There are times when life seems to fall into place, a synchronicity of sorts appearing to pervade all of our thoughts and actions and ‘efficiency in action,’ the synthesis of yoga, becomes our modus operandi.
Then there are those seemingly more frequent occasions when the level playing field feels to be at a severe angle, when computers crash, cellphones go wonky, and we as well as our colleagues seem off kilter. Then what?
This is where the rubber meets the road, where the professionals earn their room and board. Continue reading “The Spiritual Path: An Inconvenient Convenience”
Now is the Time for All Good Men and Women to Come to the Aid of Their Planet
That we live in “interesting” times understates matters. Perhaps all times were interesting, but the magnitude of the challenges on our individual and collective plates currently, makes the word ‘understatement’ seem like an understatement!
Continue reading “Now is the Time for All Good Men and Women to Come to the Aid of Their Planet”
On Fear and Faith
“Faith is to believe in what we do not see, and the reward is to see what we believe.” So said St. Augustine long ago and as I have not come across a more succinct, direct formulation, I continue to quote this.
If fear is sometimes acronymed to ‘false expectations appearing real,’ then perhaps we can call faith something like, ‘full and intimate trust in Him.’
Continue reading “On Fear and Faith”
Homa Therapy Teaching Tour in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, India
Karin Heschl, Bruce Johnson, Mary Lee Weir and I embarked on a Fivefold Path teaching tour in the southern Maharashtra state, city of Ratnagiri in India. This 4 day trip was arranged by Madhukar Appasaheb Patwardhan, an Agnihotri since the 1970s. It turned out to be a tightly scheduled, efficient tour of Resonance Points, prospective Homa Organic Farms, meetings with Agnihotris and talks to newer persons. Continue reading “Homa Therapy Teaching Tour in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, India”
Somayag: Transformation Unlimited
The story is written on their faces, all of their faces.
The young ones seemed to mature overnight. The older ones acquired a lightness of being that belied their years. The nervous people released; the prideful seemed humbled. I was sucked in. I could not resist; I did not want to resist.
The atmosphere was purified in ways that nearly defy the senses. Seems to have gone beyond the senses actually. It is simply not possible to stop smiling.
Where does this feeling come from? What has happened really? Six days of purification fires and mantras and tapas or disciplines by the practitioners. Intense, yes, but hardly the stuff from which one would imagine such transformation would manifest.
Then again, one might surmise similar thoughts about daily sunrise/sunset Agnihotra fire performed by untold thousands twice daily around the planet. The results so greatly outweigh the effort that attempting to figure it out rationally goes only so far. Quantum mechanics (quantum physics) might help explain it, but then again, sometimes perhaps explanations aren’t all that necessary.
The woman who arrived with a shyness and tentativeness over the six days melded into a visage of acceptance and comfort. Those originally uncomfortable being together appeared harmonious. The fifty-somethings danced into the night, oblivious to time and space.
And Hari Apte, the Yajamana, or main practitioner of the Somayag, and his wife seem to have come back to earth, at least for awhile– or had they?
And we all felt as one. It was unmistakable, undeniable and as real as the noses on our faces. The bonding between mothers and sons was unfolding before us. The ages didn’t seem to matter.
And the synchronicity, oh the synchronicity. Everyone seemed to sense it; everyone knew it, but appeared to hardly believe it.
We had tasted “heaven on earth.” We had been told of the possibility; now it seemed to be staring right at us. And I was sure no one who was there would ever be quite the same. And each one seemed to know it.
The Indians seemed to not believe what they were seeing, westerners acting as Indian as they. We all danced together, so many races, so many creeds. Indian women got up and danced with men. They didn’t touch but danced nonetheless, a highly unusual occurrence, we were told. This was the musical celebration following the six days of fire. The drummers were intoxicating, the beat went on endlessly. The old souls had returned to the Narmada. One could not stop smiling; you just sensed that time as we knew it had somehow stopped or been transformed somehow.
And the faces, all the faces; But now the babies’ faces reflecting the generator induced lights. Then the young Indians came and danced and danced and danced with an energy that belied the lateness of hour and the weather and the material limitations of a country less “advanced,” say some than the West.
It took the dancing and the music to dilute the sting of the removal of what had a few short hours earlier been the site of the Somayag. The practitioners now sat with us in their “street clothes.” “Was it really over?” we wondered.
And all the young people. You could taste and see the future in them.
You wanted to leave the celebration and go to bed. But you couldn’t. The spell of the Somayag and its aftermath had been cast.