In The Cave of the Heart - Anahata

The Queen suffered a terrible sickness when the King left. It was a terrible wave of grief and loss. It is a very odd hollow echo of pain that came from much deeper within her heart. But this morning the Queen picked herself back up again, went to yoga class downtown on her pink moped (free parking!) and felt much better. She breathes and recognizes that Durga's name, hard to approach, is just that.

In the cave of the heart is that which swallows up all thought. It the event horizon of a black hole that swallows everything up, it's the anahata heart chakra- unstruck, it enters eternity as just being exists and is the only focus. It cuts out everything, like death comes through with a scythe to cut your life down at death. Isn't armageddon our own death? The death of the ego and the world it has spun out of its conditioning and storytelling? To cut everything, surrender, die. È più.

I've noticed that because of yoga practice and really working the inner thighs back, my lower lumbar spine I really released and I sit regularly on my sit bones now, right over the mula banda point. I'm just starting to figure out just what it means to get the thighs back and why, and it changes your whole relationship to your core and your alignment. It keeps you connected to the earth all time and this is a very safe feeling. To be so rooted in your own being, that radix ipsius. It's quite an awakening. It's as if I have finally learned how to release and remove those old grooves and patterns from a dysfunctional childhood by relaxing into it. Something else has woven deep patterns instead on the heart and body. The goodness and vibrations are ritualized through yoga and story. Awakening emerges from the heart as images and dreams, and we put it together with meaning and out pours a poem of the body.

I realize that my mother reacted to pattens of fear deeply engrained in her body. Overwhelmed by grief and loss and traumatized by her father and electro-shock treatments, my mother resorted to withdrawal from us children to cope with the overwhelming demands of a mother of four children. My father sick from post-traumatic stress, how does one raise children all alone with few resources, especially money, which plagued my mother terribly. I remember clearly my mother screaming at us that we "didn't even move a plate," or "turn off the lights!" Those are the exact things that my children don't do. I can feel myself mirroring her patterning, the fear, the overwhelm. How those patterns and feelings in our body compel us to repeat it unconsciously, no matter how hard we try not to. It takes effort not to give in to the pattern. To really end it in its tracks, end of story, and create a new reality, a new energy pattern in the body. Yoga reconditions the body's energy to reset patterns. Creative imagination, words and stories reinforce it on a symbolic level to our mythic aspect of our existence, the psyche.

So Durga myth resides in me now. Her energy to shut it all down, stop the thoughts, the pain, the sorrow and just remain in being and bliss. She is the mother that devours all that and let's you rest in her bosom. She lends me her weapons to keep battling the demons, and keep living as the Queen.

The Feet and the Breath

I was talking with a Mythic Yoga participant in Mexico by SKYPE today and her feet came up in the discussion. I work with my own feet quite a bit, putting yoga to work in mindful, brisk walking in alignment as a great practice among nature. I spread my toes and all four corners of my feet. The peroneus muscle fires up and I feel rooted in the earth and I feel a safety, a surrender, an exhale. Before, instead of being centered over the vernicular bone in my foot where the mula bandha point hits the earth, I tended to lean back, as if not to take in the world. Balancing over that point also is essential to mula banha through proper alignment of the pelvis and the pelvic floor, the pubic and coccyx bones and that pubiococcyx muscle, that spanda of our bodies, that pulses in the energy up from that point and into our bodies, up our spines to the heart and then hits the pineal gland to make us super aware, super conscious. I think that's what we're all becoming. Super conscious beings, and that the earth changes are all part of a greater archetypical evolving psychology. Like some upcoming events are about stripping away an old psychology all together and shifting our awareness to a different level. It is almost like an ascension.

Then there is the breath. The breath affects the adrenal glands, which affect the kidneys. Deep breathing and saying yes to life with great optimism and expectation is essential to reprogram one from samskaras from past negative thinking, grief and shallow breathing. Those samskaras are the deep grooves our mind's energy seared into our energy fields of the body and psyche, they are like the toad at the bottom of the well blocking it from flowing wine; or the rat gnawing at the roots of a tree that used to have diamonds for leaves. The breath is like Drano, that loosens up whatever is lodged in the darkness of our unconscious. Allowing it to break up slowly and float to the surface to be examined and then sifted into reality up top here in our waking projection. And the breathing really slows the mind, it slows it all down and into the body and into deep connection with everything around you.

On the home front it was great to bring my daughter's tutor my father's home-grown tomatoes. She is going to make homemade sauce for us. The kids and I walked Pepe down to the school. It was drizzling out but much of that gorgeous part of fall here in Boulder near the foothills. We have a wonderful support system!

The Queen picked some more apples today from the backyard trees and will make a fine elixir for the visit of the King. And the house keeper is coming to deep clean tomorrow at one o'clock and she is beside herself with joy.

So that is Mythic Yoga for today.

The Queen of Bohemia No Longer Cleans Her Own House, or, Quetzalcoatl Returns

I went to yoga class today with the divine Jeanie Manchester. How incredibly healing is yoga. How very essential to the core of well-being. And to have a wonderful teacher is also a gift. And to socialize with the kula. It's really essential, this kula, the community. It is the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. So important. I think it's the community that brings about my healing as well. That the Queen of Bohemia No Longer Cleans Her Own House. She just hired off of Craigs List Boulder to clean her house and do housekeeping (GOD the laundry, next I need a cook) a 30-year-old Czech woman who wants to learn English. The Queen showed her the "Ancestral Wall," of Grandma Tichacek dressed up in traditional Bohemian folk couture and used the few words of Dobje (good) kutchka (cat) and smetak (dustpan broom) on her.
The Queen also finally took the handyman's advice and let him have Lance mow the lawn and get rid of the tons of cardboard and trash that was in the garage, and keep things running smoothly in the house, even though it costs money.(CASH! I'M ON CASH BASIS! SCARY!) And the Queen met with the special education teacher about her daughter, and they are having her tested, and she's so grateful for the help, from the school psychologist to the principal to the teacher to the tutor. And today her daughter got to go to the farmer's market with another adult. A lovely, theatrical woman named Libby who will be spending time with her. It really takes a village, an entire court.
It seems modern society has really taken a turn for the most isolated. To cut ourselves off from community, family, and now mostly alone with our own televisions and I-Phones. But the Queen has a wonderful court, a wonderful community, and it allows her to focus on more important things, like her children, her creative work, and her King. What a delight that is.

I am most excited because I've been accepted to do a children's camp at Kripalu while Shiva Rea is teaching. What a wonderful opportunity to create a beautiful children's yoga program and beautiful community. I feel a wonderful energy. In fact, I feel such a wonderful energy that because I am not focusing on the demons and letting them drag me down into their dungeon, because I hear the King's voice and I feel the optimism and I move toward the light and that's all I see. I felt the yoga today down to my bones and down to my soul. Things are looking up, because I focus on the good. I know and acknowledge that the dark is there. Oh, yes, it's there and it's my friend, actually. My dear sister, Ereshkigal, or the devil himself, or any dark, cut off part of myself. All my demons just want my love and friendship. I know they are there. And we play on in the field of time and space and we take duality and we shape it into nice little dioramas and dramas, and how the dramas have played out. But somehow I feel it's the end of drama and the beginning of deep peace. Eternity. And that's where Quetzalcoatl comes in. How eternity periodically renews itself. THANK YOU ELIADE. That as the world and the collective psyche goes through a transformation, things on the surface will change. There is a shift in consciousness. To focus on the good, the truth, the love and the light. Because after the Kali Yug, comes the Satya Yug. Beautiful things are happening. At the darkest point is the opening, the light. Because in duality, after all, all things are equal to it's shadow. However great works are created, just as much darkness. And just as much darkness, so much as wonderful. It's how it all plays out in the world. It's how things hang together.
So Mythic Yoga continues. That continual surrender to the irrational, to balance it out with the rational. I am back to the birds and the serpents. The Mermaids. The Watery deep and the etheric netherworld of air. The instinctual and irrational and the intellectual and the mind. Funny that Jung's Red Book is about to be published. All his journey to the depths of his being. I can't wait to read it! All this is coming out now because it just is.

So the Queen is excited. Excited to do her yoga, excited to live her life and she is hopeful, optimistic. She told her book keeper to take over her finances and pay whatever, do whatever it takes, she just doesn't want to think about it. She just wants to be the Queen, and tend to her children, to the garden, to the world's children and the little animals and play things that make life enchanting, and let somebody else worry about the accounting and business. It's really what is needed. And it makes all the difference. And what makes all the difference is that the Queen is enjoying envisioning a wonderful, enchanted life with a King. And how beautiful is that vision; imagination - your creation.

Demons on 32nd and Speer

The Queen really has to work hard as not to let the demons invade her castle.
Things have been going very lovely for her, with a fantastic excursion to a far away paradise that the Queen frolicked in and still reflects longingly on.
So no amount of fairy tale will take away the fact that there is still this evil rental property on Speer that hangs over her head and sucks her resources. For the Queen was rudely awakened from her sleep by an angry tattooed tenant about some gas problem and the Xcel army blaming it on some stupid faulty connection to the water heater, so it’s turned off and the tenant also complained about the price to dry his clothes in the dryer. And the Queen was proud of herself for calmly telling him to call Tom or talk to Miguel downstairs and that his complaint was noted. Thank you.

So the old familiar demons love to play with her and tempt her down a dark road and feel the rot. The poor me, life sucks, I hate my ex for getting me into this crap, his sloppy work, lets skulk around and torment my mind. Get rid of this thing! And all it reminds you of is your husband's death up until now.

Already I wonder should I declare bankruptcy now? I hear the dollar ‘s collapse is imminent: BUY GOLD AND SILVER! But when? Are all the banks going to collapse for good now too? I mean it seems like they are just resurrecting themselves as more powerful than before and in just a different Neo-America, post-Bush era with any shred of a Constitution. Do I pay my credit card minimum? Or buy pants for my son and even get the orthotics he needs and continue to pay my daughter's tutor. Or do I stay focused on my work and manifest that which I think about. And to manifest that everything will work out. Despite the demons, there will always be demons. Stay optimistic! But then the trickster always appears and changes everything no matter what. So just be prepared for that too. Maybe she should just surrender all together.

The Queen takes a deep breath in and out. Several actually. She clears her mind. She writes this down from bed, sick, while her cat lies on her chest. Demons be gone. It’s a beautiful moment. Why ruin it with dark thoughts when the Queen can be thinking about a King on a magical island paradise. Yes, that's what she'll do. And so the Queen does.

The World Tree

There is a voice inside that sometimes speaks only in images, and those images and feelings come up as doves and roses. Once in a while this little glimpse of paradise is available, and often times it also comes up as an image and a feeling of a tree. This flowing, flowering, blooming energy that really does crown within you. When you are really connected and not afraid but linked to the source, it is a lot like a tree. And the tree has roots. Deep roots, that come out of the vagina and reach into the ground and reality. They hold on to the outer realm and make you feel safe. There is nothing to fear.

Anyone who has experienced trauma knows the fear inside. It pulls you up, nothing is safe, not even the ground you walk on. You are waiting for the other shoe to drop. This tree image pulls us down, down, into our bodies and into the earth, Mother earth, and paradise. It takes us to a place before the trauma, before the wounding, to the prima materia, and on this journey we find another mother taking care of us. We find it through the body; the body is like a tree, especially the nervous system. I have often gazed at the mangle of cottonwood trees in winter, and how their delicate branches seem like nerves all bundled up. Our legs are firm and strong, and the feet grip the earth. Our bodies are the trunks, and our heart the heart beat of the earth. So many world mythologies have the world tree. Mayan, Norse, HIndu, Hungarian and more.

The tree is us. It is our body, our container that the spirit visits the material world. Our consciousness arises from the biochemical action of the body and prana. It is the Shakti, pulsing through it. We are going from unity to duality, and bringing creation forth. This is our cosmic dream, and we are participating in it. We don't have to make it a nightmare. The dream can be beautiful. Just imagine it so! Imagination is your power and creation! You really do get what you think about. So think great thoughts. They are coming true!

Once you are grounded again in your own being and can feel the depths and the flow, once you identify with that rather than all the stuff going on up above, once you are rooted in spirit, then you can create effortlessly up top. Things change. Trauma heals. But it was the darkness and the suffering that guided you to the light, it is what makes the tree grow.