Prakasha/Vimarsha

On this day, I think of Janus, the Roman god of thresholds, bridges, and new beginnings, whose image is dominated by his two faces.  One looks forward, and one looks backward.  He gives his name to January, which we will make much to-do over in the course of the next days.  Like the Hindu Ganesha, who reigns in the same areas of our experience, they are each the first gods invoked in their respective cultures.  They are the gateway to and the boundary between where you are now and where you’re heading. 

That’s all well and good, and I love Ganesha as much as the next WASH (thanks, Eric).  But Janus’s image really does it for me today.  He is the depiction of prakasha (shining forward) and vimarsha (the light back as reflection).  If you made it to this blog, chances are that you’ve already made it through some others, some Oprah, and some yoga classes.  We understand that we’re each other’s reflections, what with our mirror neurons and all.  What you’re getting is a result of what you’re putting out there.  In a way, though, we can let ourselves off the hook a bit because we’re reflected and refracted through the individual lenses of other, radically free entities.  Sure, it messes us up when we see our insecurities and need to have the last word right out there in the open.  It touches that place inside of us that we’ve been taught to believe doesn’t belong.  But, with other people, we can also tell ourselves that we’ve been doing our own work and that we have very little to no jurisdiction over other people’s behaviors, expressions, and voices.  So there.  You can use it.  Or not.   

Now, turn it around.  When we direct the light toward ourselves, the vimarsha is what comes out as our actions.  When you’re hard on someone else, check in on how hard you’re being on yourself.  When no one can please you, in what way are you unable to please yourself?  When something’s wrong with everyone else on the planet, chances are you’re directing that same attitude toward yourself.  (Take a few breaths with this one, especially if you’re telling yourself that you’re getting it ‘right’ here.)  The point is, you’re always keeping company with yourself and your actions.  Give yourself a break.  Give other people a break.  You will go a long way toward happy. 

Let’s move on.  Janus is more than just forward/backward…

He is two-faced, duplicitous.  When we sit with him, we’re of two minds, loving the leaving while at the same time wanting to keep everything from before.  That attitude, that injury, that habit.  I mean, we never really leave them behind, anyway.  We just crowd them in nooks and crannies, possibly never seeing them again until it’s time to move out of this house (and on to the next?). 

He shows us that we’re more than one person.  We’re all the authentic guises we can handle, the fractalizing making more of us rather than less.  But in order to learn and love, we must not just make more of the same.  We must let in more than just the same. 

Janus’s faces don’t face each other, looking past each other in to the middle distance.  Nor are they side-by-side, looking opposite directions.  They are back-to-back, leaning and merging into each other.  The same, but different.  Just like today and tomorrow.

Solstice Puja

 This afternoon, in the moments preceding the longest, darkest night of the year, my son is taking a long, dark nap.  I’ve been using the time to look through some old notebooks and remember some of the things I’ve learned over the years.  Much of what I wrote down was in the tone of someone who knew she would turn around and teach the ideas to people who – for the most part – have not heard any of this before.  Over the past couple of weeks writing this blog, it’s felt really good to stretch my writing muscles and return to a practice that I’d left off for a few months.  But the truth is that so far I’ve played it safe, a little self-conscious about all the other blogs and teachers out there who have no doubt written very similar posts in much more skilled styles.  What I’ve just learned – again – is that I need look no further than right in front of me for worthy inspiration.  It can be uncertain here in the dark, seemingly alone, but there’s always at least a tiny light.  Sit with that little bit, and notice how you are when you’re not obligated to be anything else.  The extended darkness is a free pass to dive into the expansion of your heart.

Breath - If you’ve been out of your heart for a little while, there’s a swan/goose that will take you from your head to that place.  It’s called hamsa.  Don’t think of it like this magical, mystical creature.  Think of it as this sturdy, workhorse bird.  (It’s what I named my bike, the biggest, steadiest old girl that feels safe and secure.)  She will always do her job, and once the breath takes you to the heart, you’ll feel the tug of a narrative that longs to be remembered. 

Deva (Light) - Then, the notebooks that live right beside your bed will become more than just things to dust every week.  Divine inspiration is right in front of you.  It’s whatever you’ve managed to bring close by, for many years or just for today.  It may be something that everyone else already has.  If it draws your attention, it’s worthy.  Let it bring you a little light on a dark afternoon. 

Mantra - Even though you’re alone, there’s a universal chant that’s vibrating.  That it’s a chant (not a song) invites you to listen first, and blend your vibration to the one that’s already happening.  You don’t have to re-invent everything.  Just let it work on you.        

Mudra – My tantric friends and I like to ‘turn our kleshas in to lakshmis’ (turn our blemishes in to beauty marks).  Similarly, we can turn our samskaras in to mudras (our ruts in to receptive imprints).  How can you do the thing you always do, but make it a vessel for experience rather than a dessicated habit? 

Nyasa – This is how!  You’ve probably read/heard all these other terms before, but nyasa might be a new vocabulary word.  It means ‘placing’, as in the way you lay the puja upon yourself.  Start inside, then bring everything outside through mantra and mudra, then lay it back on your own body.  The idea conveys an element of style, and it’s kind of the point.  You have taken yourself down some rabbit hole or other, be it reading, writing, sitting, throwing things in fires, or doing full king pigeon pose.  As far as this is, it’s still just getting you in to a basic story, song, structure.  It’s still what everyone else is doing or has already done.  The rest is articulation and embellishment.  Take it upon yourself to  inspire yourself to inspire others. 

Crossing the Threshold

"Take a comfortable seat, soften your eyes, put your attention on your breath, and bring your hands together in front of your heart in anjali mudra."  Did you even realize that this was a sequence?  It seems every single yoga class in the world begins like this.  This process had been so deeply embedded in this manner and in this order that I almost didn’t even notice it as a thing I did any more.  And, in a way, that’s kind of the point.  It gets us ‘in’ efficiently.  No muss, no fuss.

But once we get to the point that we have a sequence so deeply ingrained that we do and accept it without thinking about or questioning it, there we have an opportunity to pull on some of the threads and open them up.  Not for the sake of dismantling the traditional way, because if it works, it works.  But for the sake of a more meaningful and evocative experience. 

Sit.  You’re in the exact place that you belong.  And also, there’s this little thing we do when you know something or someone good is coming.  Even if it’s ‘just’ your sweetie or your child, you do a sort of energetic equivalent of re-arranging the furniture.  It’s not about making yourself uncomfortable or less comfortable than you already were.  Just place your chair so that you can make eye contact with the person you’ve been waiting all day to see. 

Eyes.  Soften them, so that everything gets a little blurry around the edges.  (Contrast this feeling with ‘piercing’ eyes.)  Here’s a funny story: one of my best girls wears really cute glasses.  She always needed to wear them, but she didn’t always wear them.  In this way, she saw her friends (and herself) without blemish, dream-like, and wondrous.  I was around her quite a bit when she started to wear her new glasses regularly.  She was shocked at what everything ‘really’ looked like.  But her brain had already memorized another version of me, in which so much of who I was to her was informed by her other senses.  She heard me.  She felt my energy.  And when she could see me ‘correctly’, she still had the benefit of all that other experience.  Then she adjusted my side bodies in the sweetest way.

Breath.  Honor the gift of your life in a ritualized way to re-commit yourself daily to your highest calling.  Do what makes you heave and sigh, and you’ll be a long way toward doing yourself and others a great service. 

Hands.  Then, as you bring the hands together, palms softly pressing in front of the heart, the threshold is both created and crossed over.  The gesture brings the inner world outside and the outer world inside. 

And so we enter in to the process of doing what we’ve been doing all along, just in a way that invites us to reveal more of ourselves to ourselves. 

  

Preliminaries

It helps to have a template, a set of guidelines that leads you gently and progressively from one point to another.  Over the course of the past several months, I’ve been thinking and teaching more and more about puja.  Sure, I’ve been cultivating a little altar in my home for years.  And I have my own style of ritual when I practice yoga and teach class.  But I’ve been wanting to know how you’re ‘supposed’ to do it outwardly at the same time that the inner meaning has become ever more clear and important.  This past weekend, I got to spend some time with two very dear people, and I got really inspired.  One, a murti wala named Manoj Chalan, regaled us with tales of the gods and goddesses and the details of their iconography.  The other, my longtime teacher Zhenja LaRosa, taught me how I could teach as puja.  It made the process of creating a class even more of a sacred act than it already was for me. 

Manoj has sold me four murtis.  They are small statues of deities, like the ones you might find at the front of a yoga studio.  I am thankful for the Bank of Manoj, whose payments always seem to equal out to $108 per month.  Auspicious, I know.  The murtis live where I usually practice yoga in my home, and I often light a candle for them or put a flower out for them.  But it’s not about what I do to them or for them as it is about the exchange of light between us.  See, they are just me in reflection.  That’s why they’re shiny, so I can see myself better.  But what’s the difference between laying on my bed and looking at my Ganesha and doing puja?  Well, there’s a way ‘in’ and a way ‘out’.  We go step by step, gently.  Bring an offering and come receptive, so that the puja can receive your offering and give something back.  Like gift giving, a true exchange leaves each party with more than just things coming out even. 

Even if you’ve never done this before, you’ve done this before.  There’s some experience that pointed you toward this one, and that was facilitated by a teacher.  Traditionally, you honor your teacher and two more generations back.  Less traditionally, you could honor your self, another person, and the kula.  The collective consciousness of the kula can often take us so much farther than any one consciousness.  The self is the guru, I’d do anything Zhenja said (although she’d probably hate that), and numbers don’t lie when assessing your reality.  However you do it, do three.  One is inert.  Two’s too stable.  Three gets something rolling.  What we’re getting going here is the receptive part.  To see yourself, you have to let something in more than yourself.  It melts your heart. 

Soften first, then focus.  Douglas Brooks likes to call this part ‘today’s special’.  It’s the flavor of the day, the focal point of the conversation.  It’s the process of articulating what you’d like to get at.  We may be tempted to just be open or let whatever happen, but putting effort toward naming some thing or another let’s the universe know that someone’s coming to dinner.  I have a mental image of the universe pulling some delicious treat out of the freezer and throwing all of the mess in the kid’s closet five minutes before I show up.  I always tell the universe the place looks great.   

Once we know we’re having a party, Ganesha comes.  He gets Most Invited Guest for a few reasons.  First, he’s the elephant in the room, taking up your subconscious.  He’s the threshold, the there you need to go when you need to ‘go there’.  Finally, he symbolizes three wounds that, through addressing them, lead us from the mundane in to the more of the sacred.  The first, human, one is to be separated from mother.  Ganesha’s second (male) one was his decapitation by his father and restoration by his uncles (more on that another time), which is his coming-of-age.  The third wound is unnecessary and comes out of curiosity and desire.  Ganesha writes with his broken tusk.  We cross the threshold in to puja, in to bringing ourselves up and out, telling the life we live in an interesting way.  

Om gam ganapataye namahah