Saturday XXXIII: Tohu Vabohu · 30 November 2007

Him: How was practice this morning?
Me (matter of fact): The best of my entire life.
Him (blasé): That’s what you said yesterday.
Me: (shrug)
Him: And the day before that.

But actually, SS Saturday is quickly becoming the best of all. Yeah. Luxury, joy and beauty. I know there are those of you who do not approve. But excuse me: I live an extremely orderly life. Did you notice? O-R-D-E-R-L-Y L-I-F-E. Grant me my study in spontaneity.

Just so you don’t think me all sunshine, let me say that I am horrified that it is nigh on December. I am talking dark, existential, dread-laden horror. Time is satan. Dark and fleeting. Nothing happens, and then you’re old. You feel like the past is more real than today, the present is happening without even pausing to let you realize it and the future is going to crush you. Kill you slow and grind you to dust. It’s going to rush in and steal what you think you have as soon as it possibly can.

You feel like time is some human invention gone horribly wrong and all it has to offer you is darkness and dread. At least this is how you feel if you are me. I wonder if this is a basic existential condition… or a dissertation condition?

The only way to leaven it is to love what is. Love it like crazy because the dread makes you love. Sometimes looking into the existential maw, embracing the void, is the shortest route to living in the now. Lightly. XO

Links:

● Naked Indian bodies, manual labor, molten metal, and one terrible colonial product supply chain. I hesitate to link to Shakti Industries, because this stuff is just asking you to get off and there should be a question of why this is so aesthetically absorbing. But it’s a good story, and the slideshow will definitely make you respond.

● So, Sally Kempton. Dive-bombing the Esquire readership with feminist manifestoes in her 20s, dressing down a young Hefner on TV, and generally being smart smart smart and sexy in New York in the days of the new left. Then she accidentally has a peak experience in her living room or something. Shit. Meets Muktananda, goes east, disappears for a long time. Comes back integral and starts talking. Not about turning away from leftism, but about expanding it so it’ll actually work. Here she is in conversation with Ken Wilber about the oldschool hostility to any kind of interiority (even psychoanalysis) as somehow inimical to social change, about problems in the Dawkins-Hitchens agenda, about philosophical maturations that need to happen in order for the left to get itself out of its little old box. And with hints (in my interpretation) toward a spirituality that’s concrete—that’s not just about occasional altered states, but is practical and daily and not split off as woo-woo. (More.) 

● The wonderful thing Morgan Spurlock is doing has pretty well made the rounds by now. This is even nicer: Christians themselves calling out the greedy affluence, the grasping, and the nauseating amount of crap that will weigh down my own holiday this year in the heart of WWJB land. If you haven’t seen rich suburban American Christians, there’s a level of obsessive consumption disorder you’ll never understand. Lucky.

● You know the science writer Natalie Angier? Nice. Here she is elaborating two answers to the question: Why do we make art? There’s the sex answer—individuals create things to display what they have to offer genetically and to garner attention (this kind of evolutionary reduction is in these days... yawn)—and the communal answer. She loves the latter enough to put it beautifully. I like the hue this gives to the auteur-focused conversations we had here this week.

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: astanga yoga , beta state , esoteric shit , evolution , having a body , integration , markets-networks-society , morality , spirituality

Comment

1. you’re so abbreviatory on this blog. it’s perfectly acronymical!

   Posted by: R · Nov 30, 08:16 PM · #

2. and nice that way. and ken wilber! remember his story about neil armstrong on the moon? seems neil was a kid living next-door to a mr. garfinkle, or something, and when neil did his moon-walk and said what he said, he also said, “and good luck to you, mr. garfinkle”, which nobody could figure out. seems one night when neil was about 10 he overheard mrs. garfinkle say to her husband, “you’ll get a blowjob when that little boy next-door walks on the moon!”

   Posted by: eeyore · Dec 1, 04:52 PM · #

3. thanks so much for the reference to Sally Kempton. I did not know about her. I’ll be off to the Bohdi Tree to read her book this afternoon before class. Wilbur is such an interesting dude. So heady,so overly precious but nonetheless so valuable. His portrayl of the nondual in the pointing out instructions of The Simple Feeling of Being is incomparably good,- pages 244-253 earmarked and bedside for 6 months now.

   I don’t know about Wilbur’s association with Genpo Mercel however. Genpo can be seen on youtube rapping down about Big Mind but I don’t at all see that there is anything different in the essential approach. It feels like a marketing niche to me but I appreciate that these guys are at least trying to get the word out to a larger audience like over at the Omega Institute.

   People might want to check out the great Russian yogi Andre Lappa. His theories on strength training and vinyasa are quite interesting. My teacher has loaned me the collection and the guy is just out there. Began intense yoga practice at a time in the Soviet Union when you would be arrested and thrown in prison for trying to teach the stuff. One can only imagine his level of commitment. Hands down he is the Worlds’ Most Skilled semi-fat Yogi.

   Posted by: tristan · Dec 2, 11:05 AM · #

4. OMG we’re going to be “dead in a minute” in a very Monty Phython way. I hope I get to fall in love again, before my time’s up.

   Posted by: boodiba · Dec 2, 01:31 PM · #

5. Reminds me of another Garfinkel , eeyore. The father of the breaching experiment. His idea of sociology was to act strange in order to reveal the unwritten rules of normalcy. Ran around having fun with people in the UCLA Dep’t of Soc for decades, and still makes the odd, exciting appearance.

   I thought you might identify?

   Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 2, 01:32 PM · #

6. Aaah, Boodiba. It’ll happen.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 2, 01:35 PM · #

7. Lots of the best teachers in whatever lineage are Integral, so wind up knowing Wilber, it seems. Two great ashtanga teachers are Wilberheads, and others are Integral without needing to do the reading. Others are not integral. :) In LA, Julian Walker is of the persuasion.

   Genpo Merzel Roshi is doing a unique Big Mind workshop in Los Angeles in February. I personally could never get past the creepy marketing of fast-track “insight like you’ve never had before—exclusive!” but I do not doubt that meaningful transformations will take place there. Yet in a way, because the Big Mind process transcends lineage and is practical and efficient, I guess the 2-day hotel airport workshop format may be a bit less of a cop-out than it would be with other practices and traditions.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 2, 01:47 PM · #

8. Ouy. I guess I’m not done on this topic. Yes, Tristan, I’m pretty interested in Sally Kempton and there is an impulse to have a relationship with her. Among much else now that she has “returned to the marketplace,” she is doing the subversive thing of writing for the Yoga Journal. If you can get past the anecdotes with which they make her illustrate the articles, and cope with the super-dumbed-down stylized Yoga Journal prose, her message is insightful and right on for the audience. She is hardcore, bridging distance like that.

   I look forward to Simple Feeling and would be more of a Wilberhead personally, but the culture around him is, perhaps for reasons he does not have the power to control, adulatory and submissive. He is a genius synthesizer but not a genius at creating culture. That’s ok. I can learn from him without participating in the cult.

   Besides, I’m already in one cult. One is enough.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 2, 02:00 PM · #

9. Time depresses me.

   Enjoyed the Sally Kempton interview. And her references to all-one. ;)

   Posted by: gartenfische · Dec 2, 02:51 PM · #

10. Sorry to learn Kempton is writing for Yoga Journal but as Brando said once when he signed up for the Superman potboiler, “everybody at one time or another has to sing for their supper”. George Carlin has an exquisite rap on how everything in Amerikana can be reduced to sales and bullshit. Unfortunately I tend to agree. Practicing over at Center for Y. this evening I noticed a line down the stairs and out around the corner, thought Sting and Trudy must have shown up in Ashtanga or somebody was handing out free T-shirts. Wrong. Krishna-whatever was droning on upstairs to a packed house of zombie yuppies and stoned out Rastas. I just don’t get it. Utter monochromatic musical drivel and half the time the guy croaks flat. I just don’t get it. People waving their torsos in unison like daavening Hassids. My faith in humanity is ebbing lower by the day.

    The trick with Genpo is the carrot of enlightenment and ‘true seeing’. Inherent in that is misunderstanding to begin with. Also the difficult part is not at all to glimpse reality. Many,many seekers have had flashes of clarity. The trick is in sustaining and deepening the insight which is far,far more difficult and challenging. No way a weekend workshop can even approach that imo. This is why the rich traditions of the Mahayana are grounded in a lengthy teacher-student-sangha relationship. I don’t think you get around that unless your on the marketing circuit and its about You.

    I could talk about the fundies but its late and i have alot of backed up hostility towards them. The flock and the shepards in that authoritarian tradition have very deep,black karma to shoulder and sadly it will have to be faced sooner or later. The blood of well over 1,000,000 innocent Iraqis just from this most recent insane invasion are part of that karma just as the good German goosesteppers who rallied for Hitler saw their own karmas come to fruition in Dresden,Berlin and the wholesale destruction of the Reich by 1945. There is no escaping that ones actions whether passive or active, ignorant or deceitful influence future outcomes. In fact all of us living now in this country bear burdens based quite literally in how this government has acted.

    Posted by: tristan · Dec 2, 11:18 PM · #

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