Stars and Stardust
I love star gazing. If you let me be under the sky, I can stare up at it for a very very very long time. I might start humming if I'm alone. I might start talking about something absolutely random, go off on a tangent most times, or I might just stand and stare. There's that poem right, I can't get the name for some reason, what is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare ; or something like that. Star-gazing, gives you that opportunity to just stand and stare. There's something about that. :) I remember, when we were young, mom, dad, Aiyappa and me went on a road trip through Kashmir - Leh - Ladakh, and we stopped at Dras for the night and the sky from there was such a brilliant sight. I could just watch the sky full of stars the whole night. That image has stayed with me all these years and will be with me for the rest of my life I think.
Today was a tough day at class. We were coming out of an off-day. I was super tired. I didn't realise how much yesterday and the entire experience had drained me, I was out the minute my head touched my pillow. But because I don't have my phone, I was so scared that I might miss waking up on time, and so I woke up every hour just to check if it was time to go. So when I finally got out of bed, I was tired and needed sleep and was battling a headache. But willed myself through it and sat down with my cup of Chai. Wayan now knows my schedule. Maybe I should just tell him to wake me up everyday at 6! So we have our small little ritual where we chat about the day and he teaches me a few Bahasa words here and there, and he watches my chai making everyday with utmost care, almost as if it were something magical (well, it is!) I got to class and was pleasantly surprised to see Andrea there and he led us through two 20 minute meditation sessions and then a really tough class with Emily. We spoke about how our bodies have electricity within them, and a fire within all of us. And the class was modelled to ignite that fire. We went for an hour and a half without a break and then for another 30 minutes before we hit shavasana. Crazy crazy sequence. I was generally feeling extremely low and super tired. And didn't even attempt the handstands and the trip-pod stands and did the alternatives instead. But she taught us a beautiful way to get into the Wild Thing : Camatkarasana. It is just such a lovely asana, like you are opening up your heart to all the lovely things out there. It is beautiful.
I felt a little better after that and the hearty breakfast. But was low throughout the day after that. And even slept for an hour in our afternoon break from 2:30-3:30. This evening we had a agnihotra ceremony - which is why Emily decided to theme the class earlier that day around fire. Agnihotra is the fire ceremony, in India we call it havan (हवन ) or yajna. It is a vedic ritual that uses fire to purify the atmosphere. I hadn't participated in one in almost over a year and was looking forward to it. After yesterday's water purification, we had today's fire purification. A complete cycle. I'm all pure now. :) Just kidding there! I just got back from the ceremony. We chanted the Gayatri Mantra 31 times for 30 of us doing the training and Emily and at the end of the gayatri mantra we said Swaha and put into the fire whatever we all had to offer. Emily had told us to write on a piece of paper, anything we wanted to let go of and offer that to the fire. Since the havans I've been a part of have always had a gratitude spin to it, I wanted to thank the universe for everything it had offered to me and then offer my intention or my deepest desire to it. I picked the same intention that I'd sent out into the universe at Awa Hoshi's crystal bowl meditation. It was a lovely ceremony, a lot shorter that what we have in India usually, and it was nice to see the priest here singing the gayatri mantra in a different tune.
The priests had lit up the entire place with candles and decorated it with marigolds. They are my favorite celebratory flowers, they bring in so much life and colour into the surroundings. I just absolutely love them, I also feel like they're so synonymous with India. Anyhow, so the ceremony was lovely. I felt like I was back home for a bit.
I know I've been saying I'll talk about my music classes and I have spoken about them somewhere. What i discovered was that they are a powerful form of meditation. And like Octavio said to us, when you're chanting or singing, you're so engrossed in that action, that your mind in the beginning of that meditation doesn't have the liberty to wander. And once you get into the rhythm, you're already in deep meditation of sorts for your mind to then be distracted.
Through the sessions he slowly introduced us to the chakras and the sounds associated with those chakras, the root sounds and the smaller sounds that make up the root sound, I think (!) It is said in the yoga and tantric world that the universal or cosmic energy, prana, sets up great vortexes in certain parts of the nervous system, known as chakras or wheels of psychic energy. They are usually depicted lotuses with differing numbers of petals representing various qualities and energies of the chakra. According to tantric texts there are various chakras all over the body, but there are 7 main ones.
This post might seem a bit random, but they then depict Octavio's classes! We literally were THIS random, but still managed to learn a lot from him. There was this one conversation where we spoke about how some of us use being busy as a coping mechanism. I have done it loads of times. After a heartbreak or a tough time in life, i have thrown myself into work like a mad woman, sometimes not eating breakfast or lunch or responding to emails at 1 am in the morning and what not. I think it was Colette who told us about this story. There was a rider, galloping away on his horse, on full speed. Someone stopped to ask him where he was going, and he said "I don't know ask the horse!", before riding away. And that is us at times (if not all the time in this modern world) galloping away at full speed, running from task to task, but not knowing where we are headed. I can see how this can be confused with "Let's see where life takes me". But that is a different thought altogether. Personally for me, that is an acceptance and flexibility to face and take anything that life offers you. Which is very different from running from pillar to pillar. Even though you have a open mind about life and where it could take you, you could and should, still have a goal or an idea of what you want your life to be, or what you definitely don't want it to be. The horse rider on the other hand was purely ignorant.
We spoke about how using japa, or repetition of the mantras can be way of dealing with your emotions at any given point in time. And when she said that, I realised that I do it so often off late. Every time something or someone bothers me, I start chanting in my head or softly using my lips. And I even shared this with Nanna and the group, that sometimes for me, it's like background music. So the noise in my life and what I'm dealing with still continues, but I now with my music, have the strength to deal with whatever i find difficult to be around.
I know I said, be the fly on the wall of your own life, so what I'm going to say now might be countering that! But sometimes it's so important to even step away from your own life ! We did this meditation with Andrea I think, where he asked us to think about a particular event or happening in the recent past that we have reacted negatively to and to picture with closed eyes, every single tiny detail pertaining to that event. How we felt, what we were wearing when that happened, how we reacted, how the other person reacted, what were the surroundings....so literally basic basic stuff. And then he asked us to embody that emotion we felt and to feel it strongly now, to let that emotion flood our senses. And then he asked us to let go of the parts of our 'story' and one by one as I let go of the characters and everything else that made up the story (the story i picked was me being very upset about what someone had said to me the previous night), I found that the sadness that I felt melted away as well. And the exercise was basically to make you realise, that what your feel most times, all your emotions of anger and sadness and jealousy and what not, are your own doing in your own head, with the story you have built around it. Now, no one is saying that you make up these situations. Sometimes, we are genuinely angry and agitated and someone has done something very wrong to get us into those states of the mind. But we add our own colour to it, to then make it this huge ball of "I can't believe he said/did that!" and that intesifies the negativity that you feel.
The moment, I started dropping away the colours of my story, i went from being very very upset to feeling nothingness. It was magical. So sometimes, it is important to step out of your own mind and body and look at yourself. So maybe then, it doesn't not gel with my earlier observe yourself all the time take on life :)
That's all from my end for today. My no-phone run continues. A very dear friend of mine joins me for the weekend, she arrives on Friday. It'll be nice to spend time with her. She leaves on Sunday and then we have a movie night planned for Monday and Tuesday is our last day off. And next Saturday I'll be in Singapore. time has flown, literally! Sigh.
I'll end this post with this stanza from a beautiful poem called The Invitation by Oriah, the Mountain Dreamer
I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or yours
without moving
to hide it
or fix it
or fade it
.....
I want to know
if you can be all alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments
नमस्ते
Today was a tough day at class. We were coming out of an off-day. I was super tired. I didn't realise how much yesterday and the entire experience had drained me, I was out the minute my head touched my pillow. But because I don't have my phone, I was so scared that I might miss waking up on time, and so I woke up every hour just to check if it was time to go. So when I finally got out of bed, I was tired and needed sleep and was battling a headache. But willed myself through it and sat down with my cup of Chai. Wayan now knows my schedule. Maybe I should just tell him to wake me up everyday at 6! So we have our small little ritual where we chat about the day and he teaches me a few Bahasa words here and there, and he watches my chai making everyday with utmost care, almost as if it were something magical (well, it is!) I got to class and was pleasantly surprised to see Andrea there and he led us through two 20 minute meditation sessions and then a really tough class with Emily. We spoke about how our bodies have electricity within them, and a fire within all of us. And the class was modelled to ignite that fire. We went for an hour and a half without a break and then for another 30 minutes before we hit shavasana. Crazy crazy sequence. I was generally feeling extremely low and super tired. And didn't even attempt the handstands and the trip-pod stands and did the alternatives instead. But she taught us a beautiful way to get into the Wild Thing : Camatkarasana. It is just such a lovely asana, like you are opening up your heart to all the lovely things out there. It is beautiful.
I felt a little better after that and the hearty breakfast. But was low throughout the day after that. And even slept for an hour in our afternoon break from 2:30-3:30. This evening we had a agnihotra ceremony - which is why Emily decided to theme the class earlier that day around fire. Agnihotra is the fire ceremony, in India we call it havan (हवन ) or yajna. It is a vedic ritual that uses fire to purify the atmosphere. I hadn't participated in one in almost over a year and was looking forward to it. After yesterday's water purification, we had today's fire purification. A complete cycle. I'm all pure now. :) Just kidding there! I just got back from the ceremony. We chanted the Gayatri Mantra 31 times for 30 of us doing the training and Emily and at the end of the gayatri mantra we said Swaha and put into the fire whatever we all had to offer. Emily had told us to write on a piece of paper, anything we wanted to let go of and offer that to the fire. Since the havans I've been a part of have always had a gratitude spin to it, I wanted to thank the universe for everything it had offered to me and then offer my intention or my deepest desire to it. I picked the same intention that I'd sent out into the universe at Awa Hoshi's crystal bowl meditation. It was a lovely ceremony, a lot shorter that what we have in India usually, and it was nice to see the priest here singing the gayatri mantra in a different tune.
The priests had lit up the entire place with candles and decorated it with marigolds. They are my favorite celebratory flowers, they bring in so much life and colour into the surroundings. I just absolutely love them, I also feel like they're so synonymous with India. Anyhow, so the ceremony was lovely. I felt like I was back home for a bit.
I know I've been saying I'll talk about my music classes and I have spoken about them somewhere. What i discovered was that they are a powerful form of meditation. And like Octavio said to us, when you're chanting or singing, you're so engrossed in that action, that your mind in the beginning of that meditation doesn't have the liberty to wander. And once you get into the rhythm, you're already in deep meditation of sorts for your mind to then be distracted.
Through the sessions he slowly introduced us to the chakras and the sounds associated with those chakras, the root sounds and the smaller sounds that make up the root sound, I think (!) It is said in the yoga and tantric world that the universal or cosmic energy, prana, sets up great vortexes in certain parts of the nervous system, known as chakras or wheels of psychic energy. They are usually depicted lotuses with differing numbers of petals representing various qualities and energies of the chakra. According to tantric texts there are various chakras all over the body, but there are 7 main ones.
(Chakras and their qualities. Source: http://ethericdragons.com/chakras/)
Each of these petals have a sound attached to it and they're not regular sounds, but pretty difficult to pronounce and remember. And it's said, that if you repeat all the sounds associated with all the chakras 12 times, you go into a very deep meditative state and the energy that you build up from the lowest Chakra up to the highest can produce some very lasting effects of dizziness or calmness or both. Not counting the last Chakra : Sahasara, the total number of petals in the 6 chakras are 50 ( 4 + 6 + 10 + 12 + 16 + 2). Imagine a sound for each of them and repeating those 12 times, nonstop. It's pretty hardcore. And the tempo picks up, so you start slowly and then pick up to a high point and then come back down to a slow end. I wont' share it here, since it's unfair to. It's something Octavio taught us, and something that his lineage and his school taught him, so I don't want to share it on this platform. Together the chant is called the mantralaya and it sounds beautiful. I thought it was very close to Tibetian chanting. Had the same ring to it. Octavio joked about how some folks have "popped their muffins" chanting the mantralaya 12 times. We did it on his last day, and thankfully came out of it pretty OK. It was very intense thought. You could almost sense the energy in the room.
We spoke about a lot of things in Octavio's classes. Because he has a habit of going into tangents, we picked up that cue from him and went into crazy tangents of our own. When you are discussing the universe and consciousness and tantric stuff and music that can 'pop your muffin', going into tangents isn't the most efficient thing to do. But then that is the beauty that this training is. We speak about so many different things and it all makes sense, it all comes together. Each of these chakras have a quality attached to them. Some make you more grounded, some inflate your ego too much, some make you indecisive and what not. The one thing I remember when we were discussing the qualities and I can't remember which Chakra we were discussing, but Octavio said to us, that some people have the tendency to over-give, to over-expend themselves and that can be pretty exhausting for the individual, especially if you are not grounded in yourself. We also spoke about how it is so important to be conscious of your thoughts and what you're feeling and observing yourself, your deeper self that we sometimes neglect.
I've been in situations and positions, where I've ignored that inner voice and also forgotten to observe and it hasn't done me a lot of good. So it's important to be the 'fly on the wall' of your own life sometime. Someone is class said something to the effect of, sticking post it's at various places at your work station and at home, maybe even in your car, with just one question on it " What are you Thinking now?". How many of us ask ourselves that question. And if we do, how many times do we answer it honestly, and how many times do we override or hide or shoo away that honest answer. It's so so easy to do.
This post might seem a bit random, but they then depict Octavio's classes! We literally were THIS random, but still managed to learn a lot from him. There was this one conversation where we spoke about how some of us use being busy as a coping mechanism. I have done it loads of times. After a heartbreak or a tough time in life, i have thrown myself into work like a mad woman, sometimes not eating breakfast or lunch or responding to emails at 1 am in the morning and what not. I think it was Colette who told us about this story. There was a rider, galloping away on his horse, on full speed. Someone stopped to ask him where he was going, and he said "I don't know ask the horse!", before riding away. And that is us at times (if not all the time in this modern world) galloping away at full speed, running from task to task, but not knowing where we are headed. I can see how this can be confused with "Let's see where life takes me". But that is a different thought altogether. Personally for me, that is an acceptance and flexibility to face and take anything that life offers you. Which is very different from running from pillar to pillar. Even though you have a open mind about life and where it could take you, you could and should, still have a goal or an idea of what you want your life to be, or what you definitely don't want it to be. The horse rider on the other hand was purely ignorant.
We spoke about how using japa, or repetition of the mantras can be way of dealing with your emotions at any given point in time. And when she said that, I realised that I do it so often off late. Every time something or someone bothers me, I start chanting in my head or softly using my lips. And I even shared this with Nanna and the group, that sometimes for me, it's like background music. So the noise in my life and what I'm dealing with still continues, but I now with my music, have the strength to deal with whatever i find difficult to be around.
I know I said, be the fly on the wall of your own life, so what I'm going to say now might be countering that! But sometimes it's so important to even step away from your own life ! We did this meditation with Andrea I think, where he asked us to think about a particular event or happening in the recent past that we have reacted negatively to and to picture with closed eyes, every single tiny detail pertaining to that event. How we felt, what we were wearing when that happened, how we reacted, how the other person reacted, what were the surroundings....so literally basic basic stuff. And then he asked us to embody that emotion we felt and to feel it strongly now, to let that emotion flood our senses. And then he asked us to let go of the parts of our 'story' and one by one as I let go of the characters and everything else that made up the story (the story i picked was me being very upset about what someone had said to me the previous night), I found that the sadness that I felt melted away as well. And the exercise was basically to make you realise, that what your feel most times, all your emotions of anger and sadness and jealousy and what not, are your own doing in your own head, with the story you have built around it. Now, no one is saying that you make up these situations. Sometimes, we are genuinely angry and agitated and someone has done something very wrong to get us into those states of the mind. But we add our own colour to it, to then make it this huge ball of "I can't believe he said/did that!" and that intesifies the negativity that you feel.
The moment, I started dropping away the colours of my story, i went from being very very upset to feeling nothingness. It was magical. So sometimes, it is important to step out of your own mind and body and look at yourself. So maybe then, it doesn't not gel with my earlier observe yourself all the time take on life :)
That's all from my end for today. My no-phone run continues. A very dear friend of mine joins me for the weekend, she arrives on Friday. It'll be nice to spend time with her. She leaves on Sunday and then we have a movie night planned for Monday and Tuesday is our last day off. And next Saturday I'll be in Singapore. time has flown, literally! Sigh.
I'll end this post with this stanza from a beautiful poem called The Invitation by Oriah, the Mountain Dreamer
I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or yours
without moving
to hide it
or fix it
or fade it
.....
I want to know
if you can be all alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments
नमस्ते
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