guruji pays me a visit
Listen to this. I dreamed last night that I went…somewhere, I don’t know, this sunny room with big, square, terra-cotta tiles on the floor and a peaceful breeze. I was doing some yoga. There were some other people doing the same. And then, Lo, Sri. K. Pattabhi Jois came over to help me! I was so happy—I said to him that I thought I had missed my chance to ever meet him and I was so glad to be wrong. He smiled and nodded, and assisted me in some pose, I don’t know what. As I came out, I touched his head, my whole hand, palm to his skin. The sensation of it is still in my hand this morning. He kept smiling and patted me, seemed happy that I was there in his class. Then he moved on to the next person and I woke up.
What a cool dream!
In other news….
A friend of mine read my blog yesterday and called me up to set the record straight. “You have so meditated before. You were not a meditation virgin.”
“What?” says I. “When?”
“Well, there was that class you took at that center in Virginia. You bought a zafu. It had angels on it.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember that zafu. I wonder what happened to it?”
“You sat on it, you tried it.”
“Sitting on a zafu is not meditation. Besides, I remember that now. It was hopeless. I couldn’t bear it for more than a minute.”
“Still. It’s meditation.”
“No way. That’s like saying making out in the car is the same as intercourse.”
“And then there was that other time, you were reading a bunch of books on Buddhism. You said meditation messed up your chakras. So you must have tried it.”
“I said that?”
“Yes. You said you felt like you were suffocating and your chakras were turning inside out.”
“I did not say that. And how do you remember this stuff? Besides. Reading about Buddhism is not the same as meditating. It falls under the category of reading books about working-out while sitting on the sofa, eating potato chips.”
“You love to do that.”
“I do not.”
“And there was the time you were learning how to lucid dream.”
“Okay, that was NOT meditating. That was like…guided napping.”
“You are so full of it.”
“Poetic license!”
“Exaggerator!”
“Literalist!”
Um, anyway, I’m here to set the record straight, lest anyone think I may be misleading all seven of my loyal readers. I may have dabbled in meditation prior to having children, prior to sitting on the bank of my creek a couple of days ago, back when I had free time and disposable income for such things as angel-covered zafus and recreational spiritual-ish classes. But that was another life. I can’t possibly be held responsible for anything that occurred back then. I mean, except in a karmic sense. But definitely not for blog purposes. So there.
Besides, maybe back then it was just for a minute and a half or something, doesn’t count. This time it was a full five minutes, plus there was a creek and everything, which counts twice. It’s kind of like doing yoga on a beach or a mountain rather than in a sweaty yoga room, double credit.
I tend to do ten minutes seated meditation after practice rather than a long Savasana (minute and a half does it for me then I’m on to some pranayama), how about trying that? I hit the cushion more seriously in the evening 30-40 minutes, but ten to fifteen is fine to start with.
Oh and of course for busy mum’s, take the magazines out of the loo and use the time spent on the throne more spiritually instead.
oh and nice dream
Hi Grim! Hey, I didn’t know about the double credit thing, most excellent. And the Throne Meditation, I’ve heard of that, it’s in the Pradipika, right? It’s one of the Kriyas? Thanks for pointing that one out. I’ll get right on it.