Serving Up Some Yogic Tennis

 

In ninth grade, I read a book called The Inner Game of Tennis. At the time, I had no idea whether it was a good book, because I was in ninth grade. And I had no idea whether it was just a fad, because I hadn’t read enough books like it to compare. What “sort” of book it even was…likely I couldn’t have identified a genre (because: ninth grade). Regardless, I took it to heart. Retroactively, it is clearly a personal growth book, practically a meditation book, wrapped around the sport of tennis. The Inner Game of Tennis popped into mind recently when I was pondering the value of hitting the ball “at two-o’clock,” the part of the ball I was instructed to aim for when I hit a serve. The difference between simply “watching the ball” and seeing “two-o’clock” on the ball itself is remarkable. It narrows down the focus. It’s actually a yogic idea, in that it intentionally filters out every distraction, leaving a very narrowly defined spot, such that one can’t help but be Here, Now.

Lily has Here, Now tattooed on her wrist, but that’s a story for another day. 

I’d forgotten all about that book until Wimbledon 2022, when a tennis commentator referred to it, and I realized that the book, whose cover I can still see clearly in my memory, is still relevant—what an amazing gift to have somehow read it decades ago, when it was released! In retrospect, clearly that book had planted a seed of pioneering consciousness long before I knew of yoga, or consciousness. And interestingly enough, when I resurrected tennis after a 25-year hiatus, I experienced the re-training of my body as yogic. In order to re-learn tennis, I had to clear my mental space moment by moment, amusedly banishing thoughts such as "I can’t."

And the truth is, it’s not just tennis: everything is yogic, everything is yoga. Yoga is simply union. Yoga really has nothing to do with becoming flexible; flexibility is merely a fringe benefit. What yoga does--if you’re truly doing yoga as opposed to merely stretching--is teach you to recognize the thoughts that keep you from fully experiencing any given moment. It brings us into union with ourselves and potentially the Universe.

In tennis, for instance, it’s so unhelpful to get mad at the teacher, or at yourself. It’s tempting, when the going gets tough, to blame someone, but after 25-plus years of yoga, I know beyond a doubt that these mental reactions don’t help the learning, training, or reprogramming process. 

If “everything” is yogic, what does that actually include? It includes grocery shopping, social media consuming, car driving, people meeting, child rearing…all are opportunities to draw upon the felt concept that while we have almost no control over the world around us, we do have 100 percent control over our reactions to the world, in any situation. Yoga is an opportunity to practice that, to strengthen the muscle of consciousness, so that the “muscle memory” of true consciousness takes the reins when we find ourselves in challenging, uncomfortable, or undesirable situations. 

As I re-learned to hit the ball in this second phase of my tennis life, the moment I felt a smidgen of anger at the tennis teacher, or an impending frustration that it was taking too long to re-train my body to play the modern tennis style, I simply let go of that potential thought and re-routed myself back into the present, which is the only time I—or any of us—can actually make a difference. Time spent on the yoga mat is practice for everyday life.

Cheers!

PART ONE

Five or six years ago, every time I drank a beer, especially if I had had one the night before, or even two nights before, my teenage daughter would ask, “Mom, are you an alcoholic?” 

I found this triggering. Never had I ever had anyone monitor or even notice my alcohol consumption. Alcohol monitoring was my job.

Three out of four of my grandparents were alcoholics, and one out of two of my parents was an alcoholic, and one out of two of their kids—and that one kid is not me. I gave birth to one kid who has, I think, grown up to be a normal social drinker. 

But wait, what even is that? Couples my age split a bottle of wine every night; because of luck or grace or genetics, I’m just not into it, as a nightly habit. When I ask my daughter if she drinks alcohol daily, she reminds me how many of her peers get blackout drunk, or drink till they vomit. That answer reminds me of when I asked my mom if her father had been an alcoholic, and she responded, “My father never missed a day of work in his life,” –-because apparently that was the criterion for not being an alcoholic. Anyway, everyone drank every day back then; haven’t you seen Mad Men?

While it is not my responsibility, and, come to think of it, none of my business how much or how often my daughter drinks, it is hard to not wonder, and I feel like I could save her a ton, a lifetime, of energy and effort and anguish, if she would heed my advice to enjoy alcohol sparingly, advice she likely doesn’t actually need. I mean...I hope she doesn’t need it. 

I love when she hangs out with sober people; I’m always relieved when she’s having dinner with Susan, or Patrick, because I know, in solidarity, she won’t drink. Clearly, she doesn’t want wine so much that she orders it when she’s out with sober people, even if everyone else is drinking. Does that mean she’s in the clear? Does that mean I can take that off my rapidly decreasing list of parental concerns? She says it is, and it does, and I can. 

“Mom,” she has said, “I don’t have a drinking problem,” and I have refrained from saying, well, yes, of course: that is what people with drinking problems say.

My mom died of cirrhosis of the liver a few months ago. “I never really thought of your mom as a heavy drinker,” my cousin Lisa (whose mom had died a decade ago after 30 years' sobriety) said to me, when my mom was on her literal death bed. “I mean, have you ever even seen her drunk?” she asked. 

“Not really,” I said. I mean, certainly it had been awhile. Though I should point out that I had told my mom in 1986 not to call me if she’d been drinking, not to answer her phone if she thought it was me. So how would I even know? 

Last month, my brother left six progressively drunker voicemails, from a number I didn’t recognize, while I was teaching at a sacred sexuality retreat in Maui. I had no capacity, or time, or cellular signal, to help him in any way. He was convinced that our father had died, and that I hadn’t informed him—“just like when mom died,” he accused, through tears, and I involuntarily giggled. He had gone from concern about the whereabouts of my dad and slightly slurring, to very drunk and flat-out victimhood, crying to me via his final voicemail: “What kind of way is that to treat your brother?” I giggled. How did he even have my number? I texted my dad and suggested he reach out to my brother. I didn’t tell him Nick thought he was dead. A week later, back in Chicago, I played his string of progressively drunker voicemails and giggled again, without judging myself. 

But when my daughter posts a fun Instagram story of herself in which she drinks out of the wine bottle, I don’t giggle. 

PART TWO

Lily has a certain skewed perspective on what constitutes alcoholism. While my mom considered the condition to be a moral flaw, my daughter seems to think it’s a lack of discipline. While my mom needed an inch or two of alcohol every day just to take the edge off, the primary alcoholic in Lily’s life is a dear friend her age who would “lose count” and accidentally have 19 drinks, instead of the three he’d planned to have. “But I lost count!” he would explain, each time. He was known to throw it up later, in epic proportions. It was all rather dramatic. 

That’s one way to do it. 

For me, alcoholism looks like drinking in secrecy, in small quantities, because that’s what my mom did, back in the day, back when my 13-year-old brother reported it to 16-year-old me, and I told my dad about the ever-decreasing vodka bottle. 

My mom could never really love me as much, after that.

I went to visit her in her rehab facility last January—rehab for starting to walk again, not rehab from alcohol use, even though alcohol is what led to her not being able to walk. Too many enzymes in her liver had led to an intestinal infection, which had led to a prescription and a warning not to drink while taking the medication. And she didn’t. But if you’ve been a daily drinker for decades, you apparently can’t just stop drinking, or you’ll have a seizure, and she did, a seizure from which she never recovered. Who knew? Apparently not my mom, or the doctor, whom she probably hadn’t told about her “little alcohol thing” (this is how my mother once referred to her drinking problem). I imagine she filled out a form for the physician and checked the box that said only 3-5 cocktails a week, so as not to incriminate herself.

Having grown up with the mom I grew up with, my level of vigilance began with my first bitterly undrinkable beer in college. Would my drinking become unmanageable? I will never know if it didn’t because I never let it, or because I just didn’t have the gene. My daughter has none of the vigilance she might have had if I had been a secret or excessive drinker. She just has a mom who seems a wee bit paranoid about alcohol. 

When I spent a few days with my mother last winter, I wanted to optimize what was likely the last time we’d be together. I went through our old photos and articles and brought them to the facility to remind her of our past adventures and holidays and conversations. She hadn’t exactly been a person who sucked the marrow out of every morsel of everyday existence before the seizure, so I wasn’t expecting much emotional payoff for either of us that day. But, in those photos, 30 and 40 years ago, she sure looks like she’s having a good time. 

“You know, that can be addictive,” my mother warned, interrupting me from her wheelchair. “I read an article about it.” 

She was referring to my lip balm, which was made of, I feel compelled to mention, an organic blend of beeswax, coconut oil, vanilla and rosemary. At any other time in my life I would have announced the ingredients that second, or protested that even if lip balm were addictive, it was the kind of addiction like exercise, or drinking water: arguably good for you. Her observation about my lip balm addiction reminded me of the time, about 15 years ago, when I had told her about an Ayurvedic product called nasal oil, which was an organic blend of sesame oil, eucalyptus, and healing herbs. It was a uniquely helpful, alternative-medicinal product, and I had no idea why it didn’t fly off American pharmacy shelves. As I rhapsodized about how much I loved nasal oil, my mom had informed me that one of the worst addictions a person could have was putting substances up one’s nose. 

That was the kind of alcoholic she was: the kind who accused other people of being addicted to their lip balm. When I speculate on what kind of alcoholic my daughter would hypothetically be--and believe me, this is not something I even want to do, but if I don’t, it will haunt me, so, in a fit of negative self-indulgence, I can’t help but speculate that my kid would be, first of all, fun. 

When her fun had peaked, she would want whichever friend she was with to tell her that she was their best friend. Once assured, she’d suddenly regret drinking in the first place, leave, and on her Uber ride home, develop a compensatory workout routine, and post the hilarious drunk-Uber exercises on her Instagram the next day. She’d have only the slightest hangover, and I’d be—virtually--proud of her creativity in a way that would predictably warp into sadness and guilt, and that’s the kind of alcoholic she’d be: a fun one, a funny one, who nevertheless elicits my refined sense of guilt. “Mom,” she’d say, with an eye roll I could hear over the phone, “I left before midnight, and my workout post got more than 12,000 likes!” In fact, it would probably go viral and she’d probably get a web tv series out of it, because that’s the kind of alcoholic she’d be.

But I would nevertheless feel a sense of personal guilt, because who would have brought a child into the world with 50-50 odds? I’d look back to now, and wonder what I could have done. But I know, as well as I know anything, that there’s nothing I, or anyone, could do, or say. It’s in the genes and it’s in the stars, and back in the day when I felt compelled to pry glasses out of people’s hands and stomp on people’s cigarette packs, I ultimately realized that rash oaths and grand gestures don’t work, because that’s not the way it works; that’s what I learned back then, and haven’t needed to revisit the topic--it’s been decades since I’ve secret-policed how much other people drink. 

But, I am told, “the little alcohol thing” can skip a generation. As a mother, that’s a blessing and a curse.

Another equally irreverent blog regarding my mother's death: Barbara Terket Thomas Connolly (1940-2018)

But Don't ALL Lives Matter?

Q: What can I do in light of current events if I am a liberal white woman who is (obviously!) not a racist?

A: We grew up in a racist society. No matter how racist we think we're not, we’ve been pretty clueless. When I cautioned my kid to be careful at a protest, she said, "Well. Now you know how the parents of black kids feel every DAY." So. My mailing list is full of cool conscious primarily white women who sent their kids to diverse schools, and we likely have more black friends than our parents did, we've attended diversity trainings, we’ve read Toni Morrison and White Fragility and we voted for a black president, and of course no one on my email list would be racist, no way! But. The American system is permeated with racism. I believe it’s time to examine the stories we’ve believed about race. Unlearn them and understand where we got them. I think white women are afraid to feel the collective shame. I certainly am. It’s uncomfortable. I don’t want to know that I’m imbedded into a system that has caused suffering. But it’s also SO cool, because the collective is actually creating a more conscious world rather than playing out this horrible old story that we have outgrown, this old story that we were born into. Everything I just said, though, is considered hijacking the narrative. And it's also super privilegey to even have the IDEA that we can create our own reality. I can not imagine what it would feel like to NOT be able to create my own reality simply due to the color of my skin. Assuming that I can "create my own reality" is a privilege.

We were all born into this system and something about it does not work for "minorities" (see how we are writing a story in which there are more of "us," so "they" are the minority? It is just mind blowing to start to see the old stories we were taught, which simply don't work anymore.

I have experienced that We are One. And I understand that even THAT is super priviledgey. But the entire reason for yoga, as I experience it, is to have that knowledge, that felt experience, that humans are inherently Divine. And yes there are also some nice physical heath benefits too! So it is from that place that I want to share some enlightening but also entertaining suggestions. Most of us know nothing about history from a non-colonized perspective. The only way out is through. We are the ones we've been waiting for.

When “sheltering in place," for reasons I don’t actually understand, I felt compelled to learn about the Vietnam war. (I got really into it—major blog post coming soon.) So I was on a big 1968 retrospective during the lockdown, and when George Floyd was killed and the protests began, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between now and 1968. Based on my deep dive into the ‘60s, here are some recommendations that offer a perspective that's valuable right now:

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, free documentary on Amazon. Apparently, the FBI files have been opened because 50 years passed, and this film uses FBI documentation to illuminate the disparity between what I was taught about the Black Panthers as a kid (dangerous black guys, basically terrorists) versus what this organization actually was. It especially shows HOW THE FBI created lies about the Black Panthers that the newspapers then printed, leading every white person in the country to consider the Panthers dangerous. Actually, they were male citizens trying to peacefully protect their community from police violence. In 1968. Ultimately, the FBI broke into their pad and shot the leaders. (That could not happen with Black Lives Matter, because it intentionally has no mailing address and no official leader.)

13th, free on Netflix. This documentary is about the 13th Amendment and the prison industrial complex. Does that sound boring? It’s not. It’s lively and well produced, historical but also very current. The US has a surprising number of for-profit prison corporations, and they have to keep the prison populations high, because: stockholders. (Please make sure you are not accidentally invested in any of these barbaric places.) For-profit prisons are filled with people who couldn’t afford decent representation. And they have to work there. It’s practically legalized slavery. This illuminating and heartbreaking movie also explains the huge rise in the prison population over the last few decades. You’ll find out how Jim Crow laws are alive and well in the American South, and why the majority of black men in Alabama are not eligible to vote. I was taught that black men commit more crimes, but they don’t, actually. They just get picked up more often because they are perceived as more dangerous, which also just what we were taught--see the Black Panther documentary. The only thing that has changed since forever is that everyone now carries a video camera. Worth watching till the very end; correct me if I’m wrong.

The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson. Fascinating book telling true stories of three black families who left the south in search of a better life. It reads like fiction. The level of vicious racism these people were trying to flee is painful to hear about. Minor detail: early 1900s southern society considered the biggest threat to be black men raping white women, but guess what: actually, the rate of white men raping black women was far higher. (What the heck is that even about? Honestly it just makes white men look super insecure.)

American Values by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. This is a view of the Kennedys through the eyes of Bobby Kennedy’s son, Bobby, who is married to the woman who plays the wife in Curb Your Enthusiasm. (She’s adorable, and I follow her on Instagram because I love Bobby Kennedy Jr. inordinately much.) Over the years I have found that most people are either Kennedy-lovers or Kennedy-haters, and, well. Hi. You’ll be reminded in this book that there were tons of great ideas and a trend toward racial justice in the 1960s—which I remember well, because my parents were totally against it. “You can’t legislate equality!” they used to say as small-government Republicans who did not want the government messing with human relations—that’s overreach. But I digress. After MLK was assassinated, 110 American cities rioted. On the 6th day of the riots, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed. This book illustrates the great ideas of the 1960s and how RFK senior, speaking from his heart and not using speechwriters, was loved multiculturally, which was apparently just too much unity for…whoever shot him. It appears the family thought both RFK’s death and his brother’s were pretty sketchy. If you like Kennedy antics, the environment, and civil rights, this book offers a comprehensive and colorful picture. It shows how close we were to major racial progress in 1968. Too bad everyone who might have tipped the balance toward racial equality was assassinated!

If you are not into the 1960’s but you want to view race relations from an educated, hip, contemporary African perspective, the novel Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is just the book. All her books are great.

If you really want to challenge yourself, check out The Great Unlearn (@thegreatunlearn on Instagram, or rachelcargle.com).

A little action step: call Target, Whole Foods, and Walgreens corporate and use your white voice to demand they distribute goods to the south and west sides of Chicago, where unstocked shelves still prevail from the early days of covid.

Things to say to your Facebook friends from high school who just don’t get it:

> 1 in 3 people killed by a stranger was killed by a police officer. Unarmed black people are twice as likely to be killed as unarmed white people. There were only 27 days in 2019 when police did not kill someone in the US.

> Don’t ALL lives matter? YES. But black lives are the current focus. Only black lives need a protest. People shouldn’t have to protest for their basic civil right not to die. It’s not like it’s 1968 anymore!

 > Don’t ALL lives matter? YES. But when the Boston marathon was bombed and everybody said “Boston Strong,” nobody said, “ALL cities are strong.” When someone posts about breast cancer, no one says, “But what about colon cancer?” Black Lives Matter is not an either/or proclamation. Americans traditionally rally round the group in crisis. That does not discredit or diminish any other group; it brings awareness and support to the group that needs attention. (Paraphrased from an Instagram post.)

> Police can’t even refrain from police brutality at a peaceful protest against police brutality. (Another Instagram post.)

> “I have friends who have been police officers, and I have friends whose spouses are or have been police officers. They are nice and not racist.” Me too. The protests are not about individuals. The protests are about the system of policing. (Police Departments are super funded and reforms do get put into place, but, for example, countless policemen covered up their badge numbers during the protests, and so many were not wearing their required video cameras. I didn’t see that on the news, I heard it from young friends who observed it firsthand in Chicago, LA, and NYC. )

> “It’s horrible that an innocent black man was killed, but destroying property has to stop!”  How about: “It’s horrible that property was destroyed, but killing innocent black men has to stop!” (More from Instagram.)

Let's not wait for external evidence of change. Let's hold space for a shift we probably never thought we'd see in our lifetime. We don't even know what this new world is going to look like--I mean, how could we? But we can hold energetic space for something better, and open our virtual spaces to a glorious diversity. I have no idea what to even say about physical space, but when we CAN congregate again, it's going to be even better than it used to be.

IMAGINE.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become

silent about things that matter.”

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Coro-Nation

“Happy virus!” said the older Chicagoan, gallantly scooting himself and his dog away to give me a wide berth on our shared sidewalk. “Happy virus to YOU!” I replied, amused and heartened.

That was yesterday. Today, everything could be different.

While I’ve never had LESS security in my life than I have during (and because of) this pandemic, at the same time, I have never been more comfortable with my utter lack of security. Perhaps because everyone (the self-employed service providers, anyway) is in the same boat. We are a collective. Perhaps because I had felt this one coming.* Perhaps because, after the other times when the “bottom” has dropped out and everything I knew to be true suddenly wasn’t, I learned that I create my own security, and that in fact what looks like security externally is actually merely…familiarity. Comfort.

Like when my daughter’s dad (my dead ex-husband), a trader, lost a million dollars, plus $50K which was not even ours, or like the moment he died, or like the moment I read the email from the real estate agent telling me that the house I was happily renting was suddenly on the market—those were moments I’d never want to repeat. But what I had learned from those moments of dire discomfort was to not  reach out immediately to whoever I thought would say the perfect comforting thing, but…to stop and feel. Feel my body, feel where the terror had landed, and if possible, where the truth was located. To observe the way my mind tends to project into the worst-case scenario, and to not believe that story. To trust that the actual truth is both unknown and trust-able. How to trust the unknown?

First of all, don’t make up stories about it—unless it’s a story of opportunity.

Indeed, that is the entire point of having a spiritual life—and/or a religion. Dealing with the great unknown.

Having evolved from Catholicism to New Church to yoga to tantra over a lifetime, I’ve gleaned a few truths along the way…and on the tantric path, the bottom line is non-duality, the concept that everything and everyone IS divine. IS “god,” as opposed to god being outside us. Wait, even Donald Trump? Even Covid-19? Yes. And yes. I know that seems crazy, but first:

Western culture uses the word ‘guru’ synonymously with “all-knowing,” but actually a guru is simply someone who lights up the darkness. It’s not about what they know. They are just a mirror that reveals you to yourself. A guru shows you who you truly are. They light you up. You know those stories in which the devotee is yelling at the guru, or crying, or begging for help, and the guru is calmly sitting there, legs in lotus position, with a beatific smile, maybe even laughing? It’s sort of a guru trope, but…what that image conveys is that a guru is simply a Mirror. A guru is a mirror for what is going on inside us.

So: Covid-19 as guru. I know. I could not be LESS interested in doing my personal awareness via a virus. But bear with me.

What first came up for you, when this virus hit? Knowing only that about ourselves, we can learn so so much—and learning so so much, in my line of work, is the entire point of human existence. Awareness. What if the virus is here to accelerate that process of knowing who we are?

Sadly (for me, anyway), growth and the expansion of consciousness rarely happens when we are coasting along. Growth happens when we are confronted, thwarted, or challenged. (Hello, novel virus.) So, again, what first came up for you? Who did you worry about, what did you worry about? Whom did you blame? What did you hoard, what did you mourn? What worst case scenario stories did you make up?

These are not rhetorical questions. These are retroactive journaling topics; go for it. The time is now. Notice what your deepest fears are, see what your concerns truly are, see what matters most when all is said and done, and see how other people’s fears can lead you to act in ways you might not ordinarily act.

BECAUSE here is the thing. We (yoga teachers and power of positive thinking type people) have been saying for decades that we “create our own reality,” and people are so quick to disagree and say no way, humans would not have created war and famine and dis-ease, but let’s break it down into a tiny manageable simple bite:

(Oh, but first, Welcome to the New Age. Welcome to the Awakening of Human Consciousness. There’s no turning back now!)

This is how it works:

Human THOUGHTS freak out over a potential shortage of toilet paper…for whatever reason. Those thoughts spread virally. We as individuals and quickly as the collective then hoard toilet paper, and thus we CAUSE that. We caused exactly what we feared. It is so clear. Writ large. We just created our own reality.

On the other hand, what if humans of the western world had a fear of a potential toilet paper shortage and instead someone said, let’s all help each other out here and distribute the TP to those among us who need it most, then buy enough for two weeks, and only enough for two weeks, every two weeks…and use this as a collective TRUST exercise instead of creating our fear? What if we trust that there will be enough for us all? (I mean it’s a steep what-if. But: what if?) See how our very thoughts would have created a different reality? A reality of cooperation and abundance? Yes, sometimes shit happens, but also…we to a very large extent do create reality with our thoughts.

What if everyone all prayed at once, instead of everyone running to Trader Joe’s at once? What on earth could THAT create? (I am not saying we could pray away a disease but I do wonder whether we could pray away dis-ease.)

For me, having had the bottom drop out of my life more than once, and having learned a lot from those experiences, I see this virus as another massive screen upon which we all project our thoughts and fears--and the toilet paper example is the easiest one to grab and run with.

So.

What if…I know, here I go again, but…what if one purpose of this virus was SO we could see that, SO we could see a clear example of how we individual humans create our own collective reality?

And what if another purpose of this virus is to help us SEE what goes on inside our own sacred selves when our world is suddenly filled with troubling unknowns? And by that I mean: what if this virus is a guru? How can we use it as such, how can we use Covid-19 to bring our lives back into alignment, whether we start with organizing our kitchen pantry or our computer desktop or going back to basics with our now-adult children who are temporarily living with us until the crisis passes?

I am going to take it even one step further, for those of you who may be thinking oh, yes I already know all this so far, thanks, but I already do all this (and if you are not in that category, and you can’t possibly imagine taking it one hypothetical step further, skip this next part because it’s more a leap into the absurd than a step). So. What if, those of you who are still with me, what if, in the Byron Katie sense, in the New Testament sense, what if we are meant to LOVE the virus?

I mean, I don’t, I can’t, it’s a virus, and I love my health and those two are clearly mutually exclusive--I mean I don’t just hate this virus; I hate each and every virus and I want to kill them all with Purell! (Oh wait, there is no Purell because everyone else wants it too!) But as long as I’m encouraging this leap into the absurd, I will have to take the leap too, so I ask…how can I love this virus? Wow, well that is really a steep curve, a drastic jump…it really sends me back to my roots, to Jesus’s last-ish words: they know not what they do. The ultimate forgiveness of what is literally killing you. Viruses are not alive. They feed on us. They have no consciousness. They know not what they do.

The minute I “hate” the virus, I put myself into victim mentality. The minute I love the virus, I take back my power.

By loving this virus, I do not mean I offer it my body to cohabitate in…I mean I give it the power to remind me to take back my power, to make me actively change—in this case it has taken me from my introverted one-on-one healing role in my individual clients’ lives and into being here writing words that may actually help or inspire someone outside my sphere. It has definitely taken me out of my everyday procrastinating writing until 10pm, and into crisis mode, into “write now, or forever hold my peace” mode. Is it possible to be inspired to love your enemy? Our enemy? I find that I need to take it one day at a time. Wake up, find something in this world of unknowns to be grateful for. I am grateful that we are all faced with the same enemy. It seems to be uniting us, even as it physically separates us.

Speaking of viruses, here’s another thing.

There are viruses literally in and around us all the time, but this is a new one that has been isolated and labeled for us, and its behavior has been studied, so based on that, in this new world populated by this novel virus, now we get to CONSCIOUSLY CREATE our relationship to it and to each other and to ourselves. What are we going to do with all that power? What if we use it to increase our awareness, because if we don’t, we risk letting it dictate that we become victims, victims of this external, invisible enemy.

Speaking of victims, here’s another thing. What if, and here I depart from my early religious roots and leap into yoga and tantra, what if the “savior” is not external? Are we looking to be saved, do we want pharmaceutical companies to research a cure, and better yet do we want them to research a vaccine, so we don’t even have to deal with the enemy in the first place? That’s the old paradigm, in which the savior is external. But in the new paradigm, we are not meant to be victims. The world is changing this very second. Old paradigm: god is out there, and we are at “his” mercy, victims of “his” will. New paradigm: we are creators, not victims; the savior is within. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are being shown how to SAVE ourselves: slow down, be with our loved ones, work from home, don’t panic-buy, nurture our immune systems, trust we will pull through with a lot of help from our friends and communities. We can do it. As a collective.

I am going to take a step further, extrapolate even more. My daughter went to a Waldorf school, a school with a philosophy of life and a form of education and its own method of organic farming and even its own branch of health care called anthroposophic medicine. While there is a misconception that the anthroposophic philosophy is “anti-vax,” it isn’t, but they definitely do consider childhood illnesses to be a re-booting of the immune system and a way of moving a child into a new phase of development. So, my one step further is this: what if that’s happening to us, here, now? What if Covid-19 is, for those who unfortunately contract it, a system reboot, but also, for all of those who don’t, for not just this country but for the entire…what if this is a new way of seeing the entire world, a new way of being in the world? The flowering of human consciousness, as Eckhart Tolle says.

Yes it certainly sucks, I do not deny. Having a mere flu or a sinus infection or a bad cold also sucks—and the extreme contagiousness and potential death rate of this one is horrifying—so yes, it sucks, but also! We have been able to communicate with and learn from Italy and China and our literal individual next-door neighbor through the miracle of technology (years ago I wrote a blog about how the internet is merely a physical, tangible version of how connected “we” all already are, in the We Are One school of thought that characterizes the New Age, and maybe back when I wrote it it sounded outlandish, but…). Today WE are all fighting the SAME virus…the president tried to characterize it as a foreigner, but in truth it is a PAN-demic, affecting everyone, and everyone needs to participate in some level of isolation in order to arrest its spread. In the midst of all this isolation there is evidence of profound connection. But beyond and before anything else, we are being given time to connect with our Selves.

*I had been feeling an unusual level of anxiety several weeks ago regarding my (and my cat’s) living situation. The anxiety was so puzzling, because the one thing I know in general is…everything’s gonna be alright. So to have life not at all seem like it was going to be all right, to feel like life was an actual emergency, was so disconcerting and puzzling. I felt a wave compassion for those who live with anxiety on a daily basis—though it didn’t assuage mine. I did breathwork of every kind, I got a massage, I already do yoga at least once a day so I amped it up by attending a class, twice…but I still had anxiety. So when this crisis hit, when we were told not to touch our faces or shake hands, I felt liberated, vindicated. The anxiety had not been personally dysfunctional; it had been intuitive. I was relieved that my anxiety about where I and my cat were going to live was not some random, dys-functional, out of the blue regressing. I was relieved that decades of yoga and meditating and breathing and loving my "enemy" had not inexplicably collapsed and had in fact empowered my resilience. Exhale. 

My older friends and relatives are at risk. My living situation and lifestyle of ease and comfort is at risk. But. Also. I knew that moment of crisis heralded the fact that: now IS the time. This IS the paradigm shift. No doubt we are in the middle of a CORO-NATION. I’m a creator. You’re a creator. What do we want to create, individually and as a collective? How can we re-create a society that honors and supports every single person? As individuals, and as a collective, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are ripe. Let’s make it good.

Dead Ex-Husband Alive at the DMV Part 12

Yesterday, Lily woke up with a clear intuition to visit her grandmother, Barrett’s mom, who for the last few years has lived in her hometown of Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, the "mecca" of Barrett’s former religion, where there’s a beautiful and cohesive community—an entire town’s worth of New Church people. Barrett went to college there, and he’d be thrilled to know she was making the effort to contact her relatives to make a trip happen. Our friend Steven was thinking that exact thought as he drove us to the San Francisco airport, Lily texting her cousin and exclaiming with glee, when I glanced up to see an exit off the expressway: “Barrett Avenue.” That second. That was pretty cool in and of itself, even cooler than the day before when Lily called me so I paused my book on tape, somehow at 1:55:55. And also cooler than when, on the plane, I told Lily my computer was using battery too quickly, was already at 68%, so she turned off my computer's wifi, leaving my computer battery at an amazing 55%.

It was our Christmas trip. He was making himself known.

I had been slightly unwilling to believe (because this may be getting old to some people, and because really I have no proof, do I?) that he was making himself known a week before, when we were decorating the tree. It was the one time a year I’d invited him over for dinner when he was alive—to put the lights on the tree (my not-favorite task) and to make us dinner. (Yes, I invited him over annually to make us dinner, and it was the same dinner every year, called, post-mortem, “The Barrett Dinner.”)

Lily put the lights up herself this year for the first time ever; my kid is a trooper. She is absolutely committed to having great holidays and loving life, even when she’s sad. So the lights were up, most of the ornaments were on, and she was staring at the tree, when she said, “Mom, see how that one light is WAY brighter than all the others?” Indeed. It was weirdly bright. Five times brighter. Transfixed for a moment, we were silent. Lily, because she’s like this, reached out and touched it. “Ouch!” she yelped, and that entire strand went out. “It was really hot!” she said.

Our friend Steven arrived for dinner and he simply IS all things Christmas, yet he had no explanation for the weirdly bright, burned-out light. My instinct then and there was that Lily’s dad was making his presence known: on that one day a year he’d come for dinner, on that one day a year he and I would simply get along, so our daughter would have a tradition that included both of us. Never in my daughter’s 19 years did we have a strand of lights go out, let alone have one amped-up bulb.

We kept it to ourselves; she’s less inclined to share, and even to my most mystical friends I hesitated to say, “There was a really bright light on our tree, and it was Barrett!” Because, come on. I completely see the ridiculousness of it, while at the same time I regularly and randomly feel his presence with no need to tell people or seek proof. And I’d have let this Christmas bright-light magic/weirdness recede into coincidence had this book not arrived today, reminding me of the synchronicity of the Barrett Avenue sighting.

So I texted his sister, who told me she had just been scanning photos of their grandfather, who Barrett strongly resembled, and had therefore been thinking of Barrett. I then texted our most heavenly new age friend, who said she’d recently come across a photo of Barrett and me from 1992. That’s a lot of Barrett, and synchronicity, and 55’s in one week.

“I Am The Word.” I will keep you posted.

>> 18 hours later: I quite enjoy the book. I read Chapter One last night. It is very Barrett. Had it been given to me by a client, I'd say they were very intuitive and possibly even guided from beyond by Barrett, due to the fact that Swedenborg is mentioned on page three, and that the book is just, well, verrrry Barrett.

But indeed it was not given to me by someone. I called Amazon. I waited happily on hold, while the customer service rep searched two times each for the USPS number and the Amazon order number, neither of which were in the system.

Neither of which were in the system. If YOU sent me this book, now is the time to jump out and say, "Surprise!"

I wonder if Paul Selig has ever had any other readers receive his book in the mail from anonymous and possibly post-mortem loved ones.

Dead Ex-Husband Alive at the DMV Part 11!

I received a book in the mail from Amazon today—not uncommon, except that I hadn’t ordered it. I knew at a glance. Great paper quality, though. I knew that at a glance too. And that’s all I did: glanced at the book. (By the way, if you ordered this book for me, now is the time to let me know.) A couple times I ordered a book from Amazon, but it never arrived, because I never did actually press “purchase.” Oops. However, I’ve never received a book I didn’t order. I texted the usual suspects, none of whom had sent me a book; given the date, it could have been a Christmas present. We’ve been out of town and it was in the mailbox when we returned.

Any second, anyone can call and ask if I received the book yet. I’m waiting.

After looking in my Amazon order history, where it wasn’t, I did a search on the book, to see exactly what it was I hadn’t ordered, and read the description, then returned to the book itself: I Am The Word, by Paul Selig. “A channeled text.” I like channeled books--at least the ones I like--but more to the point, Barrett’s religion (called variously Swedenborgian, or Church of the New Jerusalem, or New Church, the doctrines of which, by the way, were channeled, or divinely derived), was very important to him as well as a key to our connection. And his religion, and he, referred to The Holy Bible as “The Word.”

I Am The Word. Unless you tell me right this second that you sent me this book, I am going to assume that Barrett sent it. I’ve seen those videos of the Amazon warehouse, entirely automated—mistakes could happen, and I have no doubt, literally zero doubt, based on other signs from Barrett, that if he wanted to send me a book he could send me a book. And, if he were going to cause a book to be sent to me, it would be this book.

The book, according to its description, is meant to help readers connect with their guides and “become receptors for energies from above….”

Of all things.

So there’s that. And this story absolutely stands alone with whatever explanation you want to give it—unless you call me this second and say you sent me this book. And even if you do, I might suspect Barrett gave you a nudge. I would ask you what gave you the idea that I might want this book. Because this book is sooo him, and so not me—though it looks potentially interesting, and how could I not read this book? Tiny, minor coincidence that this very BLOG site is called "The Word 1111."

But there’s more.

(To be continued.)

Tantra 101

Yoga has traditionally stressed brahmacharya (“the right use of energy”), offering various effective techniques to withdraw from sensory stimulation. While I do not entirely disagree with this aspect of the 4000+ year old spiritual path toward enlightenment, I also have come to embrace the idea that human consciousness has developed to the extent that we as a species are ready (and one might even look around and say we are not just ready but the world is at crisis level) to embrace  tantra, which is inclusive of sensual and sexual energy as part of a spiritual path: everything earthly is also Divine, in the spirit of non-dualism.

There are a variety of paths called “tantra,” and a Facebook group of which I am a member places emphasis on defining and disagreeing on what “tantra” actually is—much in the same way a student of Iyengar yoga might attend a Kripalu class and emerge saying, “That’s not yoga!” and vice versa.

While the the Kripalu students and the Iyengar students could form a Facebook group and spend hours discussing the finer points of what constitutes yoga, and perhaps eventually (I’m optimistic) come to agreement, is that the most productive use of time? Perhaps a better use of time is to agree to disagree and allow both (and all, even, acro-yoga!) to be called “yoga” and then go DO it. 

That’s what I propose for tantra.

While on an imaginary continuum there is, on the far right, a philosophy called “tantra” that has nothing whatsoever to do with sexuality; and on the far, far left there is an association with the word “tantra” (aka neo-tantra) with concepts like polygamy, polyamory, group sex and getting naked with complete strangers, in the middle of that continuum is the “tantra” that I know and love: a spiritual path inclusive of and honoring sexual energy, composed of both ancient and modern yogic techniques that awaken the Divine flow of life within, to promote a state of sex-heart-consciousness.

Is the yoga world ready for sexual tantra? I posit that it is. Why should sexual energy and genitals be the one area not addressed, not included, by yoga? The tantric sex path requires skillful, compassionate guidance (even if you are guiding yourself) and an abiding identification with the highest part, the Divine part, of yourself and others, as well as a deep acceptance of the lowest, most human and flawed parts—of yourself and others, and especially your partner, if you have one. That, and desire, is all one needs.

While we in our journey as yoga teachers and students and aficionados are leaving sexual energy off the mat, sex is a billion dollar industry online, and the current generation of young people are learning about sex from porn, learning to objectivize each other’s body parts, learning to separate sex from intimacy (or even from actually knowing the name of their sex partner). Far from being a prude, I am a lover at heart—and I see the value of knowing the person whose energy and physical body I am allowing to penetrate mine. I question which senses and chakras need to be shut down in order to engage intimately with people we don’t know, people whom we might not even like if we did know them. I want more for the next generation and I want more for myself.

Meanwhile in the real world, we have couples working all day, drinking coffee to fuel up, wine to wind down, exhausted and crabby at the end of the day with no tools or techniques to reawaken their sexual energy in order to be fully present with the one they love the most—even if they go to a yoga class regularly.

It has been instilled in us 21^st Century-dwellers that marital union is practically the climax of our existence. We were taught the proper gender identity to unionize with, depending on the gender identity that was given to us at birth, based on genitals that may or may not match up with our mental gender identity. This identity and partnering system is a thick belief system, handed down through generations in a patriarchal society, until now self-perpetuating unquestioned. And sex is associated with it. The structure of the belief system around gender and coupling has begun to be questioned; why not question, and maybe even enlighten, the paradigm of sexuality itself too?

If you have a voracious appetite for paradigm shifts, you might like tantra. Tantra says that not only is sex not a shameful and nasty physical act, but that it is an act of Divine Union (whether you are married to your partner or not)—in other words, that sex is inherently spiritual. That our physical bodies are a gateway to higher consciousness. Yes, people actually meditate in sex positions. (Wouldn’t one distract from the other? Are they not mutually exclusive? Merging the two is the tantric sex path. Take it from a longtime practitioner: Best. Meditation. Ever.)

We have lost sight of the deeply unifying energy that sex is. Surely we are ready for tantra as an ancient art reclaimed. It feels foreign, but it can be brought home very happily. I have never seen anyone at the end of a tantra workshop feeling inadequate—experiencing and sharing this quality of energy makes a person feel they are enough—and it leads people who already feel like they are enough to feel divine.

Tantra increases the sheer volume of sexual energy within and around you. But it filters it through the Heart and higher consciousness so that it’s clean, pure, and appropriate—even though it’s sexual. Many have come to know it as creative  energy and embody a heightened awareness. (“I want what they’ve got,” I thought, when I first met my tantra teachers on a modest Midwestern front porch.)

Through breathing and awareness exercises, rather than a physical act (“friction sex,” my beloved teacher Richard Asimus calls it) sex becomes a spiritual act—like a full-body prayer, in the way that yoga can be a full-body prayer. After our own bodies have been cleansed and more finely tuned, we tune in to each other and feel that sense of Union that we crave. Deep intimacy is hot.

Our everyday consciousness craves that moment of orgasm in which we fully let go of wanting, of habit, of everything banal…through tantra it is revealed that that this bliss is happening and available all around us at any time; though typically we need to be in the moment of orgasm in order to feel it. But it is not just about genitals. We mistake it for being merely genital stimulation and brain activity. It is also an energy present on the planet at all times, for those who learn to tune into it—and it can happen in any chakra.

Tantra teaches us to tune into this bliss in everyday life. Therefore it’s great for longtime couples, who re-learn to harmonize in a way that leads to enhanced sexual experiences.

It is hard to practice tantra and maintain the mainstream myth that sex is shameful, or that it should be properly relegated to the end of the day, after all the bills have been paid and the dishes done. Instead, celebrate it! Prioritize it! Honor it! You can see why tantra has been underground since the 13^th Century—no one would have ever paid the bills or done the dishes (but now that we can pay online and use dishwashers, don’t we have more free time?). Tantra exposes other myths too, such as the one that says humans are born guilty. (In my estimation, the only original sin is believing that we were born with an original sin.) Warning: tantra may lead to the breaking down of societal mores. At the same time, why not say yes to breaking down the ones that leave sexy people (i.e., all of us) feeling shamed or oppressed?

These tools and techniques, the ability to awaken our energy and be fully present to the Divine in oneself and one’s partner, are what tantra teaches (or what, in particular, UGoddessTantra (my “brand”) teaches. My teachers at TantraHeart.com taught me, and their teachers at Ipsalu Tantra Kriya yoga taught them—my “brand” is lineage-based going back to the Kriya Yoga described in Autobiography of a Yogi. (Yogananda’s Babaji is Ipsalu Tantra’s Babaji.)

And so on back into the past, back to a time when the vagina was revered as the gateway between heaven and earth. You are invited to jump in—wherever you’re at--and create a new paradigm that honors yourself, body mind and spirit. It is time to find a new space for women to reside in that is neither virgin nor mother nor whore…nor any of the old paradigms handed down to us. It is time to create a paradigm for male sexuality that is empowering but doesn’t assert power over anyone. Students of yoga and life can create ourselves to be however we want to be, to claim that unique individual territory in this amazing thousand petaled lotus that is the Divine Human.

A manifesto: the planet is not just ready, but crying out for, a heart-sex-consciousness that has been hibernating for millennia. Awaken this consciousness in yourself alone, or invite your partner—not just for yourselves and each other but to create enlightened sexuality on a planet that deeply needs that kind of transformation.

UGoddessYoga offers Tantra 101: Demystifying the Ancient System to Awaken Your Erotic Intelligence, February 13, 2016. For more information and to join the mailing list: ugoddesyoga@gmail.com.