December 14th
Middle of the Night
In my dream I’m on the road, on a street corner in Detroit standing outside a theater where there’s a show going on. It’s also a collective house that I’m visiting, seeking out an old friend. I’m listening to Iggy Pop on a small, beat-up stereo and then out of nowhere Aretha Franklin walks up to me and starts telling me a story about playing a show in that theater in the late 60’s. and that she likes old Iggy and the Stooges. I’m overjoyed by this whole exchange – I don’t realize that it’s a dream at all and I’m actually writing it down in the dream to remember it and it also has something to do with seeds I or someone else saved -- some kind of brassica – and I decide that I’m going to write a story -- 2 pages at the most – about seeds and Iggy and Aretha and use it to talk about the past and the present and the future and I’m getting into this idea of sending my friends a story for the holidays with a little package of seeds and music…
And then at some point I remember that I’m actually living on an ashram in the Bahamas and I don’t have time to write a story for anyone and that’s okay as well. Then in my dream I’m contemplating how much I want to write little stories for my friends and what it would be like if I just let go of that part of my identity and just lived in a different mode for awhile. I was in the temple ostensibly meditating last night but my mind kept wandering – thinking about the recession in the states – wondering what it would be like if I just dropped everything and went on a spiritual journey…I saw myself in the desert in the Middle East, I saw myself in India…and then I’d come back to my breath and feel the cool air in the ashram temple and hear the palm leaves swaying in the breeze and remember we’re on a tropical island and there are large painting of Ganesh and Krishna on the walls and then I’d smile and go back to focusing on my breath until the next thought would sweep me away. My mind is like the ocean with tidepools and undertoes and all kinds of waves crashing into each other. Breath.
(a few hours later)
I fell back asleep, it took a few minutes—I was feeling sick and decided to rest more and miss morning satsung. I wasn’t thinking lucid dreams – I was thinking I feel too weak to get up, and then suddenly I’m walking into my mom’s apartment and I see a black painting in the wall with yellow and green, like a Calder painting, and I push it like a button and it clicks and lights up and suddenly I’ve crossed over to the other side! Everything goes dark and then I’m on some adventure wandering the streets of an unfamiliar city but I totally know I’m dreaming—the skyline in the distance is totally fantastical—enormous and reflected in the water of the Bay like the moon was reflected in the ocean last night. Craig Webb (the guy who’s been giving the talks about lucid dreaming) shows up and tells me to relax and breath and then I’m walking the late night streets – kind of like Ithaca before I got locked up this time around – everything is a possibility – this is so familiar – I know this way of being, this type of presence. It’s like I’m made for this.
I see Ben from the farm with Susa the dog and he’s having a conversation with someone (himself? I don’t see anyone else there.) about the farm budget and tax codes and he looks more haggard, white paint in his beard – and is clearly to surprised to see me but plays it off. We’re friendly with each other but it’s awkward and I see myself transform into this timid creature around him. He hands me a messy folder of my old zine masters and K.girl shows up and says she’ll retype them for me and Ben and I are both like: bad idea. I just drop the folder and leave them both behind and keep walking. Actually – I start flying! And it’s amazing I have all these adventures and at some point I’m on a rooftop and I decide to just jump – what the hell – and I’m falling really fast and hit the ground and wake up!
I’m in my tent and it’s still nighttime but suddenly I realize that my tent is longer and has a deep maroon carpet. I hear a young child crying out in pain and I look behind one of the windows of my tent and there is a boy – I know he’s three years old and his head is split in half and he’s crying in pain and I look away horrified and look back and his head is healed now and he’s staring at me with big brown eyes and I know he’s me as a child and he says he’s waiting for our cousin to come and save us. “Our cousin?” I ask. “Cousin Moses.” This answer somehow makes sense to me. Suddenly the tent is transformed into a space with painted walls and mirrors and I’m so lucid – I realize how powerful this situation is, how powerful I am – I feel so relaxed and breathing into it and suddenly this figure appears in violet spandex (!) and we’re having this sexual interaction where we’re taking turns holding each other down and resisting, wresting on the floor and suddenly she looks me straight in the face and it’s J-cat, back from the dead, and my heart stops – it’s totally her. I’m upset – I slap her in the face: “But you’re not real.” “Neither are you, Sascha. And here we are. What are going to do about it?” (You are spared the explicit dream sex sequence...) J-cat and I dissolve and the dream goes on and on…
I’m in a market in Chicago where wrinkled men are selling old meat and onions slathered in gravy. Then I’m alone in a dark green painted bathroom and I’m staring at the mirror trying to figure out if I can go to the to the other side – no, if I can bring the Power with me, this power of Lucidity, to create a life worth living. I fly more – I push myself – go towards scary places. I know how to do this already, I’ve been practicing for years. And here I am.
The 8am bell just went off, I missed satsung. My throat and chest are all scratchy but I feel incredibly empowered like I’ve been strengthening a muscle I forgot I had. The possibilities have just increased dramatically.

Full on Wizard of Oz scene walking late into the staff meeting. Everyone’s staring at me with smiles. “You have…Big Dreams?” asks Tina from Barcelona. I’m staring at Krishna and laughing because in my dream he was just in drag all LA fabulous with a blond wig and he’s telling me how much he loooves Leftover Crack and in the dream I’m thinking: “Why am I creating this? What the hell is wrong with me? And I feel shame and that’s what wakes me up with the bell. A few minutes later we’re standing there in the staff meeting cracking jokes and I’m shaking my head.

December 23 Day of Irrigation Pipes
Omkar was my patient teacher today – cutting pipe, cleaning pipe, gluing pipe. It is So basic, so tangible, and I Struggle with it like I always have. The depression makes it so much harder. I kept wanting to tell Omkar that I used to know how to do this but I got hit by a car and lost my memory, or something ridiculous like that. I kept wanting to apologize for my lack of skill: “See, I was raised by intellectuals and I was supposed to be one but I wasn’t a good intellectual so I hung out with people who had skills like this but I’ve always been kind of slow and clumsy and never learned like the other kids and instead of doing things myself I just wrote about them and lived through other people’s experiences and that’s why I’m 34 years old and I hammer a nail “like a girl.” See, where I live the “girls” do all the hard work and I hang out in my room in front of the computer. What have I been doing in there? I can’t remember anymore, nothing important…” meanwhile – the pipes! My hands aren’t strong enough to cut the pipes like Omkar can. I’m not used to pressing the pipes together and my head gets tangled up with the system and how it’s set up around the ashram. It feels like there’s some basic set of rules that would illuminate everything, that would descramble the frequency that keeps my head scrambled, and yet it’s so clear that the answer lies in Focus and Being Present – in not slipping into old trauma grooves. So we’ll see how it is tomorrow. Today was exhausting in that way when the internal gears are churning and churning.

December 30
so sweet that sugar is jealous of its sweetness

a talk from Swami Bramananda this morning about the necessity of devotion to the Guru. Submission to the Lord. It doesn’t work without Submission. The punk in me is holding on tight. I am of many minds, the chatter is still loud. I catch glimpses of something else. I’ve finally settled and I’m not obsessed with where to go next. This is a wonderful place to be. A talk from a Sufi mystic tonight about Rumi, about love, about being a good lover, being full of love and devotion…to God. Is this really the big missing piece in my life? A relationship to the creator? The speaker tonight was a poet and his translations of Rumi were so beautiful. His relationship to language was so meaningful without the ego of the kind of stories I write, the kind of stories I have written. I desire a relationship to the written word that is transcendent, that still allows me to touch the divine and be a bridge but keeps me from getting so caught up in my own story. I have so many world’s to learn from – that’s the crux of what I’m trying to say: there’s something powerful about being a part of something new, about youth culture, but eventually youth culture gets old and the hollow parts crumble away and what’s left are the old stable pieces. Part of me laughs at myself that it took so long to go exploring – that I was against so many things and trying to be so pure to Anarchist standards that I shut out most of the world without realizing that that’s what I was doing. Thinking my friends and I were so special, like we were chosen people or something. Makes for good mythology but when it’s hollow all the bullshit blows away. And what’s left? All the stuff that has been here this whole time. the talk tonight reminded me of TAZ by Hakim Bey – how that book satisfied a craving for spirit amongst so many of my friends when it came out – we followed its sexy anarcho-riddles at the same time that we scoffed at the Rainbow hippies and their New Age posturing. So Anti Anti Anti. So cynical and black/white. And hear I am all these years later making sense of this world and I’m still grateful for my solid grounding in Punk Rock and Anarchy. But like all rhetoric, no matter how powerful – even rhetoric that masks itself as anti-rhetoric -- the time inevitably comes for its foundations to be shaken to the core and a whole new value system to rise from the site of its old foundations. It’s surely going to continue to be a painful, confusing experience. But there is a whole universe waiting to come in once I make some space for it to come.

The lightening of the heart, the moment of realization. And then the rain.
Heart cracked open beautiful feeling the touch of the divine, just a little taste and I’m satisfied.
Universal Yoga – realization is the expansion of the heart, destruction of the ego. Heart is the core of being.
Destroy the ego by holding onto the heart.
Your guru is in your own heart.

December 31st 7:30 working the phones in the office on New Year’s Eve. It down poured today for the first time since I arrived. Haven’t written much in the past few days but it’s been full. Lots of thoughts about the role of the healthy ego – feeling a relief in a loosening (not letting go) of the Story, my Story. Lots of thoughts about ‘God’ – discernment of the eternal and the temporary – trying to figure out the place of life and death, the importance of it all. And then the very concrete painting and pulling electric wires through plastic pipes with Omkar – having confusing conversations about the Israeli Army, feeling so naïve, seeing the protests about the latest attack on Gaza by the Israeli’s – the Left is up in arms and here I am studying peace. One of the biggest realizations in my mind over the past few days is that I’m thinking seriously about doing the teacher’ training here and staying for at least an extra month. I’ve been reading Chandika’s TTC manual and thinking about how much it makes sense to invest in this community – because I can – what a good thing they have going on, how the Yoga Ranch is 10 minutes from mom’s place in Phillipsport. And then I’ve been thinking about how much I’d love to teach this stuff to other people. I still have questions, but I have enough confidence in the practice and in my own ability to work with it, to make it my own, to integrate it into a framework that might work for me and other’s who think like me. ‘Who is that?’ you ask. The Freaky Non-Believers, the Confused and Mentally Weary, the Mad Ones. Woah—did you hear that? Mad Ones, huh? Do these social constructs we form come back together once our own sense of self returns a little? Wasn’t the whole idea of “Mad Ones” seeming hollow and confusing just a month ago? Uma works in the office and is Bipolar and teaches yoga at the state mental hospital in Austin. I could do that and love it and I know it. I could be a yoga teacher and probably do it well. I think about some of the teacher’s here like Arjuna and Hari and Vashasta who I’m so inspired by, who have taught me so much. It doesn’t mean I have to swallow all the guru stuff. Take what works and leave the rest behind.

New Years
The New Years ceremony was so joyish and ecstatic dancing and drumming – a fire in the temple and burning offerings of ghee and incense – lots of smiles and hugs. Amazing that I’ve only been here a month and my heart is open enough to feel so much love for all these people. But I suppose that’s what we’re cultivating here, very consciously cultivating love. What a good idea! How did I spend so many years not making it a priority? Paying lip service to love without actually allowing myself to grow. Of all the things last night this sticks out in my mind the most: at 1am, when the ceremony was over and we were putting our cushions and prayers books back, these two angelically beautiful little girls were asleep on the floor and I was just staring at them in wonder and awe and their mother came up to me and said: “I know, they break my heart every day.” And that struck me so hard somehow, thinking about what it really means to be open to love – really let oneself be open. I walked down the pathway to the beach platform alone marveling at how much my life has changed in a year, how it took such chaos and tragedy to end up in this place I’m so clearly meant to be. I walked out on the beach platform and did bagwa exercises with the ocean and then three rounds of sun salutations that are getting so much better. Some New Year’s memories started rising up to the surface like they do every year but instead of going there I just let them be taken by the ocean. It’s a different kind of grounding, not being grounded by my past, but being grounded by the present, the enormity and the beauty and the Oneness. The past fades by definition – the present is always here if we can just be patient enough to find it waiting for us.

Jan 3rd nightmare
What if no one’s watching?
Dreamt I was with Joe C. and Lisa but it was the part of Joe C. that was totally selfish and self-absorbed to the point that he had been embezzling money and had been caught and his life was falling apart and he was like a little kid. I sat there with him and finally got to tell him how much he hurt me and how betrayed by him I felt and how many years I’d carried that pain around with me. He was totally unreceptive, as if he was just emotionally dead but it still felt good to say out loud. And then suddenly it switched and I became him: the liar and the hypocrite and the social climber and the emotional cripple. In the dream I was trying to have empathy for myself, trying to let go of judgment, realizing that I was just projecting my own feelings about myself onto him and I felt trapped like I was in a hall of mirrors. I was crying and crying and the scene melted away and it was just me and then I was in some unfamiliar town but there were no people on the street…back to the ocean and the safe world of my tent and the pressure on my bladder of having to release the water inside of me….what is me and what is the ocean? Right now in half awareness the blur is tangible. What is me and what is Joe C.? I don’t have clarity – that wasn’t an ‘A-Ha!’ dream. I’m full of questions.
New Years day I was swimming in the ocean and burst into the shower room full of life and giggling feeling the Spirit all around me and I just spontaneously started chanting “The Whole World is Watching! The Whole World is Watching! The Whole World is Watching!” just laughing in awe at feeling so present and how much it reminded me of wandering the streets knowing everything I was doing was important and being recorded – but taking my shower it was so humble like a drop of water in the ocean but still feeling like I was being looked out for by God – which is the best feeling in the world I think – it is universal love – it is the Bliss Divine – it is the ultimate connection. But is it delusion? I wish upon my full bladder for some clarity today. Last night lying there with Chandika by the ocean, so many things I wanted to say to her but held my tongue because it felt inappropriate. I had that Ani Difranco song in my head:
“What if no one’s watching? What if when we’re dead we are just dead?
What if it’s just us down here? What if God is just an idea somebody put in your head?”
And yet, and yet…

Monday January 5th
First deep meditation
In evening satsung and it was because I used a mantra : “Om Namo Narayanaya” It gave me something to hold onto, to pull the thoughts in and then head up or deeper – it was so good that during the kirtan I kept my eyes closed and felt the vibrations of all of our voices and had this vision of an enormous temple below the ground and an enormous golden temple reaching up to the heavens and all of us just like a thin layer of crust on the surface of the earth and the chanting and clapping just flowed and I realized that at some point I was smiling and so I just started grinning and at one point I had a little vision of my little kid self in front of the TV at dad’s house watching Fraggle Rock and feeling that feeling of community I felt watching it as an observer with something missing (the way I then did the same thing with the squatters when I was a teenager!) and then suddenly I was right there in the middle of Fraggle Rock singing Hari Krishna visioning enormous golden temples on the inside of my eyes. Last thing: I was so focused that I could hear the guide voices right at the end just like when I used to work with Sky…and in the desert. “Very good, Sascha.” Tangible progress.

Jan 15th
I had to go to town today to get medicine for my ear infection and I was walking back from the pharmacy along Bay street and there were all the fish and beer shops – all these Bahamian folks hanging out, 5:30pm – after work relaxing. I’m hungry and I walk the whole strip and at the end past all the shops are these two grizzled white bearded Bahamians and a table full of beautiful live conchs, the ones with the deep violet and pink yin insides like the folds of a woman, shimmering rainbow glints in the afternoon sunlight, the outside shells divine spirals like maps to the cosmos. But these are different then any I’ve ever seen: they have alive creatures in them with bright eyes staring up at me. I’m fascinated, horrified, curious…and hungry. One man is cutting up a conch creature into little pieces with a sharp knife, he puts the meat into a little plastic bag and hands it to the other man who gives him a crumpled 5 dollar bill. I tell them that I’ve never eaten a conch before and that I’ve been living at the Yoga ashram across the water haven’t eaten any meat or fish for 6 weeks. They laugh. We’re talking and the man takes a conch in one hand and a hammer in the other and swiftly cracks a small hole in the front of the shell, pulls the creature out, picks up the knife, cuts out the intestines, and proceeds to start cutting up the thick, white meat of the conch creature. I grab the intestines from the pile on the table and examine them – they remind me of something one would pull out of a chicken – a gizzard or something, tough and iridescent. I give him my $5 and he hands me the little bag of conch meat which is thick and chewy and tastes like salt water and is satisfying. I’m walking and eating back through the market – not fully present just cause of my ear and all the people knowing I have to make it back to the boat.
Ok, so then it’s a couple hours later and I’m sitting in satsung, sitting down to meditate, uncomfortable with half my hearing gone, just breathing, silently chanting – Om Namo Narayanya – focusing on the inhalations and exhalations pretty well and choosing to put my energy into my heart even though it usually falls more easily to my third eye. Suddenly I have this image of my heart as the conch shell and this knarled black hand cracking it open with a hammer and in the middle of the temple I burst into silent tears! I’m clutching my chest having this buried memory of being a 14 year old boy at Bronx Science the day Erica Brody and I went to the animal rights club after school and watched that movie about vivisection with monkeys getting tortured and screaming cats with electrodes in their heads. How I flew into a blind rage and knocked over a bunch of garbage cans and locked myself in my room for a whole day and cried hysterically for the first time since my dad had died. But suddenly there I was in satsung feeling this grief for my teenage self and thinking about hermit crabs; about the spiked jacket I inherited from an older punk kid and how I wore it like a shell because I was so soft and tender underneath, so defenseless and open. This voice from deep inside: “Crack me open like a conch and eat me – let me nourish you with my blood and body. Let me be reborn. I am yours – open me up and set me free.”


I’m going to tell you about what happened to me in satsung last night because it was truly incredible and horrible and really felt like I was breaking through into a whole other layer of hell inside of myself. These great guys were leading an epic, hypnotic chant of “Om Nama Shivaya” and I was really into it: eyes closed, chanting away, feeling my charkas glowing and patterns under my eyes, energy rising in my spine – and then suddenly I started having these totally bloody and gruesome visions and I saw the man who originally taught me the “Om Nama Shivaya” mantra when I first got here – the black man from North Carolina with the beautiful loving energy – I saw him violently murdered in front of my eyes and stuffed into a container that said “Om Nama Shivaya” in agony and it was all my fault – I’m such a deeply disturbed person, I’m so sick, I hate myself. What’s wrong with me? Suddenly I was cringing in the temple – totally claustrophobic and unable to escape myself and the horrorshow in my head.

It got so much better so quickly, healed by sunlight and smiles and yoga. The nightmare thoughts are just like a dream – they fade into vague memories. There was this moment tonight in satsung where I felt grateful for everything – even all the misery and scatteredness because it brought me to this place where I’ve been forced to crack open and change into something new – something I wouldn’t do if I was competent and had job skills and could hold it together without lots of help. It’s like I’m being forced into becoming a holy person because I’m so fucked up that if I don’t I’ll have to live with the psychic pain of the nightmare channel. The nightmare is like bright red dye on my white clothes that only I can see – I have to be pure or else I’ll be a mess, to myself at least – and that’s the key thing: because if I’m not straight with myself then everything becomes the nightmare. This may not make as much sense to you as I want it to back here. Basically, I’ve been thinking about love and compassion a lot today – about how when I get mad at someone else I need to look inside myself and get straight. And what about slumlords? What about military war criminals? What about men abusing women? They are all me too. This has become so obvious – its taken me so long to finally realize it deeper than the intellectual level – judge the behavior, not the individual. Punish the individual if it’s necessary – but with loving hearts while we do it.

Meditating this morning, trying at least, it’s been very hard lately with the angry scary ‘tamasic’ thoughts flowing and I get so frustrated with myself and then I hear this voice, like a little kid, saying “I feel left out!” and then I have this flash of memory and recognition – all the ‘demons’ inside me are like little kids that didn’t get enough attention and it’s so important that I have compassion for them – compassion for myself so I can have compassion for others. On some level there’s nothing magic about angels and devils. But I’ll tell you this: it is damn hard to meditate on one point of concentration with a school bus of screaming children in my head. It’s hard to be present with other people – loving with other people – compassionate with other people when there’s a war going on inside myself.


Etymology of the word Attention: to tend to; to watch over; to care for
Focused Mind/Open Heart
I’ve noticed that my mania – the root of my mania – is an attempt to run from the darkness inside of myself.
When I’ve tried to face it before I’ve cracked under the strain.
So what happened?
I think it’s something like: My container cracked and the world poured through me and I was tuned to the lower channels and now I need to change my frequency and I need a stronger container. I need retuning and then I need to be held and taught how to always get back to it when I’m lost.

Luna Llena early morning
Crash of the ocean – there are trillions of cells in our bodies, as many as stars in the milky way galaxy – and they talk to each other. Talk about Self-Realization. We are the Universe.
How grateful can I be today? How much can I hold onto a sense of awe? How present can I be?
The trick that seems to work the best for me these days is to picture in my head a colorful box tied up with a ribbon that I pull open– it’s a Present! It’s called The Present! The best present I could possibly give myself –
Being Right Here, Right Now. the pressure on my bladder, the swish of the palm trees, the crash of the ocean, the air moving in and out of my lungs, here I am. Yawn, Stretch.


Sunday Dreams just upon awakening I dreamt I had a big cut on my finger – a big slice so that it looked like my fingertip was two intact pieces. But I was working with my hands and I needed to keep it taped up to let it regrow and truly heal. Feels like a good analogy for my life right now: I’m clearly healing from the trauma of this last break but I need to be careful.

Some thoughts:
The present is like opening a Present: the veil lifts and we are Right Here – like a Lucid Waking Dream That Never Ends
The more we can stay here the easier it will be to find our way back when we get lost.
Gratitude is a gateway to Joy and Joy is a key ingredient of staying Present.
We follow our Joy, we follow what gives us joy – so the more we can figure out ways to rejoice in everything we do – from the mundane to the terrible – it will unlock the gates of our consciousness.
One of the keys to rejoicing in the mundane and terrible is to do whatever we can do to remember the spark of divinity inside of us, do whatever we can to feel our connection to greater spirit. – to be connected to a larger mission – to remember the divine is flowing through us – that we are just playing our little roles and to not get too attached.

I just woke from a lucid dream:
I’m tired, I’ve been on a long journey, I’m older, maybe in my 40’s. I find myself standing in front of a door in an old apartment building, black metal door with scratches and dents and rubble dust on the frame. I knock and there’s no answer and then I knowingly reach above the frame on the left and pull off a key and unlock the door.
It’s dark inside and I hear a voice say warily “Who’s there?”. I announce myself and the light comes on and it’s a cozy, lived in apartment and there is a couple, man and woman, who bring me to a bed and sit on either side. The man is large, maybe reminiscent of Marcello the Rabbi at B’Nai Jeshrun, and he makes some reference in Hebrew – some reference to a mystical relationship in the universe (*this is probably because I went to sleep reading Ehyeh by Arthur Green – the chapter on the four worlds or ‘olamot: asiyah/yetsirah/beri’ah/atsilut) and says non-chalantly that I’m the one who taught him that. (“like you always used to say…”) At that point I realize I’m older and a writer and a teacher. Then I turn to the woman, she has long black curly hair but her face is obscured and she’s terribly upset – she knows I can see her for how she really is and she’s in so much pain that all I see is a face with all the features rubbed away and the whole universe staring back at me – painful and cold – a night filled with pointed stars. I’m filled with compassion for her and somehow grounded. Way more grounded than I am in my life right now. Grounded in a way I long for.

I’m not sure what the transition is – I assume I fall into a deep sleep on the bed and then suddenly I’m in an intensely lucid dream where I’m running through a suburban neighborhood (in Chicago?) through lights and shadows and I’m Very conscious I’m dreaming – at some point I look at my hands and I have something scribbled and faded on the left hand – the Durga mantra: “Om Sri Durgaya Namaha” – it was there yesterday on my hand to memorize and now it’s washed off as I’m writing this by flashlight.)
There was so much: I open doors, I have conversations, I’m running through backyards, listening to Mexican Ranchero music coming out of a passing car and feeling the breeze on my face – it was SO lucid this dream.
At one point I pick up a glossy postcard for an art exhibit happening that looks really interesting and I feel So Free – like the times when I’ve been traveling or manic or both I suppose – tuned in to the world of possibilities – the connection to the all powerful divine so obvious that it’s hard to understand not having it.

At this one point I’m staring at my hands and saying out loud: “If this is my dream then who is creating all of this for me to see and touch and experience?!?” I’m conscious that I’m an actor in this dream but I didn’t make the set! How is this possible? DO I have agency in this story or is it all predetermined? Where do the borders between me and the world begin and end?

Notes from lecture:
Consciousness doesn’t end when we die.
And everything we do is factored into our next lives
As he spoke the room shrank and grew and changed colors like in a dream.

Another dream: I’m lying in bed with Dad and Liza – he’s still alive but asleep. Then a handful of other people get into bed with us – anarchist kids from NYC..it’s actually very sweet, we’re cuddling, it’s like a family. There’s a squat that a bunch of folks have been living in that’s in the process of getting evicted. They’ve dug holes into the floor and made areas to do civil disobedience. I volunteer, not sure why, I’m thinking about ego, about Brad Will, about why people put themselves on the line to get their heads beat in by cops. Swami Vishnu is there in spirit. I woke up having a conversation with a friendly cop just as the bell rang. There’s some missing blurry stuff in there about love and dad and liza and me wandering around a supermarket thinking about reincarnation and past lives.
It’s a common theme these days. If we all come from One – if we’re all made of stardust, that means of I turn off my logical mind (which by now I have a little practice with over the years) and “talk” to the vegetable seedling and palm tree with my third eye or heart – not in words – but in energy, in Intention or Attention – humble and pure – on some other level there is a connection made. This is how energy work works, it’s the power of Intention. We are powerful creatures, a lot more powerful then many of us realize because we have the spark of the divine inside of us. My biggest obstacle to doing this more is not my logical mind (which, although strong, I have experience disengaging) – it’s the lower order thoughts that rise up in my head – the dark angry thoughts. In the dream Liza was talking about Dad’s uncontrollable temper and rage and suddenly it hit me that I’m carrying around this Fountain of Rage – totally twisted and distorted rage That’s Not Actually Mine – it’s some dead guy’s, or really the twisted and distorted rage of millions and millions of dead guys hating on and killing each other we’ve all inherited in different ways. The hate that hate made.
Now, if I’m a materialist and an atheist then someone like me is just a crazy sicko and should take drugs to make the voices go away so I don’t end up hurting anyone. If I believe in a higher power and in angels and devils then I can plead with that higher power to control the demons in my head and heart and make them go away. If I believe in the law of Karma and reincarnation, like the people here do (along with millions if not billions of other people around the world) then everything that happens has a higher reason behind it that is veiled – that our souls have actually been around forever, like an ocean that evaporates into water particles and then returns to the ocean over and over again. That we have lessons to learn on this planet while we’re here – that we choose to be born into these lives, we choose our parents before we are born because we have lessons we have to learn this time round so we can get closer to reaching the Bliss Absolute. The logical part of my mind resists but I have to admit that it’s a very helpful way of making sense of our struggles and figuring out where we belong in the scheme of things, why people suffer so much. It doesn’t excuse injustice and cruelty, but it’s a way of not holding the pain of it as a constant because no matter how hard we struggle and fight, in the end it’s out of our hands. We are so small, and this is an enormous relief. And really, once we tune into what a miracle being alive is: the fact that I’m even writing down little scribbles with a pen into language right now – translating the thoughts in my head so I can return later and make sense of them, fire-water-air-earth and all the combinations
I think any spiritual presuppositions about the nature of our lives and the universe have to begin with a healthy sense of awe for creation itself – the mystery of it – the beauty of it – the dancing shadows of palm leaves on my tent, the doves cooing in the morning air, the feeling of Connection to it all because we’re coming from the same place, we come from the same place. Once I’m in touch with the Mystery, once I’m tuned to that channel on the higher frequency, then all that then karma and past lives doesn’t actually seem so far fetched, it actually explains quite a lot and opens up the space for so much more that I only imagined possible in my wildest dreams and brilliant ‘delusions.’ In the meantime I’m so grateful for the air in my lungs.


The black cat darts by and I’m back in an alleyway in Berkeley, California at the end of time. Can’t you see it’s a riddle? It’s an enormous hall of mirrors that lead back to the One – the pinprick of Now. All the times I thought that the world was ending it was actually just me ending, not knowing how to make the transition smoothly – having to go out in a bang or a slow, excruciating bed of flames. And then the cat reappears and we’re sitting next to the ocean 15 years later, it could be 2000 years, it could be last week. It’s like there’s a spinning murky sea, my eyelids wet with memory – dancing with shadows. Here, I have something for you: it’s an old box of stories I’ve been carrying around for way too long. I want you to have them, it’s time for me to let go. It’s time for me to move on. If you see glimmers of yourself in them it’s because you actually wrote them years ago and told me to hang onto them for you and wait till the right time. Well the time is now. Can you feel the hairs on the back of your neck standing up like that cat that just walked by? Are you ready to take this to the next level? Step into the Present and lets see what we can do…
 

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I spent a lot of years being attracted to danger and chaos – partly out of a desire to serve, partly out of identification- it’s not always been clear which is which = the confustion is multlayered inside myself. For so many years identifying with the underdogs which gave me access to many worlds I wouldn’t have had access to with my privilege – helpful knowledge and experience – but al the while never really knowing who I am – identifying with the others around (oppressed) and disidentifying with others (my perception of the oppressors) and then with my narrow categories not knowing which side I’m on  -- think deep down that I was the enemy and seeing layers and layers of lies held together over so many years and running from it in my mania and not being able to hide from it in my depression – getting hit with the full force of running away from myself. I think somehow that Charity is a big part of this puzzle in my head and heart. Giving and Receiving are quite complex – Selfishness and Selflessness aren’t always so easy to tease apart.

The Three Impurities or Veils that have to be transcended in the following order:
1.    Mala – selfishness, or impurity of the heart
2.    Vikshepa – The tossing of the mind
3.    Avarana (Avidya) – the veil of ignorance (about who we really are)

Yoga means Union with the Supreme Reality

Let me try to describe something that happened to me in yoga class this morning, lying on a outdoor wooden platform with for other students during the final relaxation. I have all this Vedanta philosophy snaking its way around my head and heart and I’m been thinking about how on some level this is all just God’s Dream – we’re all living in God’s Dream and we have our individual egos but there’s a larger consciousness that we also have that exists inside of all of us and sometimes we Remember and it’s bliss because we realize we’re one and that’s the union with the supreme – that’s the Yoga – the Union of All Things. We are the divine manifested in physical form – all of us. So in once sense we’re all here in the temple right now chanting “Hari Krishna” on a warm March evening in the Bahamas in the year 2009. on the other hand we’re not actually here – this isn’t real – there are veils covering the Supreme Reality and according to Vedantic philosophy God is Satchitananda – Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss Absolute. That takes more explaining but you get the idea of where my head is at these days.
So this morning I’m lying there and I jut start bawling uncontrollably with this incredibly Familiar feeling of being the Son of God – but this time I’m not identifying with my ego – the veil is temporarily lifted and I can see clearly that I am everything and everyone and I’m crying in anguish for all the pain and confusion I’ve endured and continue to endure – and God (!) is comforting me – letting me see that it all has a larger purpose – it’s all about knowing ourselves in all our infinite manifestations – then I remember I’m lying on the floor with 40 other people in a yoga class and this knowledge is going to leave me – the Oneness is so fleeting – and it’s somehow like when my father died and the tears are just pouring down my face but it’s actually an incredible relief, remembering. Now it just feels like a dream, but everything is feeling like a dream these days.

  I feel like I’m in a state of Grace – I’m feeling the understanding of ‘God’ and ‘Oneness’ I’ve only ever experienced in mania or drugs. But this is controlled. We’re studying how to do this safely, it’s amazing. I’m understanding the importance of self purification to be able to see clearly – the ego is the enemy of god realization. But I also see that on some level it’s not up to me – by definition it can’t be – I have to give it up and then Everything becomes clear. Well, no, I’m still full of questions. Like for example: if we are all spirits in the material world – how many souls are we? What is the true meaning of past lives? If we all come from the One then we are all connected – how did we spilt and become so forgetful? The Kali Yuga part makes sense to me – that there were other times we were more spiritually in tune in prehistory. Back here I feel this as Truth with a capital T but I have a hunch I won’t always remember. Last night I put the water bottle to my lips and spontaneously said a prayer to God and was suddenly filled with deep understanding – prayer is to remember God is everywhere and we do Everything for God because we are God. That’s what praying is about – rememberance. Staying in the Present.

Saturday Night and I’m cutting out on satsung to sleep.
LEARN TO FORGET GRACEFULLY
The truth is, of course, I don’t want to forget, but I need to sleep and it’s coming too fast. I took 50mg of seroquil and ate my fish stash that’s been waiting 14 weeks for a good occasion. I’ve been in a state of Grace and Illumination for whole parts of today and it’s so wonderful and such a relief – we are spirits in the material world – this is all illusion and it’s like having my xray vision back and I love it. .but I’m not ready for it all at once like this – I need to slow down and focus on my physical body. But back here the veil has risen and Sascha: everything’s going to be fine. You have to focus on Selfless Service and be very present in it – embrase the hardships as teacher’s but watch out for other people’s egos and definitely check your own. Be very humble. You are just a viechele for the Divine, you need to get out of the way and just let it happen. And here’s the big one that we don’t have to say out loud to your mom or your anarchist friends – perform for God – NOT for your friends and community. I think that’s the big test – document but not to share with the world – not now. Become Invisible except to the close ones. Why? Because you’re trying to curb your ego and your ego feeds on attention from writing. And people looking at you, but the whole thing is an illusion. Try to remember that you don’t have to be in a hurry—it’s all going to work out in the end. This life is about learning a bunch of lessons and you’ll do fine. Go to sleep.
Okay, still not asleep. While I’m still open:
“what happened last winter when I felt like I was possessed by the great warrior spirit with the red beard? Remember? Down by the creek laughing and laughing with this dark, almost demonic laughter because “we had lived and were still walking the earth in a young body”? and we had a “job” to do I believe it’s time to purify.
I can’t believe this. I feel like I’ve made it to a higher level. We are all “androids” like in Blade Runner. And this “reality” is only one step away from the TV. Boy you really are in for an adventure. Stay very humble. 

Cast off all the fruits of the actions
The Mind is like the Moon.
The Sun is like the Self.
The Light of the Self reflects through us.
Who performs the actions? Who writes these words?

Swami Bramananda said in class today that everyone has Gods – even atheists. Whoever we admire, whoever we watch, whoever we look up to, we subconscious become like them – they become our Gods. So it’s wise to choose who we take into our hearts. Siva? Joe Strummer? Jesus? Tom Hayden? Paul DuBrul?
They’re always saying here that it’s very important to study the lives of saints. And this very interesting thought today – how scientists can study the universe intellectually – astronomy and physics – but never know it intimately. That’s what we do here.
Um…after satsung swapping stories with the Franciscian Monk by the bathroom, I’m telling him about some crazy bipolar shit and he tells some stories about st, Francis going into asxtatic states and his friends having to take care of him and I suddenly got chills up and down my whole body and glassy-eyed had a flicker of a vision of Erez and some other people carrying me, his thick, hairy arm covering up my side somewhere hot. I crawled off to bed andjust laid there for awhile – the thoughts swirling around and suddenly I pulled up that buried memory (hallucination) from the first night in LA County Jail of the man in a wheelchair being crucified my the guards and then it was me being crucified and then it was me watching him and then he was gone and I was lying alone on the cell floor under the harsh flourecent lights.
So then I was like: Fuck This, I’m taking some seroquil, so I did, and then I picked up the Hebrew Siddur prayer book that mom brought me and just started at the letters on the cover for a long time, gold and dark blue, listening to the crash of the ocean in the background. Then I went to pee in the ocean at which point I stood at the waves staring up at the immense sky of clouds about the horizon in the Bahamian night and I was talking to the spirits, thanking them, knowing, intuiting, that I come from them like a Fallen Angel that has work to do on Earth and I said out loud: “So you got my back, right?” And a powerful, warm voice responded “Of Course.” And then a few seconds later another, harsher voice said: “Of course we’ve Got Your Back.” And I immediately had this nightmarish bloody vision of the flesh being torn off my back!
So I guess not everyone up there is so friendly.