Thursday, March 2, 2017

Personal Update March 2017

Well… 

It has been some time since I’ve written. 

A year? 

Why now? Who is this for? 

I suppose the answer to the first question is: ‘because I felt like it and something kept gnawing at me to…’ 

The answer to the 2nd question is: ‘This update is for anyone who wants to read it. But it is mostly for those folks who over many years studied yoga with me and walked in the same circles I did for so long.’ 

I realized something in the fall of 2015, strangely after I began taking hormones… 

I realized that I didn’t want to teach yoga any longer. Hell, in all honestly I realized that I had never really wanted to teach yoga. 

Oh don’t get me wrong, I loved many things about teaching. Mostly those moments when lightbulbs went off inside of people’s minds, including my own. Those moments of shared experience when student and teacher dissolved and there was only a miraculoushappening, a buzz, something that crossed over… Yoga Vasistha Fridays when a ‘student’ would suddenly break out with the craziest thought… Standing in horse or on one leg collectively for 45 minutes… Yes, there were some good times for sure… Or how when many of us chanted 4000 Maha Ganapati mantras into a massive fire for 10 hours after a nine month long collective purascarana… 

I laugh at the thought that all the time I spent learning in my first teacher training in the early 90s, that I didn’t ONCE think about being a teacher. I was quite selfish really, I wanted the ‘knowledge’ for myself. 

A dear old friend asked me to teach one day in 1996 and I said ‘What? You want ME to teach?’. Crazy shit… Funny how my favorite memories are about the shared experience. I never did much like the ‘I am the teacher, you are the student’ shit… But something about the collective experience was nice. I never was very good at being a salesman, marketing myself (some of you cringe I know…). I loathed fame (although the fortune part might have been fun… who knows?)… I knew deep down I’d never make it big in the yoga scene and honestly I didn’t want to. I became crass at times, ornery and even later on quite pessimistic and cynical (which perhaps was not so good). I didn’t want to be ‘that person’. 

Anyway, this is an odd way to start a new blog piece yes? Perhaps. Perhaps I am just reminiscing on what it was exactly that pushed me so hard out of that whole field and subject that had absorbed me for 30 years. 

There has definitely been more than one transition over the last few years. I actually do feel bad about the falling out with some of the students. I’ve apologized before for some of that. 

Looking back at it now, I suppose I just say this: I’m open to any who want to come to me in friendship and reconcile. And we can leave the teacher/student thing behind and open the door to what comes.

Knowledge.
You know, I look at my yoga/knowledge/liberation/whatever books (my hundreds of books) on my shelf and I think to myself, “I don’t really give one crap about what is in any of those texts”. They are just paper. The lofty concepts, theories, practices, meditations, all of it… Stuff I studied so in depth, for so long… Just air… 

It might sound perhaps as if I’m being negative. I’m not. I just don’t have any interest in fabricated reality any more.

I’m into what is in front of my eyes and under my skin. I want to get a job, pay the bills, have a great time with my daughters when I see them on the weekend, geek out on coding or Twitter, or some book I’m reading, go dancing, or spend time with my new girlfriend (   :)  yes … we are not Facebook official ‘yet’ ) … 

I had surgery a few weeks ago. An orchiectomy. Don’t want to say any more about it but I thought I’d bring it up because it was real, happened and I’m very happy about it. Google it if you want to know what it is. My ‘transition’ has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. I feel awake, real, normal… Thanks to hormone replacement therapy, I no longer suffer from depression, obsession, anxiety, wake up in the middle of the night with panic attacks, drink too much, smoke, suffer… Yes, I suppose that’s pretty nice   :)     

Funny, I think many years pushing intensive yoga was just to break through. Maybe to break those masks… I finished up school in January of this year. I completed a 6 month intensive 40-hour a week coding ‘boot camp’, studying JavaScript, and other crazy web development technologies. And LOVED IT. I spend most of my days coding now. Crazy huh? 

I don’t have a job yet but I’m looking actively, applying to many places, currently building a website for a local non-profit that deals with building permanent homeless shelters, and continue studying technologies I want to learn more about. 

One of my old students and a good friend contacted me today and told me she would love it if I’d come down to Portland to lead a group, like teach yoga I suppose. I am open to that, as I’m also open to continued private work with folks. Probably would be some kind of donation thing I’d imagine. I’m not too much into making money off the scene anymore. That’s why I went back to school. I suppose I’d mostly do it just because it might be fun and some of us would get to hang out together and see what kind of space we could co-create… Let me know if it sounds interesting. 

I don’t feel like the same person I was 2 years ago. (laughs) Of course none of us are right? No but really… Whereas most of the time I’ve felt consistency between the years, my transition has really shifted some things. In a good way. I say this because I can’t go backward. My dear ‘brother’ Matt died at some point in the last year or so… Or maybe he was never really here and I was just wearing his mask for some time. I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t really matter any more. Sure, I’m positive that whatever you knew good inside of Matt, maybe his smile or the sparkle in his eyes is still there in me, but the part that made you want to cringe, hopefully that stuff is mostly gone, burned up… Yikes, it makes ME want to shudder thinking about that stuff… 

So what can I leave you with? What sublime wisdom? You are nothing but consciousness? Hmmm no. Of course you are but you still have your life to live and you’re probably like me, like and um, what else? And how does that knowledge help me fight Trump? And all the other crazy shit going on on our planet right now? 

Ok I’ll leave you with this. 

You be you. Be authentic. Be real. See where that takes you. 

Wake up. 

As my teacher used to say ‘there is plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead.’ 

I guess we’ll see. 

Warm hugs to everyone. 

Big smile.

Madeleine


Friday, March 18, 2016

Powerful Women of the Yoga Vasistha


“In the body of Kalaratri were found night and day, creation and dissolution, purity and impurity. Though all the gods were tumbled by her dance, they were apparently steady because of the steadiness of her infinite consciousness. In her consciousness there was natural knowledge. By her dance she created and dissolved the universes moment after moment, just as a small boy shifts his attention from moment to moment. Now she is near, now she is far, now she is infinitesimally small, now she is cosmically large. Such is the manifestation of her cosmic creative power. She dances and holds the horns of the buffalo, the vehicle of the god of death, to the accompaniment of the sound of mantra…”
                                                            Vasistha’s vision of Kali Ma, Yoga Vasistha 6.2.81

I want to talk today about some of the most inspiring female characters in an ancient yogic text called the Yoga Vasistha.
Some of you may not know about this text so I’ll give a little background.
The Yoga Vasistha is a yogic scripture based around the dialogue between Rama, a human divine incarnation and Vasistha, one of the ancient Rishis (Seers).
There is so much to say about the Yoga Vasistha. It is unlike any other scripture that I have read in that it does not copy or borrow from other textual sources and at the same time many texts quote from it (see Hathapradipika, Jivanmukti Viveka among many others). Some of the most famous quotes attributes to Hathapradipika actually have their source originally in Yoga Vasistha.
One other thing that I love about the Yoga Vasistha is that, unlike many other scriptures of the time which are predominantly male oriented, it also contains stories about powerful women. And not just companions to powerful male teachers as is so often the case. No, the women of the Yoga Vasistha are powerful in their own right, as explorers, teachers, leaders, and more.
I thought I would write this simple article out of respect for these women and what they represent in an effort to bring to light some of the forgotten female contribution to the spiritual heritage of yoga.
I started regularly reading the Yoga Vasistha in 1994 and in 2001 began to read it to my early morning classes, including time for discussion, debate, and inquiry. We still meet on conference call every Friday to read and discuss this wonderful text.
One of the beautiful aspects of this book is that it is composed of many stories layered within other stories. The stories are, as Vasistha says “have only one purpose: to enable the listener to arrive at the Truth. The realization of truth is so vital that any reasonable method used is justified, though the parables themselves may be fictitious.”
All of the quotes in this article are from Vasistha’s Yoga, the SUNY press translation done by the wonderful Swami Venkatesananda. So much gratitude to the Swami for his amazing efforts in bringing this text to the English speaking world.
As the stories in this book are quite long, I will only introduce the respective stories and maybe inspire you as the reader to read these amazing stories for yourself and discover the magic that is the Yoga Vasistha. Herein I have included my favorite stories with powerful female characters.


The Story of Lila

“This universe is but a long dream… The sole reality is the infinite consciousness which is omnipresent, pure, tranquil, omnipotent, and whose very body and being is absolute consciousness. Wherever this consciousness manifests in whatever manner, it is that.”
                                                            Sarasvati talking to Lila, Yoga Vasistha 3.42


The story of Lila is one of my personal favorites in the Yoga Vasistha. Who doesn’t like a story with astral and time travel? Who wouldn’t want to travel the multiverse with the goddess Sarasvati? Lila is a cosmic explorer like no other.
Lila is a word basically meaning “the divine play of God”. In the Yoga Vasistha, Lila is a queen, married to King Padma. They were an ideal couple, enjoying “their life in every possible and righteous way. They were young and youthful like the gods, and their love for each other was pure and intense, without any hypocrisy or artificiality.”
The love between Lila and Padma was so fierce that Lila decided that she didn’t want to live without her beloved. She began a serious yogic penance, every third night, for a 100 nights, worshipping the Goddess Sarasvati. After this intensive period of sadhana, the Goddess Sarasvati appeared before Lila and offered her boons of her choice.
Lila made the following requests: 1. That whenever her husband departed from his body that his soul would remain with her, and 2. That whenever Lila prayed to Sarasvati that she would appear before her and be seen.
Some time later, King Padma died in battle. Queen Lila was “inconsolable with grief.”
The voice of Sarasvati arose and said to Lila, “cover the king’s dead body with flowers; then it will not decay. He will not leave this place.”
Lila followed the instructions but nothing appeared to happen. She felt tricked, like somehow she had been robbed of her actual wish. Wishes are like that are they not?
Sarasvati saw that Lila was continuing to grieve. She appeared finally before her and said, “My child, why do you grieve? Sorrow, like water in a mirage, is an illusion.”
Lila wasn’t having any thing to do with lectures on sorrow and straightaway asked, “Tell me where my husband is.”
In the ways of ancient sages and gods, the answers to our questions don’t always come in the ways that we think they will. Sarasvati answered by talking about the three different types of space.
“O Lila, there are three types of space – psychological or mental space(cittakasa),  physical space (bhutakasa), and the infinite space of consciousness (cidakasa). Of these, the most subtle is the infinite space of consciousness. By intense meditation on this infinite space of consciousness, you can see and experience the presence of one like your husband, whose body is that infinite space, even though you do not see him here. That is the infinite space which exists in the middle when the finite intelligence travels from one place to another; for it is infinite.”
Lila at once began to meditate on Sarasvati’s words and further instructions for how to reach that infinite space of consciousness. She entered the highest state of Samadhi through her combined effort and the grace of Sarasvati.
From her deep meditation, Lila saw with her inner vision her husband once again. He was seated on a throne with many attendants. Some of the attendants were members of her own court which were still alive which puzzled Lila. After assembling the court in ‘real life’ to see if they were still there, Lila discovered that they were and rejoiced. But at the same time she questioned, wondering how the court members could be in two places at once?
It is here that the story gets ‘very odd’. Our feeling as we read through the story at this point is that reality is not exactly as it seems. Lila moves in and out of the inner space, where time and space seem to function very differently.
Reality itself is questioned.
Sarasvati asks Lila, “What do you consider real and what unreal?”
Lila says, “That I am here and you are in front of me – this I consider real. That region where my husband is now – that I consider unreal.”
Sarasvati then takes Lila on a wild journey through consciousness to show her that her statement above is not exactly true. I won’t relay the whole story here, as it is quite long.
Lila as the yogic student of Sarasvati, learns over the course of her adventures about the real nature of time, space, consciousness, and Self. It is a story that makes modern movies like the Matrix look tame. Lila learns about the secrets of creation and reality, life and death. She meets her alternate parallel universe ‘twin’ and much more.
I won’t ruin the story for you, but know that it has a beautiful ending…
Lila is an excellent example of a strong female yogi, explorer and creator with an amazing mentorship from the great goddess Sarasvati herself.

The Story of Karkati

“The world has never really been created, nor does it disappear; it is regarded as unreal only from the relative point of view. From the absolute point of view it is non-different from the infinite consciousness.”
                                                                        The Story of Karkati, Yoga Vasistha 3.81

Some may argue that it is perhaps sexist or degrading that the next story portrays the female character in the role of a demon. I personally don’t feel that way, and in fact there are more male demons in the Yoga Vasistha than there are female ones. And I also personally love the stories about the demons! Hey we aren’t all saints and gods right? Sometimes I feel I have more to relate to with the demons than the good guys who are always perfect in every way.
Karkati is a bad ass. She doesn’t take shit from anyone. She eats bad people to satiate her huge appetite and is a yogi unlike any other. Who else stands on one leg for thousands of years? What other characters do you know from tales that have immense appetites that transform their very body into a disease through their yogic power to feed their hunger? This is Karkati, the demon yogi extraordinaire.
The story of Karkati starts out with the “demoness known as Karkati. She was huge, black, and dreadful to look at. This demoness could not get enough to eat, and she was ever hungry.”
Karkati thinks about eating all the people on her continent to satiate her hunger but realizes that many of them were pious and good so felt it inappropriate to harass them. She begins an intense yogic penance by standing on one leg for 1000 years.
At the end of that time, the creator Brahma appears before her and grants her a wish.
Karkati wished that she could fulfill her appetite by becoming the disease cholera, one who could fulfill her wish to ease her hunger through those who “eat the wrong food and indulge in wrong living.”
Suddenly Karkati went from mountainous size to one very subtle and small. She spends many years consuming people with the new found abilities. Until at some point, she begins to regret her past actions, regretting over those she has killed to satiate her endless hunger.
Karkati again begins an intense penance, this time for 7000 years. Her impurities and desire begins to melt away. “The energy of her penance set the Himalayas on fire, as it were.” The gods begin to take notice again. The gods in fact, began to get worried, that with the incredible strength of her penance that she might grow too powerful. Indra, the king of the gods, began to worry that her abilities might grow to such an extent that she could devour the whole world. So he sent Vayu, the god of the wind to see if he could stop her penance.
“In the Himalayas, Vayu saw the ascetic Karkati standing like another peak of the mountain. As she was not eating anything at all she had become almost completely dried up. When Vayu entered her mouth (to force her to breathe so she would come out of meditation) she threw the wind out again and again. She had withdrawn her lifeforce to the crown of her head and stood as a perfect yogini. Seeing her, Vayu was amazed and lost in wonderment. He could not even talk to her.”
Vayu went back to Indra to plead with him to send Brahma once again to grant her a boon that she might stop her powerful penance. “Or else, the power of her penance might burn us all up.”
Karkati’s penance had become so powerful that “even the air around her and the particles of dust near her feet had attained final liberation!”
Brahma finally appeared before her and she listened to him grant a boon of her choice.
At this point, Karkati had no desire for boons.
Brahma told her, “the world order cannot be set aside, O ascetic. And it decrees that you should regain your previous body, live happily for a long time and then attain liberation. You will live an enlightened life, afflicting only the wicked and causing the least harm, and that only to appease your natural hunger.”
Karkati finally consented and regained her form. The story goes on from here and I will let you discover the rest for yourself.
Karkati is an amazing example of an incredibly powerful yogini, a female ascetic, and a practitioner who has learned through long practice to control their intense desires. On a deeper level, I believe this story is about learning how to transmute our demonic tendencies through practice. Karkati is truly inspiring.


The Story of Ahalya

“The body does not create the mind, but the mind creates the body. The mind alone is the seed for the body. When the tree dies, the seed does not, but when the seed perishes, the tree dies with it. If the body perishes, the mind can create other bodies for itself.”
                                                                        The Story of Ahalya, Yoga Vasistha 3.89

It is no accident that three of the stories in this article about powerful women in the Yoga Vasistha occur in chapter three of the Yoga Vasistha. Chapter three is the section on creation. Who knows creation better than the woman, who gives birth through her very body and/or also gives birth through music, art, and countless other ways. The central triangle of the Sri Yantra points downward, signifying the sacred power of the yoni and also the symbolic organ of bringing our existence into play.
The story of Ahalya is an interesting one. It starts off with a character who leaves her husband. Some misogynistic readers might consider Ahalya a whore or a slut, as she leaves her husband for another when she finds true love. I don’t share this view. I find Ahalya an amazing character who owns herself.  She is solid, she doesn’t take shit from her previous partner and she chooses through her yogic power to even overcome the intense shaming and persecution that he throws at her through her deep love and choice. Considering the time this book was written, it is amazing that this story exists at all.
The story is a short one. It is a story within a story, told by the Sun to the Creator of the Universe.
Queen Ahalya, married to King Indradyumna, listens to a story about another man Indra, “a man of loose morals.” During this discourse, Ahalya realizes a love for the man Indra.
The story is wrapped in certain symbolism. On one level, she is falling in love with God himself. Indra is the name of the lord of heaven. The text tells us, “Ahalya was so fond of Indra that she saw him everywhere. The very thought of him made her face radiant.” This is the essence of Bhakti, and a story of a woman who had incredible devotion towards God and her partner.
The king, however was not so happy with his wife’s love for Indra. The text continues, “The irate king, in an effort to break this relationship, punished them (Indra and Ahalya) in numerous ways. They were immersed in ice-cold water, they were fried in boiling oil, they were tied to the legs of an elephant, they were whipped.”
Ahalya and Indra scoffed at the king, saying to him, “You can punish the body; but you cannot punish the mind nor bring about the least change in it… The mind is unaffected by even boons and curses, even as the firmly established mountain is not moved by the horns of the little beast…”
Even the sage Bharata was persuaded by the king to curse the couple. The couple was unmoved in their devotion towards each other, laughing at the sage that he had squandered his merit on curses.
Even as the curse destroyed the couple’s bodies, they were reborn again and again as animals and birds, and eventually as another human couple again, forever with each other again and again.
This short story illustrates the power of the resolved mind and shows us an example of a powerful yogini who was both filled with yogic level devotion and a being who was highly established in her creative center.


The Story of Shikidvaja and Cudala

 “I am the ruler of the universe. I am not the finite being. I delight in the Self. Hence I am radiant. This I am, I am not, in truth I am nor am I. I am the all, I am naught. Hence I am radiant. I seek not pleasure nor wealth nor poverty nor any other form of existence. I am happy with whatever is attained without effort. Hence I am radiant. I sport with attenuated states of attraction and repulsion with the insights gained in the scriptures. Hence I am radiant. Whatever I see with these eyes and experience with these senses, whatever I behold through my mind – I see nothing but the one Truth which is seen clearly by me within myself.”
    Queen Cudala to King Shikidvaja on attaining enlightenment, Yoga Vasistha 6.1.79

The story of Shikidvaja and Cudala (pronounced Choodala) is one of the longest and greatest stories in the Yoga Vasistha. In my opinion it is the crowning jewel story of the Yoga Vasistha and contains one of its best characters, the great Queen Cudala, an extremely powerful yogini and siddha (master of psychic powers). It is also my favorite story in the book. It was quoted often by Sri Ramana Maharshi. Within this story is given the psychic coding for the technology of Kundalini, in addition to many other great pearls of wisdom.
The basic story goes like this. Shikidvaja and Cudala were noble, just rulers of the kingdom of Malva. They were highly devoted to each other. At some point in their marriage, both of them came to the conclusion that only self-knowledge could overcome worldly sorrows. So they both began the quest of self-knowledge.
The queen began her own personal inquiry, inquiring “Who am I?” Through this intensive process of inquiry, she soon woke up to her essential nature. Upon discovering this, she recognized that Self-knowledge does not entail giving up the worldly life and continued with her duties. When attempting to help Shikidvaja with his own limited understanding, he spurned her, telling her, “You are childish and ignorant my dear and surely you are prattling!... Never mind: enjoy the pleasures that are afforded to you. I shall continue to sport with you; enjoy yourself…”
Quite the pig wasn’t he? Here his loving partner and queen wakes up and he cannot see it for himself, nor could he allow a woman to instruct him in the ways of self-knowledge.
Instead, the king decides at some point to go off to the forest, leave his royal duties and become an ascetic. The queen Cudala questioned him at this point, asking him why it would be necessary to leave his vast responsibilities, as self-knowledge could very easily be found at home, right in the midst of his duties. Unable to hear her, Shikidvaja left the kingdom in the hands of his wife.
Thus begins an 18 year interlude, with Shikidvaja going off to the forest to meditate while Cudala, awake and enlightened staying at home, taking care of all of the duties, and at the same time, learning to cultivate the powers of astral projection so that she could regularly check up on her husband at night without him knowing.
When the 18 years had passed, Cudala saw with her psychic vision that Shikidvaja was ready and decided to pay him a visit. She knew however that he would not accept her teachings even now, so she took the form of a Brahmin boy through her psychic powers and approached him.
Shikidvaja saw at once a radiance from the Brahmin boy and realized that he/she had something to teach him.
There are many wonderful stories within stories that take place at this point, as told by Cudala. One story that she tells is the story of the Cintamani Gem, the wish fulfilling stone:
A man decided one day to seek the wish-fulfilling stone, the Cintamani. At that very moment of deciding to seek it out, he tripped over it. Picking it up he laughed, “what is this bauble” and threw it far away. He then left in search of what he thought the Cintamani to be in his mind…
This story among others demonstrates the idiocy to which people go in search of truth. “Clinging to puddles, they ignore the vast flood around them.”
Such was the way with Shikidvaja, unable to see what was right in front of him. In desperation, he began to declare to Cudala (as the Brahmin boy) that he just hadn’t given up enough yet and so he burned his house down. Cudala laughed and said that now he didn’t have a house to live in. He burned his ritual items. Cudala laughed and asked him what he hoped that would bring. Shikidvaja began to get more frustrated and declared, “I shall burn my body!” Cudala shook her head and declared that now he would no longer have a vehicle to move in. Why destroy the temple?
Shikidvaja finally gave up.
Cudala explained to him that it was only necessary to let go of his self. In other words, to let go of his attachment to form and object, his very mind…
Shikidvaja finally woke up at the prompting by his wife…
The story continues with some very interesting twists, including a very interesting gender bending odyssey wherein Cudala lives as a man during the day and a woman at night, among many other adventures.
The story finally culminates in both of them returning to the kingdom as husband and wife and ruling happily ever after…
This story is important on many levels, beyond just the fact that a powerful yogini is at its center. The story explains in detail, the inner workings of Kundalini, energy, and manifestation. It is also primarily a story of the nature of true dispassion. The kind of dispassion that is displayed more inwardly than outwardly. The Jivanmukti Viveka, a profound Vedantic text on detachment, utilizes much of the teaching from this section of the Yoga Vasistha. The story emphasizes, as do so many of the stories in the Yoga Vasistha, that self-cultivation and self-knowledge do not go hand in hand with exiting life and duty, that one can do the inner work and still function quite well in society.
Queen Cudala is a profound example of a working woman who manages to still find time for yoga, self-inquiry, cultivation of the psychic arts and much more. She manages an entire kingdom while remaining awake fully and caring for and ultimately teaching her idiotic husband (yes, he is kind of idiotic).
This story occurs in the 6th chapter of Yoga Vasistha, the chapter on liberation and it is one of the culminating stories. It is unparalleled in its wisdom and applicability towards modern day practice. Many gems can be unearthed by its study.


The Story of Kali

“The whole universe was reflected on her body as if in a mirror. Even as I was looking they appeared, disappeared, and reappeared. What was that dance? The stellar firmament was revolving and the gods and the demons were also revolving like mosquitoes. The revolving firmament looked like her flowing garment. It was delightful to watch the big trees which were but hairs on her body revolve while she danced. They were ascending and descending between the heaven and the earth as it were.”
                                    Vasistha witnessing Kali Ma’s dance, Yoga Vasistha 6.2.81

At one point in the last section of the book, Vasistha describes to Rama how at one point he had witnessed the destruction of the universe through the dance of Rudra (a form of Siva) and Kali (a very wrathful appearing form of the Goddess).
The description of this dance is very beautiful, quite cosmic and can even give you goose bumps reading it… Rather than relay the story of the full dance here, I want to utilize this story as a springboard into the deeper meaning of male and female as given in the Yoga Vasistha. I will pull a few quotes from section 6.2.83.
“Consciousness is never without some movement within itself. Without this movement it might become ‘unreal’... The plane of consciousness itself is known as Bhairava (or Rudra or Siva). Inseparable and non-different from him is his dynamic energy (Kali or Bhairavi) which is of the nature of the mind (and creation).  Siva (or pure consciousness) is beyond description. It is the dynamic energy of the Lord which executes all of his wishes, as it were and makes them appear as visions. This energy is consciousness (in other words, the consciousness and its energy are inseparable). ‘She’ is a living force… Since this creation-manifestation is natural to the infinite consciousness, she is known as prakriti or nature. Since she is the cause of all things being seen and experienced, she is known as kriya or action….”
The description goes on and is quite poetic and beautiful, explaining the cosmic male and female, in other words the essence behind the primal polarity and how important they are together and individually.
There is of course more to say here but I’ll leave this section for you as the reader to perhaps investigate and explore. I like this section of the book as it goes beyond mere male and female characters and explores the depths of what male and female even mean from certain perspective, at the cosmic level of understanding.

I hope this article has been interesting dear reader. Perhaps it has sparked an interest to explore on your own the amazing text that is the Yoga Vasistha. Perhaps it has revealed a few more strong female yoginis who we may have not known about.

May we all follow the example of the great queen Cudala, and learn to live our life, have our relationships, do our dharma, and still find time for deep self-reflection.

Jai Ma!

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Endings and Beginnings


We hear it often said that when one door closes, another door opens.

I suppose it’s finally time to write again. It’s been so long. There have been many times over the past year when I’ve tried to write and then just ended up discarding page after page. I suppose it wasn’t the time.

Today, strangely is my father’s 75th birthday (I love you Dad, I wish you were still here in your sweet body).

Today also marks the end of an era for me.

This morning was the last early morning immersion class I will be teaching for the near foreseeable future.

Why is this significant? I have been teaching these classes for literally almost 20 years with little to no break. Monday through Friday, for years I’ve gotten up at 4, done my practice and gone in to teach.

I started teaching early morning immersions right here in Seattle at the Yoga Tree (the original one started by Kathryn Payne, major bow to you by the way). That was sometime in 1997 I believe.

I kept teaching monthly up until the time I moved to Portland in 2000 and then continued my early morning immersions there. I taught the early morning classes Monday through Friday all the way through 2009, when I moved with my family to New Mexico.

I taught early mornings in Santa Fe up through 2013 until we again moved back to Seattle, where I picked them up again.

And now we are here in 2016. My early morning students are only a handful of the numbers they once were.

I could blame my low numbers of this past year on the modern state of yoga but I won’t do that. If anything the last few years have been a reflection of me.

I’ve had a hard time since leaving New Mexico. Hell, my life has been difficult since about 2007, in Portland. So many developments in my life…

Moving countless times, divorce, separation from my children, and working through the transition of a very strange gender journey…

For those students that have stuck with me through this crazy ride, I thank you with the deepest gratitude. Sometimes I’ve wondered why the hell you keep coming back for more…. Lol. I know I can be difficult at times. I do think I’ve mellowed out and changed however. Time has tempered me. My transformation has tempered me. So thank you. Thank you so damn much. I would have to say I’ve probably learned a lot more from you than you have from me. I am so filled with gratitude for you.

For those students and friends that got fed up with me and left, I thank you with the deepest gratitude. Why? Because you’ve taught me things, not always immediately perceptible, but sometimes only after years in reflection… I’m not an easy friend. I’m sometimes a person of vast apparent contradiction. I just wanted to let you know that I acknowledge you and am grateful for your lessons. Thank you.

For those students who still aren’t done with me. We are never really done are we? Life always has more to teach us… I’m still here. I’m still teaching a couple times a week. A little more on this at the end of this piece…

A little fill in, for those who have been following me. I haven’t updated my life in some time…

Last year, as some of you know, I changed my name finally. I still haven’t changed it legally, but I hope to soon. After moving out of my apartment last year and moving in with Brandy (my sweet love, kiss kiss), I fell into a deeper depression. A big part of me was still contracted around who I was, where I wanted to go, how I wanted to live.

Sometime around summer of last year I began to shave my body daily and wear more feminine clothes. You might argue that this has nothing to do with actually being female and perhaps you are right. However, I needed these daily rituals and external reminders to help myself be ok on some level with not being male. It was like baby steps. There was something about the ritual of it which helped me as well. All I ever saw before in the mirror was someone who was not me… Gender dysphoria can be so intense and I wonder if those who do not have it can ever truly understand its magnitude.

So my daily rituals and changes began to help with my depression and anxiety. Then I changed my name. At this point, for the first time in so long (we are talking years and years) I began to actually feel like I could see light. My life for so long has been a dark tunnel. Sure I have the yoga, sure I can rest in my essential nature, but the arisings within that eternal space had been filled with such darkness.

So light began to shine. I decided to poke my head into uncharted waters. I started off slowly with herbal hormones, phyto-estrogens. I began to feel even better. There is much to say of this time…

Finally I took the leap off of the cliff which I had been so afraid of, so ashamed of for so long. I got health insurance (thank you Washington State, thank you tax payers, I’m really really grateful…) and I began hormone replacement therapy.

It was a little rocky at first but as of today I feel better than I have felt in so long. So long…

Right around the time I started taking hormones last fall, something sparked in me. I realized that the time had come to change it up. I was tired of making 15 thousand dollars a year. I had been living in poverty for years now. The yoga world has changed. So much…

I realized that if I was to change it up I needed a new career. I had been bending my mind around this for so long.

Then one day it hit me. Back in my early teens and high school years, once upon a time, I used to enjoy computer coding. So I started again. I began to do online courses. I finished some online courses. I applied to an immersive school for computer coding. I got in. I am currently applying to another school (so I have multiple options).

If all goes according to plan and the Goddess continues to shine her blessing, I will start school in the fall. Depending on which school I pick, a few different roads will open up. I feel good about this. Really good… It feels good to know that I will be able to support my children.

What about the yoga? Well, what about it?

I still practice every day. I could tell you that new doors are opening all the time there. The hallway of open doors that appeared to me 5 years ago is still there. I just open them a little more carefully now.

What about teaching?

I will continue to teach a very limited schedule through July of this year. I will most likely take off 6 months to a year of teaching starting in August. From there on out, I cannot say. 

As of right now, I will continue to do call in conference calls every Friday morning at 6:15 am Pacific Time for studies in the Yoga Vasistha. We've been doing that since 2001 and I really don't want to stop. :)

I have ideas and plans still to produce more video. The video that I already did shoot, I plan to make public soon.

Lets just say that I don’t think I’m done with teaching. On the contrary, I think this is just the beginning of a much deeper phase.

There is a lot I cannot see right now. I am going on faith, a deep feeling. But I know that it will all lead to a powerful good place.

I will most likely pick up writing again soon. I actually may finish that book at some point. I will say that when that time comes, the time will be right.

Is this an ending or a beginning? Is there a difference?

Many blessings to you all... My heart is filled with love and gratitude for you.

Maddie

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Personal Update


"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”            Anais Nin

In an effort to overcome depression and to help better work with my gender dysphoria, I am changing my name to Madeleine Rose Huish.

Madeleine after my wonderful aunt Maddie, whom I loved as a child, and Rose as a connection to my firstborn (her middle name) from the city in which she was born, the city of Roses…

For those who didn’t get the memo in the fall of 2013, and the writings which followed over the next 6 months, I am transgender, two-spirit, trans-feminine, genderqueer, genderfluid, pick whichever term you like. Am I woman or man? Does it matter? It does in some sense to me and how I appear to the outer world gives rise to issues of invisibility and incongruity, which affects me. I can’t control how others see me but I can take steps like this, which help me to feel more comfortable in this life.

I prefer female pronouns and Maddie is fine also, and hey it’s fairly close to Matt. I recognize overriding our basic readings on gender can be difficult and don’t want anyone close to me to feel pressure around ‘getting it right’ so don’t worry if the pronouns come out awkward. I’m just stating my preferences and appreciate your understanding and support.   If you have any questions please just ask.

I reserve the right to change my name and preferences again if I decide at some point that I feel differently.

Many thanks to my wonderful loving partner Brandy and all of my great supportive family, friends and students over the past few years.

Much love you all, 

Maddie