I mentioned in an earlier post that I was on the hunt for resources on yogic-style meditation (is it a ‘style’ or maybe more of a philosophy?  Or a cultural flavor/background?  Anyway….) Some helpful folks pointed me in a variety of directions in the comments to that post, and as is my way, I immediately read a huge, honking, pile of the stuff.  Hold that thought, I’ll get back to it.

The other day I was having a conversation with a couple of friends of mine, one is a therapist and one a bodyworker who also teaches bodywork, and we were talking about the phenomena where people in those sort of healing professions are under a strange injunction to always look like they are healthy, all-together, happy, successful people.  It’s as if they must be walking examples/advertisements for the services they offer, and therefore must exhibit few, if any, personal or health problems.

On the one hand, it seems reasonable not to want to go to, say, a marriage counselor who has had three divorces.  On the other hand, this whole thing sets up a situation where people in these fields have to have a persona, a buffed and polished mask, that they live behind, at least when they are out in the world. So, the job is to help people be more authentic or alive or happy, and in order to make a go of it as a business, one often has to conceal any bits of one’s life that are not those things, making one less authentic, less alive, and less happy.  Yuck, right?

Not to mention the flip side of this odd situation: if said therapist succeeds in maintaining this persona (or is just going through a great period in their lives so doesn’t have to fake anything at the moment—but you know all lives have their bumpy bits), they get put up on a pedestal as being superior, either by effort or nature, for having achieved the goal the client is seeking. Some therapists seem to cultivate (either consciously or unconsciously) this elevated position, and others seems to try to avoid it, but the clients/students themselves still will often insist that the therapist get up there.  And stay.

Until life comes around, or the client sees through the veil, and the therapist comes tumbling down.

Makes me glad I’m a writer.  We’re supposed to be fucked up.  It’s almost part of the job description that writers drink and screw around and have anti-social personality disorders.

Woo-hoo!

Anyway…. back to my yogic meditation reading.  In all the piles of stuff, I read a short book by Yogani (a pseudonym, it turns out) called Deep Meditation that was quite helpful and grounded and answered many of my questions.  That’s all well and good.  But, as I mentioned, this Yogani person is totally anonymous.  No one knows who he is.  He’s just some guy, I guess.  I don’t know.  He could be a freaking ascended master, or some insurance salesmen, cribbing stuff from a bunch of other people’s books as a hobby.  He has this webpage with reams of information about various yogic practices and a dozen self-published books, and apparently a forum and an email group…I haven’t checked into those, but no credentials, so to speak, since he has no identity.  But he’s giving away his content, although you can purchase your own copy if you wish, so clearly this is not a make-money scheme for him—

But there now, see?  My mind just can’t help but trying to figure out his game.  Despite my getting some good stuff from the book I read, it bothers the crap out of me that I don’t know who he is, what he’s like, and so I keep speculating.  I mean, what if he’s an asshole who beats his wife and snorts heroin and kicks his dog?  What if I follow any of his suggestions and it turns me into a spiral-eyed Moonie or something?  How can I know if this is for me if I don’t see what the leader is like?  That’s like swallowing the kool-aid without vetting the person handing it to you.

But I just got through with the previously mentioned conversation where we were talking about how problematic it is to think the teacher/therapist is the exemplar of the material the teacher/therapist is passing on.  I simultaneously seem to be turned off by the pedestal thing, while also wanting to participate in it.

Huh.

I see the guru phenomena in ashtanga yoga, of course, with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. For whatever reason, maybe that he passed away before I got into yoga, I haven’t felt myself wanting him to be My Guru. I did go through a period of great interest in Krishnamacharya, Jois’s teacher, as if maybe Krishnamacharya was the ‘real thing’ the last, true yogi, or something like that.  There is a mystique there, right?  That he was from another time, that he straddled the ancient and the modern, and so perhaps he knew something. I seem to have let go of him, too, but I see the same phenomenon at work in my spell of reading about him…looking for someone who had some Answer, some Magic.

A side thought: I’ve often been interested in the way that the Dalai Lama has been able to maintain his elevated seat—that so many westerners are willing to allow that maybe, maybe, he might have some magic in him.

Is that what it is?  Seeking magic, while not believing in it?

Anyway, I’m trying to let Yogani’s meditation advice stand on it’s own, without the benefit of a person I can attach it to.  Humph.  Apparently I don’t like it though.  I’m bothered by not having more of a big picture on the guy, by not knowing who he is and if he is living what he is teaching.  Even though I also don’t think teachers should have to do that.  And even though all the other groups that have a visible leader turn me off, because I don’t really believe in elevated teacher-types (because they all seem to fall, eventually: the bigger the front, the bigger the back), I’m simultaneously annoyed that he is avoiding being elevated by staying anonymous.

What can I say, I’m complex.

When I was getting started in writing, when just writing at all was a big deal, my motto was “just shut up and write.”  No whining, no winging, no excuses.  Butt in chair: write.  I’m kinder to myself now, but I still follow the heart of it.  As long as I write every day, I can complain all I want.

Maybe it’s the same with meditation.  Just shut up and meditate.  Or maybe the shutting up comes from the meditation?  Just meditate and shut up?

Oh for heavens sake.  You see why my brain needs some meditation!  It’s freaking noisy in here.

(And another thing.  This Yogani guy needs some graphic design power-ups on his website.  It looks like the internet of the 90s over there.  But what the hell does graphic design have to do with meditation advice, I ask you?  Nothing.  See, I want some nice packaging, even as I disdain it.  I’m a mess.)