd meant to 'allude' to that past lude behavior of his, so when he called I expected him to address it. He didn't. He asked about Yoga classes, and for recommendations on where the best place was to go for a health issue that he was trying to address. We talked about his father and some health issues surrounding him as well. It took me a while after I got off the phone to release how exquisitely I had been manipulated...except THIS TIME he wasn't able to take my energy like he has in the past. I'm not sure if I believe everything he told me either. But, oh well. 

So then I watched a bunch of stuff on Sociopathy. And a TED talk on How to Spot Liars. Very entertaining. 

Through all of this, my heart seems much more open to the fact that all of us lie to a greater or lesser extent. ALL of us. I felt more aware, and yet more forgiving. I know what certain people are capable of, and I choose to keep a safer distance so that my heart can remain more open to those whom I trust more, and whom I really, really care about.

Funny, that the way my whole course curriculum for this meditation series in Kundalini Yoga is lining up with everything else. Amazing really... That tomorrow I will be teaching the kriya for "Treating Grief" from David S. Shannahoff-Khlasa's book on Axis I & II disorders. Amazing that I already had the track "Ong Namo/Sat Kartar" for the previous Global Sadhana with spiritvoyage.com on the playlist, and that I am teaching the kriya also for HOW MUCH YOU LOVE. So... I slapped down the tracks from Gurunam Singh's newest CD for the current Global Sadhana: "Touch Every Heart". 

And I noticed something else. He's got the last track as "Har Ji" for Breaking the Mask kriya. Next Tuesday is: "Breaking the Mask" and "Clearing the Subconscious Reverse Personality".

And I'm already 'breaking the mask' of hiding behind a persona that has not allowed for the fact that I am bisexual and polyamorous. I believe in polyamory, know that it is a valid way of living, just like being straight or being gay is... and I am embracing it. Whether the couple I am interested in becomes one that I am sexually involved with or not, they are helping to heal so much within me. Just being attracted to BOTH of them almost equally, seeing them as sides of the same lover in a way, and watching as they do everything they possibly can to build my trust, to rebuild it from the ways in which it was broken down by a couple in the past...they are 'mirroring' my greatest fears in relationships back with the reverse: real love. Trust. Friendship. Respect. Even on their own turf they give me the courtesy and respect of listening on the other side of the door for a briefly appropriate time to see if it is 'okay' to enter. They do not barge in, even into rooms that belong to them, as long as I am occupying the space, without first checking to see if it is something that I want. My tendency to overwhelm, to see if I can trust them, they are weathering like troopers. For this alone, I love them more than words can say...

Bhagamalini: PAINTING THE TOWN RED!!!

"So whatever be said, Goddess Parvati has two main forms, what actually shaktas say out of which one is Lalita who is Supreme in Srikula family of shaktism and second one is Durga or Kali who is supreme in kalikula family."

My first gong is named Parvati. The second Bhagamalini. She is one of the aspects of Lalita. The mandala book I am working from has mandalas for all of the aspects of Lalita, and all of the aspects of Durga/Kali. Sweet. I'm working through so much sexual pain that needs to be released by working on these "RED" mandalas. Below, it is almost finished.

Red. Love. Love. Love.

And after watching the TED Talk: "Radical Self Love: Gala Darling at TEDxCMU"...Free compliment to myself: I am bountiful, I am blissful, I am beautiful...and being bisexual and devoted to the concept of polyamory as a way of being in relationships is a beautiful way of living. It is open, it is loving, it is right for me, and anyone who does not 'get' that is not my concern. I have as much right to the lifestyle choice of polyamory as others do to committed relationships with one person, be they same-sex or opposite sex. My love for more than one person just makes my own heart bigger. This is MY radical form of self-love: who I AM and my relationship choices are valid.

The video about Radical Self-Love is on youTube:

Watch the video. Create your own journal of radical self-love. Break your own out-dated boundaries...give yourself as many compliments as you can.

And for the record, she says nothing about polyamory, it's just me coming out louder to myself and others about who I am. And I am polyamorous. It's about love, not about lust. 

Thinking about all of this...

And then today, we have the LBGT logo popping up all over Facebook, and everyone saying: "paint the town red"! 

Over a week ago, I was just starting to paint my mandala book red...working on every mandala described as having red in it without realizing it until I began each one. Red was always my favorite color. Life giving. Power. Working with my group of 'mandala women' in "Sacred Feminine Mandalas".

One woman posted today that she is going to a Jungian-inspired workshop where they will be painting and coloring mandalas. This not only reminds me of the Art & Yoga workshops I have tried to do in the past with Kundalini Yoga, just like Hari Kirin, but made my eyes pop out, because I've been thinking of adding mandala coloring to the roster of activities for next Tuesday's class with the kriyas "Clearing the Subconscious Reverse Personality" and "Breaking the Mask". Why not? It's all Jungian shadow/persona work anyway...isn't it???

I am reminded of the Paul Lawrence Dunbar poem that Terpsichord, our modern dance club in high school at Girl's Preparatory School, choreographed a dance to, complete with black unitards (classic Martha Graham design! Ha, ha!) and white paper mache masks:

"We wear the mask that grins and lies

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes

This debt we pay to human guile

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile

And mouth with myriad subtleties..."

Nilapataka: Beacons in the Darkness

Nilapataka. Done. Finished on the 19th, but not commented on or thought about intellectually until today. Today, when I am in Memphis, Tennessee at the Gong Chamber, after playing the Black Gong:Persephone, and crying my heart out. The green...the safety of the heart, how deep it opens on the other side of the storm...

Christy said there is such depth, and that it seems wise to her.

Balprem: "Something dark like the Perfect Storm off Cape Cod and the beacon of orange drawing me in delighting the eyes!"

Wow...it does look like a lighthouse. Thank you for helping me to see that. The light in the storm.

Eileen: "Brings me back to Beasts of the Southern Wild, which I saw last night...the balance of darkness and light, the clear messages of the need to go outward, into the darkness, then back inward through the darkness, again, to the light that was always there. Phoenix Amrita - you have such a gift with color."

I am beaming!!!!!

Eileen, I saw that movie in the theater twice! I loved it so much that I looked up a ton of stuff on Quevenzhane Wallis and the man who played her father, and how he won her over with pastries from his bakery. She ran the show. That movie was incredible. And I'd forgotten, until you mentioned it...how it was that she ventured into the darkness away from home, into the water, to go to that crab shack and get batter-fried alligator for her dying daddy. I thought of my daddy. I love that movie. I love that movie. Thank you for your kind comparison and your dear words.

And thanking Melissa for her kind words: I love my dearest and sweetest friend in the whole wide world! 

Everyone's perceptions help the rest of us expand outwards even more...to the stars!

Eileen: "...I saw [the movie] at a viewing given by the Jung society....Definitely the Joseph Campbell/Jungian hero's journey. Loved the androgens nature of Hushpuppy, the everyman/everywoman aspect of her life and journey (neutral clothing, except when forced into a dress at the shelter - unhappily -, neutral name, Wink's little girl but also "I am the man!") So much in that movie."

Yes. It was fabulous. She was and is a lighthouse. I am a lighthouse. We are lighthouses. Beacons in the darkness.

Lalita AND The Flower of Life!

Duti