Hi Everyone,Welcome, welcome to the turning of the page! Three cheers to a blank slate! Amen to a fresh start! Hail hail to new opportunity! Opportunity for what? What are your resolutions for the coming year? Maybe the most sensible resolution is to unlearn all we’ve learned, to unbelieve the ideas that create our sense of aspiration. Release me from that which I’ve been told will fulfill me and make me whole. Maybe the pursuit of my happiness is the very thing keeping me from it’s recognition. Maybe the idea of “me” is what needs dropping in order to discover who I am.Yoga is interested in one thing ONLY and it’s not how long you can hold a pose, hold your breath or if your mat is eco-friendly.  It’s interested in exposing and releasing what’s false, That’s an inside job, just like happiness. What are you doing in the name of the made-up sense of who you want to be? What are you doing to perpetuate a myth of who you’re not for the benefit of others? Hey, it’s the time of year for tough questions. There’s an old joke I’d like to share, which I recall every year around this time.  I’ve taken a few liberties with it but the spirit of it’s punch line remains intact.Whether the night ends with you praying to the rare blue moon or to the porcelan Gods l wish you the happiest of new years.with loveEddieTODAYThe Day had arrived, and it was a day much like today. There was much ado about the rare and brilliant full, blue moon. The townspeople held the New Year’s celebration outside to pay homage to the mysterious night sky. There was much activity at the monastery too. Tonight, after 20 years of continuous study, the monks prepared to leave their land and take the Word to the Eight Corners of the Earth. Each armed with the book of Scripture, each having passed trials of rigorous examinations, each eager to share the truth and fruits of their long scholarship.The Head Monk had traveled far, from the distant mountain, to bid the monks farewell. The Head Monk traced his lineage in an unbroken line back to the time the Word had been first written down. He carried with him the Holy Book for all the monks to see. The Word in its original form, as written by the Prophet Himself! On the eve of departure, under the light of the blue moon, the monks meditated. While his brothers received the blessings of the Head Monk,  Brother Oswald slipped away. Quietly and quickly he walked through the barely lit catacombs till he came to the room where the Head Monk was staying. He pushed open the door.  There on a small bench laid the Great Book. Trembling, Brother Oswald touched the cover. With great awe he opened it’s pages.What a grand book! The copy of the Word from which he had studied all these years felt nothing like this. The Prophet’s handwriting was as fragrant as the frankenscence burned during meditation. Brother Oswald quickly was lost in the cadence and beauty, the sweet rhythm and sublime truth of the Word.So many nights had he fallen asleep with his arms wrapped in sweet embrace around the Book. Yes, this book’s pages were more beautiful than his own humble copy but the words nourished just the same.  He knew these words like his own skin. For hours he read and read. Until he reached a passage that seemed odd. A passage he didn’t recall. He went back and read it again. And again. And again. In the temple the silence of the monk’s meditation was shattered by an anguished scream.  All the monks scrambled from their cushions, followed by the head monk who moved quickly despite his age. Louder and louder the screams became, sounding like the cry of a wounded animal, of a grieving mother. The monks followed the unearthly sounds to the room where they found Brother Oswald sprawled on the floor, ashen-faced.He looked at his brothers, their faces frozen in concern.“It says CELEBRATE!,” Brother Oswald said, holding the Book open for them to see. “Not Celibate.”

there’s still time …..such hope …. I can still get a gift delivered in time for xmas …what a relief, how reassuring ….. if all else fails there’s still time …. but not for long … the offer ends soon … time is running out … it won’t be around for forever … you better act now …. you better act fast …. though there is still time there won’t always be …. there will always be time but not for you ….. so don’t wait any longer … stop dithering around ….. c’mon now …. you don’t want to miss out …. it won’t come around again …. at least not until next year ..

“You know, that’s the real sacrifice veterans make: not the horrors we suffer while serving our country, but the loss of the world we know when we re-enter civilian life. I don’t want to be thanked for what I did; I just want to be normal. I want my command of a tank company at age 25 to count as much as running an 80-person department when people look at my resume. I want employers to treat veterans like people with exceptional job experience, not as otherworldly beings who insanely took a different path. I don’t deserve pity or awe, and I don’t want one day of reverence followed by 364 days of nonchalance. I don’t want yellow ribbons on cars. I want every person to challenge himself or herself, to pursue a life they deem honorable, to make the most of the few short years they have on this planet. Those who have been to war know that it can reveal the worst of humanity. Strive to make it better.”

Matt Ufford

when you’re watching something and realize a smile is stretching your face way beyond its borders it’s time to share.

http://video.telegraph.co.uk/services/player/bcpid1137883380?bctid=21337502001

From “I Am That”, Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj ~ Chapter 53

Questioner:I must confess I came today in a rebellious mood. I got a raw deal at the airlines office. When faced with such situations everything seems doubtful, everything seems useless.

Maharaj: This is a very useful mood. Doubting all, refusing all, unwilling to learn through another. It is the fruit of your long sadhana. After all one does not study for ever.

Q: Enough of it. It took me nowhere.M: Don’t say ‘nowhere’. It took you where you are — now.

Q: It is again the child and its tantrums. I have not moved an inch from where I was.

M: You began as a child and you will end as a child. Whatever you have acquired in the meantime you must lose and start at the beginning.

Q: But the child kicks. When it is unhappy or denied anything it kicks.

M: Let it kick. Just look at the kicking. And if you are too afraid of the society to kick convincingly look at that too. I know it is a painful business. But there is no remedy — except one — the search for remedies must cease.If you are angry or in pain, separate yourself from anger and pain and watch them.Externalisation is the first step to liberation. Step away and look. The physical events will go on happening, but by themselves they have no importance. It is the mind alone that matters. Whatever happens, you cannot kick and scream in an airline office or in a Bank. Society does not allow it. If you do not like their ways, or are not prepared to endure them, don’t fly or carry money. Walk, and if you cannot walk, don’t travel. If you deal with society you must accept its ways, for its ways are your ways. Your needs and demands have created them. Your desires are so complex and contradictory — no wonder the society you create is also complex and contradictory.

Q: I do see and admit that the outer chaos is merely a reflection of my own inner disharmony. But what is the remedy?

M: Don’t seek remedies.

Q: Sometimes one is in a ’state of grace’ and life is happy and harmonious. But such a state does not last! The mood changes and all goes wrong.

M: If you could only keep quiet, clear of memories and expectations, you would be able to discern the beautiful pattern of events. It is your restlessness that causes chaos. At least it did not slow them down, as your kicking would have surely done! You want immediate results! We do not dispense magic here. Everybody does the same mistake: refusing the means, but wanting the ends. You want peace and harmony in the world, but refuse to have them in yourself. Follow my advice implicitly and you will not be disappointed. I cannot solve your problem by mere words. You have to act on what I told you and persevere. It is not the right advice that liberates, but the action based on it. Just like a doctor, after giving the patient an injection, tells him: ‘Now, keep quiet. Do nothing more, just keep quiet,’ I am telling you: you have got your ‘injection’, now keep quiet, just keep quiet. You have nothing else to do. My Guru did the same. He would tell me something and then said: ‘Now keep quiet. Don’t go on ruminating all the time. Stop. Be silent’.

Q: I can keep quiet for an hour in the morning. But the day is long and many things happen that throw me out of balance. It is easy to say ‘be silent’, but to be silent when all is screaming in me and round me — please tell me how it is done.

M: All that needs doing can be done in peace and silence. There is no need to get upset.

Q: It is all theory which does not fit the facts. I am returning to Europe with nothing to do there. My life is completely empty.

M: If you just try to keep quiet, all will come — the work, the strength for work, the right motive. Must you know everything beforehand? Don’t be anxious about your future — be quiet now and all will fall in place. The unexpected is bound to happen, while the anticipated may never come. Don’t tell me you cannot control your nature. You need not control it. Throw it overboard. Have no nature to fight, or to submit to. No experience will hurt you, provided you don’t make it into a habit. Of the entire universe you are the subtle cause. All is because you are. Grasp this point firmly and deeply and dwell on it repeatedly. To realise this as absolutely true, is liberation.

Q: If I am the seed of my universe, then a rotten seed I am! By the fruit the seed is known.

M: What is wrong with your world that you swear at it?

Q: It is full of pain.

M: Nature is neither pleasant nor painful. It is all intelligence and beauty. Pain and pleasure are in the mind. Change your scale of values and all will change. Pleasure and pain are mere disturbances of the senses; treat them equally and there will be only bliss. And the world is, what you make it; by all means make it happy. Only contentment can make you happy — desires fulfilled breed more desires. Keeping away from all desires and contentment in what comes by itself is a very fruitful state — a precondition to the state of fullness. Don’t distrust its apparent sterility and emptiness. Believe me, it is the satisfaction of desires that breeds misery. Freedom from desires is bliss.

Q: There are things we need

.M: What you need will come to you, if you do not ask for what you do not need. Yet only few people reach this state of complete dispassion and detachment. It is a very high state, the very threshold of liberation.

Q: I have been barren for the last two years, desolate and empty and often was I praying for death to come.M: Well, with your coming here events have started rolling. Let things happen as they happen — they will sort themselves out nicely in the end. You need not strain towards the future — the future will come to you on its own. For some time longer you will remain sleep-walking, as you do now, bereft of meaning and assurance; but this period will end and you will find your work both fruitful and easy. There are always moments when one feels empty and estranged. Such moments are most desirable for it means the soul had cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places. This is detachment — when the old is over and the new has not yet come. If you are afraid, the state may be distressing; but there is really nothing to be afraid of. Remember the instruction: whatever you come across — go beyond.

Q: The Buddhas rule: to remember what needs to be remembered. But I find it so difficult to remember the right thing at the right moment. With me forgetting seems to be the rule!

M: It is not easy to remember when every situation brings up a storm of desires and fears. Craving born of memory is also the destroyer of memory.

Q: How am I to fight desire? There is nothing stronger.

M: The waters of life are thundering over the rocks of objects — desirable or hateful. Remove the rocks by insight and detachment and the same waters will flow deep and silent and swift, in greater volume and with greater power. Don’t be theoretical about it, give time to thought and consideration; if you desire to be free, neglect not the nearest step to freedom. It is like climbing a mountain: not a step can be missed. One step less — and the summit is not reached.~ ~ ~

Maybe I did. The author captures a state of perceiving …. his memories connect to my memories, until they feel the same though they “look” different. Genius! Yoga! Union! This post will certainly conjure for you unexpected moments of rear-view mirror happiness.  I hope you enjoy it as much I do — if not now, than perhaps in a few years

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/averted-vision/

Hi Everyone, Our impending Raw Food Social jarred loose a few embarrassing food memories. 

First date with J, Summer of ‘83. She: World traveler, Masters in Nutrition and uncomfortably pretty. Me: unemployed, living with grandma; five years of college hadn’t sophisticated my palate much beyond Dr. Munchies and Burger King. 

She was passionate about her work, warning me of the dangers of red meat, sharing the latest findings about cholesterol. I listened, dumbfounded. Food was something I ate when I was hungry and beyond it’s taste and availability it did not  possess for me any other alluring characteristics.  “You don’t eat red meat, do you?” J asked.

My “no” was so emphatic she might well have asked if I ate human baby’s feet.

 The waiter appeared.“Lentils and rice please,” J said.

I had never heard of a lentil, my university degree notwithstanding. “I’ll have a bacon cheeseburger,” I said, and, nodding knowingly at J, “and I’ll take it medium well. “

J laughed, thinking I was making a joke. I laughed too, hopeful that I had said something funny, though I couldn’t imagine what.The ensuing conversation revealed that ordering a hamburger “medium well” doesn’t disqualify it from the category of red meat.

Who knew? Many people, apparently, but I wasn’t among them. I also learned that lentils and rice are a great substitue source of protein, information which under ordinary circumstances (i.e. not in the company of a beautiful woman studying nutrition), would have meant nothing to me. 

Embarrassment spurred my education. A year later I was living on my own and frequenting a health food store in Brooklyn, fascinated by cookies that contained no sugar, no wheat, had no taste and cost twice as much as my beloved Lido cookies which possessed all those things. “They have no taste because your taste buds have been destroyed by artificial and unnatural ingredients,” the health food store guy said.

 “Taste bud this buddy, ” I said, leaning over the counter and smacking him across the head. It was Brooklyn, It was okay.  

I was given a copy of Eat To Win and learned of the felonious role white sugar plays in the digestive process, robbing the body of essential nutrients. That explained certain things, like I why I hadn’t been able to sit still for the first 24 years of my life. Since early childhood, a steady diet of Sugar Frosted Flakes, Starbursts, Hershey’s chocolate milk and Coca Cola has proclaimed itself in a complete intolerance for lulls of any sort (dietitians and nutritionists — and parents! — who understand scientifically sugar’s poltergeistian role in the metabolic process should themselves be prosecuted for not demanding it’s abolition from their patients’ and childrens’ diets; those remiss are accessories to health crimes on par with tobacco industry lawyers and snake oil salesmen).

A friend bought me a shot of wheatgrass. After drinking it I thought; you pay money for this? Alas, soon I was drinking a shot a day. Ditto for veggie juices and smoothies. As the diameters of my yoga and spiritual circles increased I kept hearing about the nutritional trinity of enzymes, digestion and energy. I met some people who ate only raw food. They claimed raw food, unlike cooked food, remains in full possession of all its enzymes, an attribute that supports stronger digestion, better absorption, balanced assimilation, and regular elimination.

One of the raw food people said to me, quoting his raw food guru, “elimination is illumination!”Fundamentalists tend to sound alike, regardless of the flavor of their fundamentalism. I wasn’t the kind of guy who compared bowel movements with friends though I had to admit that when things were running smoothly down there my energy was off the charts. And when it wasn’t, I felt slow and sluggish in both mind and body.   

I met some other people who ate nothing but fruit and called themselves fruitarians. Then I met a breathetarian who claimed to live only off the nutrients he received through his breath. In other words, I met one nut cake more nuttier than the last.  Everyone had a more frantic, or drastic, or evolutionary, or revolutionary idea of how to live, what to eat and how to be. Not much different than the yoga world I was encountering, with it’s Tower of Babel-ing personalities, all arguing over which toe to press down in what pose and the proper accent of a sanskrit phrase whose meaning they didn’t know in the first place.

   Confusion was rampant. What to do? What to eat? Who to listen to?  I remembered back a few years, right before my plunge into yoga-related activity, and the medical odyssey my grandmother’s eventual death from liver cancer took us on.  Toward the end of her life she could only retain liquids.  The doctors said her body didn’t have the strength anymore to digest solid food. So the New Age freaks and the Western cancer doctors agree on something! It takes enormous reserves of energy to digest food.This made sense. A lot of sense.We want to eat food and move bodies and live lives in ways that are digestible. In ways nature intended. 

Here’s what I like most about raw food: it’s undeniably not cooked. It remains unaltered. Whether you’re a hundred per cent raw foodist or once in awhile you have a carrot stick, you know that what you’re eating is how nature intended it to be. Like going outside without make-up, or not worrying what the neighbors think. Natural is an unusual way to live When your nervous system calms down from the shock and fear of unlearning what’s not natural there’s an experience of life revealed that’s quite old and familiar, but feels new and exciting.Natural. Pure. Unaffected by desire, by need, by momentum, by hope, by fear.That’s a great and timeless teaching. 

It’s in that spirit that you’re invited to join us tomorrow night at the studio. A Raw Food Social. Some food, some music, some movement,….  sharing in the basics of what it means to be alive. Hope to see you there.with love,Eddie

 Buddha’s awakening becomes a tourist attraction.  Washington slept here!  I met Sean Penn!   Theoretical lives  Red Rocks forming naturally through slow relentless interplay of elements get reduced to helicopter tours and t- shirts, vortex peddlers and sweaty Europeans checking another attraction off their bucket list.  Everyone and every thing reduced to marketplace value Sitting here, rocks as my mirror.  Why add a chant or prayer? Redundant.    Yogis lug cameras up here to capture themselves in side crow over the ridge …… capture image and market it What they can’t show and what can’t be captured is how this feels. No one can. You have to sit and listen. Just like Buddha.  Gods landscape Dive buzzzzzzzing hummingbirdsBees Gone Wild.Cactus waving their thorny mitts at me in greeting:  ”Here, come here …..  no here …… come here I’m happy and nothing’s happening. Solitary joy. Is that Mary Oliver behind that pine? Ugh a plane. Rocks rising like pieces on gods chessboard. Time to Leave? What internal clock says that? To go where?To get in a car? Back to packaged life?Why? Happy here Why go? E go.Ego Saying it’s time, enough of this already. Wanna come Mr. LiZard?  Didn’t think so.  I’m going out of habit Leaving joy for obligation out of habit. We Learn to like Attributes not Essence, confuse qualities with people. Great sadness of human life: Attributes are momentary if they even exist at all. Making an attribute solid is like building a house of soap bubbles. Natures’ only attribute is truth. Because experienced beauty/truth isn’t enough they invent helicopter tours and boast about safety records. There is no safety in nature ……..  only wild truth of creation

Vegetarianism is not about morality or religiousness. It is a question of aesthetics: one’s sensitivity, one’s respect, one’s reverence for life. Osho says, “Vegetarianism has nothing to do with religion: it is something basically scientific. It has nothing to do with morality, but it has much to do with aesthetics.” Osho shares, “Vegetarianism is nothing but a by-product of deep meditation. If a person goes on meditating, by and by he will see that it has become impossible to eat meat.” “Vegetarianism is a conscious effort, a deliberate effort, to get out of the heaviness that keeps you tethered to the earth so that you can fly — so that the flight from the alone to the alone becomes possible.”  “I do not believe in vegetarianism, because I do not believe in anything. My disciples are vegetarian not as a cult, not as a creed. They are vegetarians because their meditations make them more human, more of the heart, and they can see the whole stupidity of people killing living beings for their food. It is their sensitivity, their aesthetic awareness that makes them vegetarians. I don’t teach vegetarianism; it is a by-product of meditation.

Wherever meditation has happened, people have become vegetarian, always, for thousands of years. The oldest religion in the world is Jainism. It is a small religion, that’s why not much is known to the outside world; it exists only in India. Jainism has no God; hence, there is no possibility of prayer. When God and prayer are discarded, then what is left for a religion? God is somewhere outside, your prayer is addressed to someone outside. Discarding God and prayer you are really saying, “I would like now to go inward.” And meditation is a way of going inward. For thousands of years Jainas have been vegetarians. You have to know this fact, that all their twenty-four teachers — they call them tirthankaras, their messiahs — came from the warrior caste. They were all meat-eaters. They were professional warriors. What happened to these people? Meditation transformed their whole vision. Not only did their swords fall from their hands, their warriorhood disappeared, but a new phenomenon started happening: a tremendous feeling of love towards existence. They became absolutely one with the whole. Vegetarianism is just a small part of that great revolution. The same happened in Buddhism. Buddha did not believe in God, did not believe in prayer. I want you to understand it: the moment God and prayer are discarded, the only thing that is left is to go in. Buddha also was from the warrior caste, son of a king, trained to kill. He was not a vegetarian. But when meditation started blossoming in him, just as a by-product the vegetarian idea came into his being: you cannot kill animals for eating, you cannot destroy life. While every kind of delicious food is available, what is the need to kill living beings? This is nothing to do with religion. This is simply to do with your sensitiveness, your aesthetic understanding. Jainism and Buddhism are the only religions without God and without prayer, and both automatically became vegetarian. The same is happening to sannyasins. Christianity is not vegetarian, Mohammedanism is not vegetarian, Judaism is not vegetarian — for the simple reason that these religions never came across the revolution that meditation brings. They never became aware of meditation. They went on praying to a fictitious God — which brings no transformation in life, because he does not exist. Your prayers are just addressed to the empty sky. They never reach anywhere, they are never heard by anyone, they are never going to be answered. There is nobody to answer them.

All the religions that have remained hooked with the idea of God have remained meat-eaters. So this is a simple phenomenon to understand. Why are my sannyasins vegetarians? We don’t enforce vegetarianism, we are not concerned with it. My sannyasins are not like George Bernard Shaw and his Fabian Society, where vegetarianism was a religion. Neither George Bernard Shaw knows anything about meditation, nor does his Fabian Society. They are just eccentric people who want to do something different from everybody else so they look better, they look higher, they look holier. Vegetarianism is their philosophy. It is not my philosophy, it is simply a by-product. I don’t insist upon it. I insist upon meditation. Be more alert, more silent, more joyful, more ecstatic, and find your innermost center. Many things will follow of their own accord; and when they come of their own accord, there is no repression, there is no fight, no hardship, no torture. But if you live vegetarianism as a religion or a philosophy, you will be continually hankering for meat, continually thinking, dreaming of meat, and your vegetarianism will be just a decoration for your ego. With me, meditation is the only essential religion. And everything that follows it is virtue, because it comes of its own accord. You don’t have to drag it, you don’t have to discipline yourself for it. I have nothing to do with vegetarianism, but I know that if you meditate you are going to grow new perceptivity, new sensitivity, and you cannot kill animals. Have you observed one fact? — that the vegetarian societies have the most delicious kinds of foods. The Buddhists, the Jainas — they have the best dishes in the world, for the simple reason that through their meditations they had to drop meat-eating. They became more inquiring into delicious food so they didn’t miss meat, on which they had been brought up from their childhood — it had become almost their second nature. 

There are millions of people who have never thought of vegetarianism. From the very childhood they have been killing living animals. It is not different from cannibalism. And since Charles Darwin it is absolutely a scientific fact that man has come, evolved, from the animals — so you are killing your own forefathers and eating them joyously. Don’t do such a nasty thing! And the earth is capable, man is capable of creating enough vegetarian food — vegetables, fruits, new fruits which have never existed before. Just crossbreeding is needed, and we can have the best kind of food available for everybody. Your sensitivity and perceptivity, your aesthetic understanding is immediately understood by the animals. Here you can find so many deer — they have come because this is the only place in the whole of America where they are absolutely safe. Nobody is going to hunt them. In Oregon, for ten days per year, the government allows people to hunt deer. The deer are such beautiful animals, so agile, so lovely…. We stopped hunting on our own ground, so from other ranches deer have moved to our place. And now they must be the best-fed deer in the whole world, because we are taking care of them. We are growing grass that they like, specially for them. They would never have thought that people would be so considerate. They like a certain grass called alfalfa, and I have told my people, “Grow as much alfalfa as possible, so all the deer of the whole of Oregon by and by start moving to our commune. And they will be respected as members of the commune.” And they already understand it. They stand on the road — you go on honking your horn, they don’t care; they are meditating in the middle of the road. And they understand one thing: that you are not going to do harm, so there is no need to be in a hurry. In my garden I have three hundred peacocks. The moment they see my car, they all start moving in front of it. They know that they cannot be hurt, that nobody is going to run over them. They will not move; sometimes Vivek has to get out and push them. They are enjoying! There are a few really crazy ones — the moment they see my car they come running from far away, just to stand in front of my car. I will move slowly, and they will move slowly backwards, but they will not move away from the road. They understand something, their hearts have felt something, that “these people are not enemies; these people are part of us, friends.” And the whole animal kingdom is part of us, even the trees.

Man has lived for millions of years so insensitively that he has lost one of the greatest qualities of his being. Meditation slowly slowly gives you back your sensitivity; and a man who has reached to the ultimate ecstasy of meditation is as sensitive as any tree, any animal, anything in the whole existence. This sensitivity makes my people vegetarians. And it is a gain, not a loss. It will make you simultaneously more loving, more compassionate, more feeling, more understanding of beauty. It will make you aware of great music, even the music that happens when the wind blows through the pine trees, or the sound of the running water-even the music that happens, that is happening, in this gap, in this silence. Silence is the highest music. It is soundless, but it can be felt. Can’t you feel the silence here? Can’t you feel that the people who are here are all one, pulsating in the same rhythm, their hearts beating in the same rhythm? Vegetarianism is a small thing. We have to create a world of really sensitive people, who can understand music, poetry, paintings, who can understand nature, who can understand human beauty, who can understand the world that surrounds them: the stars, the moon, the sun. Just a bird on the wing can fill you with immense rejoicing. The freedom of the small bird, the song of the small bird, may make you dance, sing. Humanity has lost its heart, and we have to give it back to everyone who is willing.” 

Hi Everyone,  It is with great joy that I welcome Howard Wills to Yoga Soup. I’d like to share the circumstances of our first meeting — I will try to stick to just the facts, but when the topics are inner peace, cosmic light, ultimate truth, etc., the facts get pretty hard to fact check.  Here goes: Nine years ago I received a phone call from my friend and teacher Steve Ross. His message was simple: “Meet me tonight at eight o’clock in Carpenteria. There’s a guy you have to meet.” I had enough faith in Steve to just say yes. He had proven over the years to be a realiable canary in the spiritual coal mine, having personally navigated me through some powerful experiences and introduced me to so many valuable yogic resources I’d lost count. Steve’s own excitement is what made the evening even more tantalizing.  “This guy is the real thing,” Steve added, and left me the address. I taught that evening and shared news of the event with the class, inviting anyone who was up for an adventure to join me. Two people said yes and after class we formed a small caravan down the freeway. I remember feeling slightly disappointed that only two people decided to come. If this experience was as big as I expected I wanted more people to not only experience it themselves, but I wanted to get my spirtual “commission” for brokering the deal. If it sounds petty and self-centered don’t blame me;  that’s just how the ego works. By the time we arrived a fairly large crowd was already seated and the teacher, Howard Wills, had begun speaking. My two students went off to the side and sat down. I remained standing in the back, watching as Howard “the real thing, the guy I had to meet” Wills  … paced back and forth in a big white leisure suit sounding like Elvis — if Elvis was a backwoods preacher with a bad caffeine habit. I watched as Howard approached a woman in the audience, looked her straight in the eye with a face-wide grin and asked her: “Are you rehdeh? Are you rehdeh for the light?” The woman said yes, yes she was ready. Howard asked again. “Are ya showre yore rehdeh? We can only do this if yore rehdeh.” The woman confirmed yes, yes, yes! she was ready …. then Howard snapped his fingers ….. once, twice, three times …. and pointed straight at her heart, third eye, throat, the ceiling — it was hard to tell — zapping her, presumably, with whatever invisible energy had been harvested by his vigorous finger snapping. I thought: this must be the warm-up act. The comedian before the main event. But then the woman took in a big breathless breath ….. let out a great sigh, and started sobbing. “Thank you Howard. Thank you Howard. Thank you, thank you.” Sweet Jesus of Carpenteria! Steve had conned me into a tent revival! This wasn’t Ramana Maharshi asking “Who Am I?”, or Ammachi giving me a rose-scented hug.  This had three a.m. Televangelist written all over it, right down to the strange hair and smug grin plastered on good ol’ Howard’s never-not-smiling face.  I looked over at my students - thank God only two of them had come - and gave them my best “what the hell?” look. The encounters continued like this over the next hour. Some people in obvious distress - in wheelchairs, walkers, crutches - and some sharing tales of great emotional torment — and each and every story was met by the same response from Howard: The question: “are ya rehdeh?” followed by some finger snapping, finger pointing and light-saber energy zapping. Everyone seemed very satisfied by their encounter but to me it all seemed like a sad sideshow in a small town carnival. I saw Steve sitting at the foot of the stage, surrounded by the people who had traveled with him from Los Angeles.  He had on his face the rapt expression of a true believer. I thought, sadly, that this must be the moment prophesied by many spiritual texts, the moment when the student must leave his teacher and make his own way through the world. The only question was whether to rush the stage and hustle Steve the hell out of there to the nearest de-programmer, or just get the hell out of there myself.No sooner did I have that thought than Steve turned around and saw me - I had been hiding behind a pillar, out of his sight line - and he started waving his arms for me to join them. I shook my head to indicate no, I’m good, I’m fine back here, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He stood up, motioned me to come over. Even though the walk through the crowd was awkwardly self-conscious — “I’m not one of you losers!” I wanted to scream — I couldn’t  deny the importance I felt at having been summoned to the front. There I was, walking toward the stage, into the inner circle surrounded by my teacher and other important looking people I did not know, in the front row, close to the action. If it sounds painfully contradictory to be drawn toward something you condemn because it casts you in a good light don’t blame me, that’s just how ego works (think high heels).  Flaubert once said that proximity to talent isn’t talent … but in the yoga world proximity to grace does rub off. We’re encouraged to keep elevated company because it’s through the inner light of the already awakened that our own inner light is re-discovered.  But this wasn’t that, I thought, even as I walked into it’s belly. This smells like a pyramid scheme and I feel like a rube.   I sat down by Steve. Howard walked over to us and Steve introduced me.”This is a friend of mine, Eddie,”Howard fixed me his mega watt smile and said, what else: “Ehdy! Are ya redhy Ehdy?”I looked at the people around me, smiling with desperate, sheep-like timidity. I looked at Steve, who’s own bright smile I wanted to rip off of his face for bringing me here. But there was no turning back. “I’m ready Howard,” I said. “Eddie’s ready.”  “Are ya showre?” “I’m showre.” Howard had me lay down on the stage face up. He looked out at the audience and said, “We’re gonna do a little heavy work here.”My eyes were closed.  I heard fingers snapping. I could sense fingers pointing. I heard the invocation of the light. And then …. Nothing.Nothing. Nothing. Nothing squared. I was gone. I had vanished. Disappeared. Eddie was out of business.No room, no audience, no Howard, no Steve.. No Eddie. And, best of all, no more of Eddie’s relentless opinions about ….. everything. Silence.For a period of time impossible to determine there was no “I” there. There was a body still on stage and a breath still animating it, but there was no sense of an “Eddie.” When “I” returned, when I became again cognizant of my surroundings I realized I was laughing. Not laughing politely, not haha laughing, but deep teeth-baring, belly-rolling from-the-bottom-of-my heart laughing ….  …  I was laughing a laugh that doesn’t come from hearing a good joke or from seeing someone slip on a banana peel … it wasn’t a laugh at anyone’s expense, or at the absurdity of the circumstances …….. it was a laughter rooted unshakably in love, in love of being, in love with existence, in love with love. It was known in that second that this was the truth …. Howard calls it the light ….. light, truth, love ….. interchangeable ways to describe the same indescribable thing — that which I knew beyond doubt forms the core of who we are. I was laughing because every concern about every imaginery problem I had ever/never had was gone. When the “I” disappears, when who you believe yourself to be vanishes, than all the dramas that support and bodyguard that identity also disappear. What remains is the simple and obvious joy of who you are. You are not anything that can be described. You just are. I looked up at Howard, beaming. What happened I wanted to ask, but the question had no momentum. Who cares? I looked into his eyes. He hadn’t changed one bit since I walked in but the way I experienced him sure had. I fell in love. Fell in truth. Fell in peace. Whatever. Just fell.I looked over at Steve, his own eyes ablaze in light.  I saw in those eyes the joy of recognition. The joy of sharing this with his friends. Of my own recently cynical thoughts I thought: Oh ye of little faith, once again you’ve forgotten how it works. How does “it” work? When you stop looking for it, there it is. Searching implies a lack of faith that “it” is present. You wouldn’t look for something you already have. I used to think this was a lot of new age slight of hand, this kind of language, but there, in the middle of the laugh, I knew what they were talking about it. When you stop re-arranging thoughts the way one might rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, you rest in the obvious.  Judgements are ego’s attempts to remain separate and in charge, to keep out the recognition of the light of this laughter. But why? Why would you want to keep something this wonderful at bay? Good question.Because with the light, with the truth, comes the end of the story the ego loves to tell about itself, its plight, it’s life. I can understand that. I know the stories I tell over and over in an attempt to know myself and have others know me. They’re soft and comfortable, even the bad ones — especially the bad ones, as they provide a familiar reference point for me and others to know myself. One small problem: none of them are real. I recognized at once all the mean and petty ways that ego tries to remain separate by judging, diminishing, elevating, resisting, accusing, needing, fearing …..  all the ways ego attempts to stay in control, to not lose face …. never realizing the face it has to lose isn’t real to begin with.Absurd, right? Well hell, don’t blame ego, that’s just the way it’s built. I wasn’t laughing because I was crazy and I no longer cared what anyone thought.I was laughing because I felt what it was like to be alive without having a mean-spirited, cynical, and terrified software program running life. And though I’ve misplaced that laugh and that recognition frequently over these past nine years I’ve never lost it. What a gift! Thank you Howard. Thank you Howard. Thank you, thank you. Over time, with practice, the more willing one is to loosen around the tightly held version of themselves and surrender to the light — not Howard’s light, just the light that Howard delightfully plays in and with — the more truth/peace/love is effortlessly experienced. Not subdued, lethargic just-took-a-sedative peace: the opposite of that. An active, energetic peace that allows you to be in the world, as the bearded carpenter once said, but not of it. Fully in, fully feeling, but no longer fully identified with the petty control mechanisms and narcissistic fears of the ego. Will this be your experience tonight? I sure hope so, especially if you’re forking over twenty five bucks. I hope Howard snaps his fingers at you — I don’t even know if he’s still doing that — and that you start laughing the laugh of truth. But even if you can’t make it tonight know that this is your birthright — the birthright of every human being is to experience the truth of oneself. It’s the  endgame of the inevitable journey we all undertake, whether we realize we’re taking it or not. To place yourself in proximity to those who can reflect the gift of recognition, this is a wonderful way to spend time. with love,Eddie check howard out at: www.howardwills.com  www