It was the best of times…
Yeah, that’s about it. The best of times. The first night was cooooooold. Then, gradually it warmed to the point where many people were at the waterfront, boating, taking walks, playing volleyball and laying out in the sun. I didn’t attend any workshops until the last day when I went to Mahan Kirn’s Sat Nam Rasayan workshop. If you want to know a true healer walking on this planet, with powers that come from beyond time and space is like, take a class with her or schedule a private session. She’s amazing.
It was a great week as always with over six-hundred seasoned yogi’s, newbies and hardened veterans in attendance. Never before have I had such an easy, open hearted feeling of being with family as I have these past three years of attending Summer and Winter Solstices. Still, with several hundred peace-loving, open hearted people there are challenges of relationship between human beings. Each one is a chance to make a higher choice.
The energy is always there to challenge you and test what you’ve learned about your mind and the degree of self-mastery you’ve attained. Just as I mentioned in my article MEDITATION: Levels of Play, I got there thinking this year’s game of White Tantric Yoga and all else would be a snap. That is until my teacher showed up and took it to an all new level. He said one thing to me and everything I doubted and questioned about my life rose to the surface of my mind. Again, I refused to react with emotion and while these thoughts were swimming around my head, I pushed further into the Tantric exercises, breathing harder and holding focus more than ever. I knew it was another test and so I steeled myself against all fear and doubt. I hit it head on and by the end I felt I was a new man. I flew home to Los Angeles, stronger and more confident, ready for the new year.
The White Tantric Yoga this year was different than in past years. Even seasoned veterans who started with Yogi Bhajan marveled at the shortened days. Each day we finished somewhere around 1:30 in the afternoon. The exercises were subtle but powerful, just as it was in Los Angeles earlier this year.
As the theme was Prabhupati or Mastery, I really believe the fact that these White Tantric Yoga days were so brief alludes to the subltlety of mastery. Great masters are subtle beings whose very presence seems simple and easy. What I got from this years exercises was that in mastery one’s work doesn’t have to be overly difficult for the mere sake of conquering difficulty. In mastery one has access to so much power of the soul that subtle movements can be far more powerful than gross physical struggle. While the exercises may have seemed easy, I can attest to the fact that their subtle power was as great as any full day of exercises. It will be interesting to see how things progress in these meditations with each passing year, as we get closer to 2012.
Happy New Year!