They say he howls, even as he is born, due to Brahma's desire to have Shiva as a son. Rudra howls (and is said to mean "the howler") because he does not wish to be born in this world at all.
But he also howls because his consort Sati is dead... half of him is gone...and he carries her, crying, desolate...
That makes sense to me, a lot, over the last one month, as I try to come to grip with the world I see through the clarity of vision yoga gives and feel strained by what I see. There was always something wailing in my mind and I used to worry about that, often. Why that crying, in the backdrop.. because everybody sees me as a smiley-faced woman? The problem is, I fear, that I can see people as they are -- shorn of everything -- it is terrible, when u can see that much. That may have been the howl... That u see people as they are, and that they themselves do not know what it is that is being seen.. Everybody is in a hiding, and use their patterns, to hide themselves, from the world, but mostly from themselves. We are full of lies, we human beings.. because that is the nature of the mind, creating illusions all the time...
But the howling has stopped.. that may be a good thing. But before that, some churning
I realise that it does not matter, that I am a teacher, straining to reach the wonder of yoga. Unless the vision is trained to see things, most people will not see, what I see, of yoga and where it is meant to lead. Greater leaders have failed. Who understands the message of any prophet? And who am I, no prophet, to even think I can reach this wonder and magic of yoga to people who will not see it? It is not my goal, any more. I teach, because I believe in yoga. But I realise I am not required to believe in the people, that they can see, what I see, in its wonder...
So, in this learning -- perhaps the biggest one in my life and it happened over the last one month seeing some terrible sides to very normal people -- I can say safely that I have stepped back now from even seeing myself as a teacher. This may be the biggest and final attachment I would have had.. and it is gone.
It went, over the last one month, as I saw why the yoga rishis have said that many of its simplest practices must not be taught to everybody and should be the secret of secrets. Why did they say that? They may have said it, I now realise because in the hands of the uninitiated and spiritually illiterate, these practices can be misused:( U see this in the fallen gurus, the ones who have vulgarised yoga.
So, if you taught yoga to a nymphomaniac, the person learns to use yoga to manipulate and became more of a nymphomaniac. If you taught it to an egotist, he becomes more of an egotist. In many, yoga unleashes the hidden monster, not a potential saint!! The dominant pattern, that should be suppressed, only gets hidden, and so well, that it becomes monstrous. Like a cancer turns canker, this too, from yoga. One cell seeking the wrong sort of immortality -- and the cancerous ego bloats.. this u see, as a teacher, in front of you.. and then, u wonder at the monster u unleashed! This was the surprise insight I got.. and fortunately, instead of making me negative, it has made me more detached, from all this.
I also like it that I submit completely to the energy of yoga , more intensely now.
Yoga is a very live energy for me.
It knows and does not like to be misused. When it wills, it will let you down. It does not like that you hurt people, it does not like that you manipulate or grow ambitious, through yoga.
The other day, somebody told me that this girl, whom I will call M was saying odd things about me. I do not know M, having met her once, at my workshop which she attended and left without paying, saying she forgot to bring the money. She is also trained at the same ashram as I. My students said to me that she would call them up, asking them to leave me and join her class! She would tell some others that the knee accident I had was because I fell down while doing the headstand (I injured it in kickboxing:) and that is how horrible a teacher I was! And other weird things about me (one student told me "she was saying terrible things about you ma'am"... I told her I did not want to know). A while ago, somebody important from the ashram had asked me about her, checking her out because she wanted to do some programme with them.... I could have bitched, given all the provocation, but I could not be bothered. And told the person said I did not know this girl at all, which happens to be the truth. And I did not see myself stooping to wallow in the same sludge where she was sinking...
Last month, her center shut down.
It seems all her vitriol and imagined competition with me, did not save her commercial exploitation of yoga. That is what I am saying. U do not need to manipulate or do stupid things to exploit yoga. It is not a biscuit or a piece of cloth that you are selling. What is it, this wonderful thing?
You can trust it.. and do not need to bring in your base fears and anxieties to exploit it as a way of living.. It is telling you, through your own fears, that it does not like what you are doing. If you heard it, dear,...
Yoga does not work that way..
You practice it... rest of it, teaching, making money from it, all those are incidental. They cannot become the raison d'etre. Because if one does that, yoga will chew u up..
I think you must not even wangle a halo from it..
The howling has stopped.. I feel cocooned, safe.. and nowadays, I have no more need.. not even to teach:)
I submit, and I listen, to it, hearing nothing else these days...
How many lives, to be able to listen, to that wonder? How many lives..
When something trivial comes up.. I think only this, how many lives, to be done with this trivial thing... how many lives...
This one life, I want to finished with all that waiting that had happened, in all those lives..
So, there is only one (beautiful now, and not as a longing, but an affirmation)
thought now -- how many lives, how many lives?
That thought, I believe, is what shut the howling down..
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