this yogini gets b-b-b-busy.  And most often what I need to do is make room to do and say n-n-n-nothing.  This repeating of the first consonant is my attempt at rapping.  You know, hip-hop.  It's one of the musical genres i seem to fail miserably at.  really, i wanna be a believable rapper - not just the kind you laugh at.  anyhow, that's one of the reasons why I ran away from the Big Apple - ya know - not because i was a bad rapper, but because i was too busy to feel my own ecstasy.  Ha ha!  I do love this exercise of writing.  I find myself very funny.  don't you?  it's okay if you don't, I won't hold ya to it.  "Let them off every hook," as my buddy Harshada says.  Does he say this at the end of each e-mail? Why yes, he does.  

Here's what some of my friends have at the end of each of their e-mails:

Cynthia Espinal -- "Say what you mean and mean what you say for those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."  - Dr. Seuss.  

Sunny Sims -- "Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." - Carl Jung

 Don't ya just love my friends?  I just love my friends.  I am oozing oozing with love for all my friends.  (I just chanted for 2 hours with Zoe Mantarakis and the rockin rockin with shaktih Bhakta crew at Pure Austin Quarry Lake, so I'm just oozing with ecstasy right now.  I hope you can feel it all over this blog post. 

I was just getting kinda a little bit too wound up in the city of Zen yogis - Zoo Yawk.  And it was time to go for a bit  because I somehow booked every hour in the day with something and my mantra went something like - "I gotta run, I gotta go.  I gotta run, I gotta run.  I gotta go."  Because I was always running somewhere.  I mean really, I would sprint sometimes across Manhattan on foot because it was faster than catching a cab or train or bus.  Across town.  Cross-town was always harder than up and down the citay- ahay -hay.  But can't you feel me missing the city?  Ah I can feel me missing the city.  

I kept looking around Houston yesterday and wondering where the heck everyone was.  Where is everyone?  Space - we have the liberty of space down here in zee Tejas.  Beautiful beautiful space.  Akasha in Sanskrit.  I love Space.  I do.  I love Akasha.  I mean, my mom and I watched a Coen brothers movie - A Serious Man - in downtown Houston with all of our Jewish friends and we leave the theater with my mom saying, "That poor boy didn't know Rabbi Kushner.  He needed to know Rabbi Kushner."  And I was like, "Mom, who the heck is Rabbi Kushner?"  Leave it to my Catholic Catholic Filipino mother  to know the best Rabbis.  This is the same woman who taught me the word "chutzpah" back in 3rd grade and told me I needed to develop this.  Okay.  Let's just say, developed.   But our Jewish friends in the theater numbered around 30 folks (I didn't know any of them but we were all speaking Hebrew by the end of watching this movie.)  And we drove through Houston and I was like - where are all the people on the streets?  "They're at home watching baseball," my mother said.  "Or is it football?"  We are so not from this country, and it always shows on Thanksgiving.

And on Monday, I start working again - as an Interactive Producer.  I certainly hope all Producers are interactive, eh?  But I am excited because I wake up every morning at 5 am.  It's a blessing - sometimes it's 4 am.  I love this time of the morning.  In NY - I would often be at the Ashram - meditating or running around in the dark with the deer - trying to see who could scare each other first.  There was a bear prowling around for a time at the Ashram and when I was up during 4 am nocturnal bear and deer hours I always made sure not to have food on me.  Somehow in my mind, I figured the bear would have no desire to be near me if I didn't smell like food.  I always have food near me, on my person, in my pocket, purse, backpack.  My stomach's not big enough to hold much food.  So I carry food around me.  Ask anyone who knows me well enough.  Shawn Harrison said she was amazed when I would take the tinfoil piece of nothing that I wrapped up from one restaurant and eat it a few hours later.  I secretly think it grossed her out.  But she was too much of a lady to tell me this.

After meditation, I would take a shower, get ready, to go to the city.  I would then have breakfast - most of the time in the dining hall.  Me and Dick Bruns.  I love Dick Bruns.  Amazing disciple of Guruji's.  So much love in this man's being.  And I would catch the train or the bus by 7:35 am.  

I'd be on the train/bus for an hour and a half or so and got to work by 9:30-9:45 - depending on where I stopped on my way to pick up more food.  The Japanese grocer at Penn Station was one place. Cipriani's breakfast - so Scrumptious - was another one.

BUT check this out!  Check it out YO!  I now have all this time before I have to be at work at 9 am in Austin to feel my ecstasy by myself instead of in all of NYC's public places!!!!!!!!!!   That's 4 hours I just won back in each day just by moving back to Austin.  I am going to paint, sing, dance, write a musical, run, jog, bike around the neighborhood, go for a swim at Barton Springs....Not to mention that it's so impossible to find work in Austin that I have been blissfully unemployed for the past few months.  That's how many months off of work - that would be 3 months.  Without work.  And okay, I was going a little batty-cakes there in the end - especially because I have no money and spend every penny that I have.  Thank God for my Faith in God to see me through all things.  And I have been working a lot at teaching Yoga and creating the YOGALife curriculum at Love Yoga Co-op.  These are both very very important to this beingness.  

Okay Really - I'm going to try not fill up the hours - as they get filled up.  Instead,  I'm going to do as Rob Brezsny suggests on www.freewillastrology.com:

Leo Horoscope for week of November 26, 2009

I believe that in the coming weeks you'll enjoy experiences that have an emotional resemblance to those referred to in this passage by French novelist Gustave Flaubert: "I want to cover you with love, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh . . . I want you to be astonished by me, to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports . . . When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours. I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them." Please note, Leo, that I'm not necessarily saying the pleasures you gather in will stem from an engagement with an actual lover. They might. But your delight may also have a more mysterious origin. 

Self-discipline enough to make room for all the ecstasy.  "I pray for the power to stay in love with you," - Rufus Wainwright.  The power of ecstasy - it's always there - it stays - we just have to have the discipline to be with her.  "Without rain, there would be no rainbows," - Sita Sings the Blues.  

What a lesson.  This lesson is from Guruji - Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati.  "You can never fix anyone else's ego.  Even God can't do that.  If God could've fixed your ego, he would've done so.  The only one who can fix your own ego is you.  You can't fix your wife's ego or husband's ego."

 What is this ego?  It's this sense of self being separate from the Source of all that is.  It provides a set of boundaries that helps us each as individuals find our way through time and space.  It is individual I-am.  And there is nothing wrong with it.  It's a very necessary part of existence.  But the problem is - most humans stop there when thinking about who each human being is.  They stop at individual I-am - and Gurus, Yogis, Buddhas, Christ are all saying - WAIT one second - don't stop there - become who you totally are -

Cosmic I-Am

Absolute I-AM

Let these two other aspects of your I-AM-ness lead the Ego and then the ego will know its place.  This work as Guruji illustrates above can only be done to one's OWN Self.  Where we fail over and over again as humans is to try impose this work on others.  I have been guilty of this and am working really hard to catch myself every single time I want to "fix" the ego of others.   Mostly because when I look back at any attempt to working towards this in the past, all I see is failure.  Over and over again.  

Loving people for exactly where they are.  Helping to guide them to choices that will help make them whole.  While leaving them alone to figure themselves out - to figure things out on their own.  Is the work of a Yogi and a Yoga teacher.  We guide - we point in the right direction - then we surrender.  Ishvara Pranidhana.  We surrender.  We let go.  We let God.  We do this over and over again.  The same with a Guru.

My relationship to my Guru - Guruji - Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati - is that he/Guru is a force that comes when I begin tumbling down a path that is potentially painful for me and others.  He (an energy) guides me to look at my self, my motivations, my actions clearly before I do and say anything.  And I'm not always listening.  I know this.  It's why I make every bit of room always to practice, to sit, to stop and drop everything.  To meditate, to breathe, to practice Hatha Yoga.  Because I realize when the ego is again bowling over my life.  And I start feeling disconnected from what?  not just my Guru because he's only pointing the way, but from my very SELF.   

Boom.  back to the practice of yoga.  Back to clearing the mind of all debris.  Back to clearing it all out.  Back to Empty.  Empty.  Emptying everything completely.  Emptying everything completely.  Total and utter emptiness.  Cleared out.  And completely aware in the process.  Completely and utterly aware.  Wanting nothing more than total awareness.  We breathe in.  We breathe out.

The science of intutition.  REALLLLLY amazing to have this vocabulary with Caroline Myss.

http://www.myss.com

There are so many reasons why New York City is the Big Apple - even in the world of Yoga.  

One - the Yogis in New York City stand up and Fight - in a beautiful way - not to be regulated by a government that knows not a hair about Yoga.  

Guess to where this yogini is donating funds this year?  http://www.yogaforny.org/

"You must fight, therefore fight without hatred.  And love without any attachments" - Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati, aka Guruji, Ramamurti S. Mishra, M.D.

Two - the Yogis in New York City write.  Talk - gather - get together.  As a community.  Not as one yoga studio versus another.  Here's a great New York City Yoga Blog:

 See, I learned a lot from my living in one of the toughest and most loving cities in the world.  I bow to Manhattan as a great Guru, really, because we are tough on the exterior but totally sweet on the interior.  You don't have to prove anything to New Yorkers. New Yorkers are really busy proving things to themselves.  And really getting to know their very selves.

Now that I'm back in Austin, Texas, it's wonderful too.  How laid-back and non-aggressive the people are.  But perhaps, sometimes, to a fault.  I have found that because Yoga doesn't have the deep historical roots that it does in New York and California, that many yoga students/teachers in Austin seem to tread this holy ground of Yoga with trepidation.  And I have seen that unlike New York City, the large yoga centers in Texas say yes, yes, Government regulate US.  Regulate us, Texas Workforce Commission.  Because you guys, yes you, are experts on who should teach yoga out there.  Huh?

Odd enough that this is a right-to-work state and Republican.  But that YOGIS, whose very foundation of existence is liberation, LIBERATION, governance resides within, my darlings.  Should say, YES, YES, Texas Workforce Commission, you tell us who should train others to teach yoga as a VOCATION.  A vocation?  When did yoga become a vocation?  From what I understand Yoga is a Service.  There are 3 big paths, yes, in Yoga?  Karma, Jnana, Bhakti.  And then there's your Dharma.  The Purushartas, baby.  Where in these words can you find the word vocation?

Let's look at the roots of the word "vocation."  If you looked it up, it is often used as calling to the clergy.  To the priesthood, darlings.  Do you know what priests do?  Priests and preachers preach.  Do you know what a Yoga Teacher does?  A Yoga teacher facilitates transformation.  Hmmm.  

And then the classification of Yoga Teacher Training next to Beauty Schools, Manicurists and Pedicurists...I have not a problem with any of these Vocational schools, but I can't even begin to compare my meditation, Sanskrit, asana practice to any of these "vocations."  See what I mean?  You can get better at cutting cuticles in a school setting.  It might take a few lifetimes to understand one Sutra of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.  But we try to measure this in hours.  In 200 hours, I attained samadhi and therefore am qualified to transmit these teachings to you, innocent masses.  See, how laughable?

Anyways, it's good to be a New Yorkini yogini, whose heart is in India, living in Texas for the time-being.

This yogini highly recommends spending time with 3-year-olds raised by yogini social workers such as Omkari  (Anita Stoll).  Sadie - this mighty mighty 3-year-old - has started the phase that lasts our entire lifetime - the phase of establishing autonomy, figuring out her own power and what is needed from others, the world, and eventually from the Source of the Universe itself.   And she loves to do things "by herself."  Such as pour her own Chinese medical herbal cough syrup into a spoon - and spill it on the counter.  Or take all the beads out of the box and watch them scatter in every direction.  The spilling and the scattering are not her intentions.  And after each spill, scatter, "mess-up,"  Sadie says, "That's okay."

"That's okay."  And proceeds to try to gather it up. 

Fine motor skills are still being honed.  But I can hear Sadie say it now - every time I trip or fall or am not certain of what's next.  I hear her say, in her three-year-old voice, "That's okay."

And mama Anita and I talked about it because my heart just sighs around this sweetness.  "I messed up.  And that's okay."  Is what she is saying again and again.  And eventually, we know, the cough syrup will stay on the spoon and the beads won't scatter everywhere when she empties the box out on the floor.

Simultaneously - I get the following story from OSHO.  Osho.  Osho.  Osho.  (Shawn Harrison liked to tell me about spending time at his Ashram in India and they chant Osho.  Osho.  Osho.  Osho.  weird, but appropriate somehow).

 "Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples.  A man came and spit on his face.  He wiped it off, and he asked the man, 'What next?  What do you want to say next?'  The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit on someone's face, he will ask, 'What next?'  He had had no such experience in his past.  He had insulted people and they had become angry and they had reacted.  Or if they were cowards and weaklings, they had smiled, trying to bribe the man.  But Buddha was like neither;  he was not angry nor in any way offended, nor in any way cowardly.  But just matter-of-factly he said, 'What next?'  There was no reaction on his part.

Buddha's disciples became angry, they reacted.  His closest disciple, Ananda, said, "This is too much, and we cannot tolerate it.  You keep your teaching with you, and we will just show this man that he cannot do what he has done.  He has to be punished for it.  Otherwise everybody will start doing things like this."

Buddha said, 'You keep silent.  He has not offended me, but you are offending me.  He is new, a stranger.  He must have heard from people something about me, that 'this man is an atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their trace, a revolutionary, a corrupter.'  And he may  have formed some idea, a notion of me.  He has not spit on me, he has spit on his notion, he has spit on his idea of me --- because he does not know me at all, so how can he spit on me?'

'If you think on it deeply,'  Buddha said, 'he has spit on his own mind.  I am not part of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say because this is a way of saying something --- spitting is a way of saying something.  There are moments when you feel that language is impotent --- in deep love, in intense anger, in hate, in prayer.  There are intense moments when language is impotent.  They you have to do something.  When you are in deep love and you kiss the person or embrace the person, what are you doing?  You are saying something.  When you are angry, intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him, you are saying something.  I can understand him.  He must have something more to say, that's why I'm asking 'What next?'

The man was even more puzzled!  And Buddha said to his disciples, 'I am more offended by you because you know me, and you have lived for years with me, and still you react.'

Puzzled, confused, the man returned home.  He could not sleep the whole night.  When you see a buddha, it is difficult, impossible, to sleep again the way you used to sleep before.  Again and again he was haunted by the experience.  He could not explain it to himself, what had happened.  He was trembling all over and perspiring.  He had never come across such a man;  he shattered his whole mind and his whole pattern, his whole past.

The next morning he was back there.  He threw himself at Buddha's feet.  Buddha asked him again, 'What next?  This too, is a way of saying something that cannot be said in language.  When you come and touch my feet, you are saying something that cannot be said ordinarily, for which all words are a little narrow; it cannot be contained in them.'

Buddha said, 'Look, Ananda, this man is again here, he is saying something.  This man is a man of deep emotions.'

The man looked at Buddha and said, 'Forgive me for what I did yesterday.'

Buddha said, 'Forgive?  But I am not the same man to whom you did it.  The Ganges goes on flowing;  it is never the same Ganges again.  Every man is a river.  The man you spit upon is no longer here -- I look just like him, but I am not the same, much has happened in these twenty-four hours!  The river has flowed so much.  So I cannot forgive you because I have no grudge against you.

'And you also are new.  I can see that you are not the same man who came to me yesterday because that man was angry - he was anger!  He spit, whereas you are bowing at my feet, touching my feet --- how can you be the same man?  You are not the same man, so let us forget about it.  Those two people --- the man who spit, and the man on whom he spit --- both are no more.  Come closer.  Let us talk of something else.'