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Written by Anodea Judith

Recommended by Sean Corn. I am intrigued by the Chakra System in Yoga, which is a series of 7 energy centers that run along our spine which each have specific psychological, emotional, and physical attributes. This is a thick book, it’s going to take me a while, but it’s really interesting so far. “Seamlessly blending psychology and spirituality the book creates a compelling interpretation of the chakra system and its relevance for Westerners today.”

The universe exists only through a constant dance of consistency and change. Through consistency, consciousness finds meaning; through change it finds stimulation and expansion. To find consistency within change is to embrace the unfolding flow.

Second Chakra – Reclaiming the Shadow
In the second chakra, our work is to reclaim the shadow. The shadow represents repressed instinctual energies that are locked away in the realm of the unconscious. They do not die or cease to function, but they are no longer part of conscious awareness, no longer directly expressed through our conscious activity. Consequently, they are enacted unconsciously, sometimes with great force. We may think we never get angry but enact a passive stubbornness that infuriates others. We may deny our own neediness, but subtly manipulated ourselves into the center of attention.
Keeping the shadow in chains requires a great deal of energy and robs the whole of its grace and power. Furthermore, it doesn’t work. The shadow chases us in our dreams. It sabotages our work and relationships. It energizes compulisive activities. When the shadow is repressed we are cut of from our wholeness and from our ground.

Second Chakra – Either-or Thinking
Feelings are usually ambiguous. To fully embrace our feelings is to embrace that ambiguity. Black-and-white choices are seldom acceptable. Unacceptable choices keep us from making decisions and trap us in paralysis. When we can’t move forward movement is thwarted. When you feel trapped in either-or thinking, take a moment to ask yourself what you feel guilty about. Fuzzy logic is being introduced to the binary logic of computers as these states are usually more accurate and enable better decisions.
We have to develop our ability to feel in order to discern the subtle nuances between polarities. When feelings are numb, we can only discern the obvious differences, the more black and white choices. When there is guilt, we think we have to make clear decisions and are uncomfortable with approximations. As a result, it may be harder to get to the truth, harder to communicate that truth to others, and harder to work through it to a sound decision.
There is, of course, a healthy place for guilt….it is a teacher when it guides us, but a demon when it binds us.

Second Chakra Excess
The person with second chakra excess has an intense need to be connected at all times. There may be an addiction to people and partying, with an inability to be alone, form boundaries, or say no. Being stuck in this chakra keeps us in a state that is trying to find completion through others.
There is a difficulty separating one’s own feelings from those of others (clairsentience).
This may result in social, sexual, and emotional dependencies.
Often this social dependency results from an attempt to block out the intensity of one’s deeper emotions. When we are with others, busily interacting and attending to their needs, we are distracted from our own fears and sadness.
Stimulation of the senses is craved by a system that is excessive in this chakra. In contrast to the deficient who might prefer bland colors, foods, or uniformity in surroundings, the excessive wants constant stimulation, change, excitement. These people have a highly dramatic sense of being alive, which may initially appear as a kind of thriving, yet their stimulation seldom gets channeled into real output, and the person may feel lost or alone when they try to be in a quieter state.
Sexually, the excessive second chakra seems to lead the rest of the system around by its gonads (ha). Often wonderful lovers, they are responsive to the instinctual energy of Eros, and thrive on intimacy, connection, and ego validation they feel in sexual situations. While there is nothing wrong with this in and of itself, it becomes a problem when it wins out over good discrimination in the choice of lovers, creates sexual addiction to the point of neglecting other elements of life, or results in a conquest of lovers rather than real intimacy.
In terms of the pleasure principle, the excessive second chakra may be so oriented toward pleasure that it prevents anything else from being accomplished. When faced with difficulty, the pleasure addict says simply, “It’s too hard. I want to go out and have fun and feel better.” An excessive chakra grabs energy and doesn’t let it pass on to the other chakras. Therefore the energy needed to fuel the will gets grabbed by the need for immediate gratification. If that gratification could eventually be satisfied, it would be fine, but when the cycle becomes addictive, it is never satisfied and always dominates any other urges.

Healing the Second Chakra
There is so much amiss in our cultural attitudes about emotions and sexuality that healing this chakra becomes a monumental task that extends beyond our personal selves. Who has the final word on what healthy sexuality looks like? What is an appropriate level of emotional response? When have we ever completed our emotional work? How do we fully open our sensate channels in a world that is full of assaulting sounds and images? How do we hold healthy and potent sexuality that by nature involves others, when others are wounded in their own sexuality? If there were a touchstone for a healthy second chakra it would be to embrace change without losing one’s core stability.
Healing the second chakra is largely a matter of encouraging the excess (or deficiency) to move toward the center. The basic premise is simple: Where movement is excessive, learn to contain, either by releasing emotions so the pressure is lessened or by learning to tolerate increased sensation and excitement. This requires learning to pay attention to the subtle currents and impulses that flow through the body.
Reinstate the Natural Healing Process
We are biologically equipped with innate instincts for healing and self preservation, and when these instincts get interrupted by trauma or ongoing stress, then our whole foundation is upset, and with it the free flow of energy.
The streaming of energy through the body is the body’s way of restoring balance. Freeing this stream while simultaneously providing a safe container will promote much of the healing. This reestablishes the flow of liberation that allows us to leave constricting patterns and expand. As the liberating flow rises into consciousness, its meaning is integrated into a larger context. This helps bring the manifesting current downward, channeling the emotional energy toward constructive ends.
In healing the second chakra, we always act on behalf of the body’s natural healing process, where movement and emotion are essential. When that movement is restricted, so too is the healing process. If one’s innate reaction to a given situation has been thwarted, then there is a constant tendency to recreate similar situations so as to complete the initial pattern. If the block is severe, similar situations may not allow completion, leaving us in a hopeless cycle of repeating negative traumas without being able to resolve them and move on.

I wonder why I feel the need to keep my Reader’s Journal online. With me taking this online, I am allowing you to read it. I suppose I like being open and honest about who I am. I am typing, not even writing, words other people impressed me with in a place where I can have it all at my fingertips. Roxy’s Best of. I started writing because the act of transcribing the words committed them to memory more. It’s so soothing to read something that strikes you over and over again until it’s part of you. I always tabbed the pages of books I liked in the past, then one day, I realized I wanted all my favorite parts in one place. I am kind of sad that the personality of my handwriting is being replaced by this hand typed version. Farewell to my handwritten Reader’s Journal. It is a new begining. I will now have to find a way to make a printed copy of the journal have just as much personality. I can feel a very cool scrapbook-type-collage-thing. It will be glorious.

Written by Baron Baptiste

I really like his yogic philosophy. I’m not really looking to give myself a 40 day revolution, but I enjoy what he has to say about life. Some good meditations in here as well. I really want to learn to meditate.

The Twelve Laws of Transformation (The list itself doesn’t grab me, it’s his explanation of each one that meant something to me)
1 – Seek the Truth
2 – Be Willing to Come Apart
3 – Step out of Your Comfort Zone
4 – Commit to Growth
5 – Shift Your Vision
6 – Drop What You Know
7 – Relax with What Is
8 – Remove the Rocks
9 – Don’t Rush the Process
10 – Be True to Yourself
11 – Be Still and Know
12 – Understand That the Whole Is the Goal

Step out of Your Comfort Zone
The comfort zone may feel cozy and familiar, but it is like sweet poison, silently killing off our childlike spontaneity and our vitality. When we choose our comfort zone over growth we get stuck or worse, because ultimately we are either awakening and growing or numbing out and spiraling downward. Life is never static-we either grow or we die.

Commit to Growth
Never making a decision is making a decision unto itself. It is a decision to stay in a personal fog, we never have to face the mundane that comes with committing to a path.
Very few of us would ever find ourselves in a situation that doesn’t have at least one secret little exit door, a place where we can sneak through and out if we have to.
In our spiritual practice, we learn that even if every inch of our being wants to run in the opposite direction, we stay.

Equanimity
It is so easy to get reactive when we feel like we aren’t in control. In happens every day, in a thousand small ways (and sometimes big ones). We spill coffee on ourselves on our way to work, we react. We hit a traffic jam, we react. The boss takes his or her mood out on us, we react. Our kids act out, we react. Again and again we get caught in the endless cycle of stress, reactivity, blame.
Equanimity is the art of meeting life as it meets you – calmly, without drama or fuss. This is the way out of frustration. Living this way there is a brightness and a creativity very much like that of a child. It’s our naturalness. You don’t get there by fighting or wrestling for control.
An inner revolution is not about taking control. Control has no real healthy place in our lives, and only robs us of our serenity. We think we change things by taking the bull by the horns. But if you think about it, grabbing the bull by the horns would be a crazy thing to do. We change by finding equanimity and learning to relax right in the middle of conflict-filled moments.
Buddha taught that throughout our lives, we should expect to encounter four specific joys and their opposites: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute. The world conditions us to seek unchanging pleasure, gain, praise, and fame. The problem is that things don’t always work out that way. When we experience pain, loss, blame, and disrepute, we take it personally as if something is deeply wrong with us. Equanimity releases us from unrealistic expectations about what life should be and allows us to stay centered amid the inevitable highs and lows.
When you want to come out of a pose is the moment you come face-to-face with your psychology. When you hit a threshold – and we all have thresholds – it is an opportunity to see yourself clearly and ask the winds of grace to carry you. Remember, they are always there, willing and ready to carry you if you just raise your sails.

So why do we intelligent humans still consume lifeless fast-food cheeseburgers and fries and pour soda down our throats and those of our children? The answer is easy. We are living out of our legacy of distraction. It is easier to distract ourselves and go along with the status quo than to feel the discomfort of growth and change.
We may not realize it, but we are literally involved in biological warfare with ourselves. We use what I call “biological grenades” – drugs, sex, sugar, food – to continually alter our chemistry to avoid coming to peace with ourselves. We shift our moods to create a wall of separation between reality and ourselves, then blame these biological grenades as the problem…

The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.

The Daily Practices
Preparation – Have a good set of habits as a foundation in your life, for when the difficult moments arise.
Compassion
Being Spontaneous
Intimacy
Being Nonreactive
Being Honest with Yourself
Equanimity – Practice this when the winds of obsessive, compulsive, and addictive reactions and behaviors come knocking on your door.
Not Resisting Change
Relationship
Slowing Down
Forgiveness
Coming Clean

Written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I liked One Hundred Years of Solitude and decided to read this because I was in the mood for what I remembered his style to be: depth & reality of characters. Be aware, notice the word love in the title.

After a crazy description of Florentino Ariza making love with Ausencia Santander.
He would say to her: “You treat me as if I were just anybody.” She would roar with the laughter of a free female and say: “Not at all: as if you were nobody.” He was left with the impression that she took away everything with mean spirited greed, and his pride would rebel and he would leave the house determined never to return. But then he would wake for no reason in the middle of the night, and the memory of the self-absorbed love of Ausencia Santander was revealed to him for what it was: a pitfall of happiness that despised and desired at the same time, but from which it was impossible to escape.

The start of the affair of Dr Juneval Urbino & Barbara Lynch
So their love became impossible when the carriage at her door became too conspicuous, and after 3 months it became nothing less than ridiculous. Without time to say anything, Miss Lynch would go to the bedroom as soon as she saw her agitated lover walk in the door. She took the precaution of wearing a full skirt on the days she expected him, a charming skirt from Jamaica with red flowered ruffles, without underwear, nothing in the belief that this convenience was going to help him ward off his fear. But he squandered everything she did to make him happy. He was more concerned with leaving as soon as possible than with achieving pleasure. She was left dangling, barely at the entrance of her tunnel of solitude, while he was already buttoning up again, as exhausted as if he had made absolute love on the dividing line between life and death, when in reality he had accomplished no more than the physical act that is only a part of the feat of love. But he had finished in time: the exact time needed to give an injection during a routine visit. The he returned home ashamed of his weakness, longing for death, cursing himself for the lack of courage that kept him from asking Fermina Daza to pull down his trousers and burn his ass on the brazier.

By the time she had emptied the teapot and he the coffeepot, they had both attempted and then broken off several topics of conversation, not so much because they were really interested in them but in order to avoid others that neither dared to broach. They were both intimidated, they could not understand what they were doing so far from their youth on a terrace with checkerboard tiles in a house that belonged to no one that was still a redolent of cemetery flowers. It was the first time in half a century that they had been so close and had enough time to look at each other with some serenity, and they had seen each other for what they were: two old people, ambushed by death, who had nothing in common except the memory of an ephemeral past that was no longer theirs but belonged to two young people who had vanished and who could have been their grandchildren. She thought that he would at last be convinced of the unreality of his dream, and that this would redeem his insolence.

Captain had an almost maternal affection for the manatees, because they seemed to him like ladies damned by some extravagant love, and he believed the truth of the legend that they were the only females in the animal kingdom that had no mates.

They talked to pass the time. They spoke of themselves, of their divergent lives, of the incredible coincidence of their lying naked in a dark cabin on a stranded boat when reason told them they had time only for death.
…
Florentino Ariza, for his part, suddenly asked himself what he would never have dared to ask himself before: what kind of secret life had she led outside of her marriage? Nothing would have surprised him, because he knew that women are just like men in their secret adventures: the same stratagems, the same sudden inspirations, the same betrayals without remorse. But he was wise not to ask the question.

At last they mode wholesome love of experienced grandparents, as she would keep as her best memory of that lunatic voyage. Contrary to what the Captain and Zenaida supposed, they no longer felt like newlyweds, and even less like belated lovers. It was as if they had leapt over the arduous calvary of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love. They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and phantoms of disillusion: beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.

Written by Bruce Fife

I read this book because I am interested in the body’s ability to heal itself through detoxification. My interest started with my torturous enjoyment of Bikram Yoga in which you practice yoga for 90 minutes in a room heated to about 105 degrees. It hurts so good.

Toxins…everywhere!
The first indication that estrogen-like chemicals could affect men appeared in studies of wild animals. In 1947, ornithologists noticed that eagles in Florida had lost their drive to mate and nest. In the 1960’s, ranch minks that were fed fish from Lake Michigan failed to reproduce. In 1977, female gulls in California were nesting with females…
These effects are not limited to just wildlife. In 1992, Danish researchers announced that human sperm counts worldwide had plunged by 50 percent between 1938 and 1990…
Although some hormone mimicking pesticides, such as DDT which has not been used agriculturally in the US since 1972 and is also banned in many other Western countries, are widely used around the world to spray food crops and are imported for our use, leaving us unprotected.
Wildlife as well as domesticated animals raised for meat and dairy production are exposed to estrogen-like chemicals in the environment. Animals raised commercially for meat are also given estrogens in their feed to promote weight gain. Significant amounts of these chemicals, when digested by animals, are stored in their fatty tissues. When we eat animal fat in meat and milk products, we are consuming these hormone-disrupting chemicals.
Testicular cancer, while relatively rare, is the most common type of cancer among men ages 15 to 35, and its worldwide incidence has increased as much as fourfold since 1940. During this same period – since the introduction of synthetic estrogens into the environment – incidence of undescended testicles in young men has doubled and sperm counts have dropped 50 percent. In addition to diet, researchers have also fingered environmental estrogens as a cause of prostate enlargement, prostrate cancer, and other male reproductive cancers.
In women, these chemicals may cause a relative progesterone deficiency which also contributes to a rising incidence of female reproductive problems, including endometriosis, PMS, infertility, fibroids, and bleeding and difficult menopause…

The Danger of Biomagnification
Contaminants collect in fatty tissues in humans and animals. Biomagnification is a process whereby gradual accumulation and magnification of pollutants build in each animal up the food chain. It’s a pyramid effect. Those animals, including humans, at the top of the food chain can consume a concentration of pollutants 25 million times higher than that which is found in the enviroment…
An analysis by the Pesticides Monitoring Journal determined that grains and root vegetables had the least pesticide contamination. Next came legumes, fruits, and leafy vegetables, in that order. These were followed by fats and oils. Even in plants toxins accumulate greatest in fat cells from which vegetable oils are made. Dairy products contained about 3 times as much pesticide residue as vegetable oils. Meat, fish, and poultry had two and a half times as much contamination as dairy.
Fish has been recommended as a “healthy” alternative to red meat because of its lower saturated fat content and the presence of omega-3 fatty acids – considered essential to good health. Fish, however, is some of the most polluted food you can eat (so sad). In fact, 47 states in the United States currently have fish consumption advisories that warn about eating certain species. They cover 1740 rivers and lakes and large chunks of coastal areas.
Clean fish is still a better choice over other meats. Most fish caught in the US are used to make fish meal for cattle. Thus cattle are even more toxic than fish. Large fish like fresh tuna and swordfish have the highest levels of contaminants. The least dangerous fish to eat are smaller, deep ocean fish that do not live on spawn or near the coast, such as cod, halibut, and pollack, or freshwater fish from high-altitude streams that are not contaminated from industrial or agricultural runoffs or dumping. But even these fish will carry some pollutants.

the apple
One of the best herbs for overall health is the apple. It is rich in vitamins, minerals, and complex carbohydrates and contains protein, fiber, and organic salts and acids. Therapeutically it is a purifier, vitalizer, cleanser, antiseptic, disinfectant, germicide, respiratory stimulant, cardiac stimulant, brain and nerve stimulant, and tonic.

Kindey Detox
The kidney’s are the most important organ in our bodies in maintaining homeostasis, the health of all the organs in our bodies relies on the proper functioning and health of the kidneys. When the kidneys malfunction, the entire body suffers.
Ingredients:
Pure Apple Juice (organic)
Hydrangea Root (liquid extract)
(Optional)
Gravel root (capsule)
Parsley (capsule)
Marshmallow root (capsule)
Uva ursi, aka bearberry (capsule)
Vegetable glycerin (liquid)
Ginger root or cayenne pepper (capsule)
Vitamin B6 (100mg tablet)
Magnesium oxide (capsule)
The apple juice and hydrangea alone will dissolve kidney stones and improve the health of the urinary system. Combining the other ingredients will enhance stone removal and kidney detoxification and health. Use as many as you can find, the more the better.
Combine one cup organic apple juice with 20-30 drops of hydrangea extract 3 times per day. (May add other ingredients 3 x per day as well). Drink plenty of water because the cleanse will help you urinate more frequently.
Take this combination for at least 3 weeks. In that time stones will be dissolved and voided. If you have had a history of kidney infections, stones, or other problems, you should remain on the cleanse for 5 weeks. This should be repeated once or twice a year. During the cleanse refrain from meat, dairy, coffee, black tea, soft drinks, chocolate, rhubarb, and raw spinach as these substances can encourage the formation of stones.

Liver Detox
The liver is the body’s primary detoxification organ and manufacturing plant. It cleans alcohol, drugs, bacterial products, poisons, various waste products, and worn out red blood cells from the body.
Detoxification of the liver releases huge amounts of toxins. Most are flushed out the intestines and out of the body. Some are dumped or absorbed into the bloodstream. This places a heavy burden on the kidneys which will filter most of this debris. The cleanse program described here will purge your liver of “gallstones” and other toxic matter, prmote healing and repair, and stimulate proper liver function. Because the kidneys are put under stress during a liver cleanse, you need to have healthy kidneys to handle the job. For this reason, you must first do the kidney cleanse before the liver cleanse. You should experience no discomfort or ill effect. However, you will frequently be using the bathroom (ewwww).
Liver Flush
(1) Stop eating after 2pm.
(2) 6pm Drink 3/4 cup of water with 1 tbsp Epsom salt.
(3) 8pm Drink 3/4 cup of water with 1 tbsp Epsom salt.
(4) 10pm Drink mixture of 1/2 cup olive oil, juice of one grapefruit along with four L-ornithine capsules. Go immediately to bed.
(5) After 6am the next morning drink 3/4 cup water with 1 tbsp Epsom salt.
(6) Two hours later drink 3/4 cup water with 1 tbsp Epsom salt. Wait another 2 hours before resuming eating.
Quick Liver Flush
Ingredients:
1/2 Fresh lemon
2 grapefruits (or organic pure apple juice)
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cascara sagrada capsules (or other mild herbal laxative)
Take laxative after evening meal. Just before going to bed mix well the juice of lemon, grapefruits, and olive oil (remove pulp). Go to bed immediately. The cleanse is always done at night because the liver is most active between 11pm and 1pm.
There is a more thorough cleanse that should be done at least once.
Quick Liver Flush
This can be done after doing a full liver detox at least once and should not replace a full liver flush.
1/2 fresh lemon
2 grapefruits
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cascara sagrada capsules (or any other herbal laxative)
The laxatives (oh boy) take time to work, so take them after your evening meal but several hours before bedtime. Just before going to bed blend the juice of 1/2 a lemon, 2 grapefruits (apple juice can be used in place of grapefruit, if you prefer), and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Remove pulp. Mix well and drink. Go to bed immediately. The drink is always taken at night because the liver is most active between the hours of 11pm and 1pm. Greater detoxification will occur during these hours.

Ten-Step Detox Plan
You can follow this plan in sequential order to completely detoxify your body and take control of your health.
1. Attitude
2. Diet
3. Exercise
4. Oxygen Cleansing
5. Fasting
6. Heat Therapy
7. Colon Cleansing (no thanks!)
8. Kidney Cleanse
9. Liver Cleanse
10. Herbal Detox

Written by Eckart Tolle

Along the same lines as The Power of Now, this book is about the ego, and how much we let it run wild and take our lives into a negative space. I really can’t type all of my notes to this book, too much. You just have to read it if you’re interested.

The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you. In this way, cleverness may be gained, but wisdom is lost, and so are joy, love, creativity, and aliveness. They are concealed in the still gap between the perception and the interpretation. Of course we have to use words and thoughts. They have their own beauty – but do we need to become imprisoned in them?
Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much. Language consists of five basic sounds produced by the vocal cords. They are the vowels a, e, i, o, u. The other sounds are consonants produced by air pressure. Do you believe some basic sounds could ever explain who you are, the ultimate purpose of the universe, or even what a tree or stone is in it’s depth?

I was still thinking about her (crazy lady rambling incessantly on train) when I was in the men’s room prior to entering the library. As I was washing my hands I thought: I hope I don’t end up like her. The man next to me looked briefly in my direction, and I was suddenly shocked when I realized that i hadn’t just thought those words, but I mumbled them aloud. “Oh my god, I’m already like her,” I thought. Wasn’t my mind as incessantly active as hers? There were only minor differences between us. The predominant underlying emotion behind her thinking seemed to be anger. In my case it was mostly anxiety. She thought out loud. I thought – mostly – in my head. If she was mad then everyone was mad, including myself. There were differences in degree only.

For a moment, I was able to stand back from my own mind and see it from a deeper perspective, as it were. There was a brief shift from thinking to awareness. I was still in the men’s room, but alone now, looking at my face in the mirror. At that moment of detachment from my mind, I laughed out loud. I may have sounded insane, but it was the laughter of sanity, the laughter of the big-bellied Buddha. “Life isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.” That’s what the laughter was saying. But it was only a glimpse, very quickly to be forgotten. I would spend the next 3 years in anxiety and depression, completely identified with my mind. I had to get close to suicide before awareness returned, and then it was much more than a glimpse. I became free of compulsive thinking and ot he false, mind-made I.

The ego tends to equate having with Being. I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison. How you are seen my others turns into how you see yourself.

Those who are identified with their good looks, physical strength, or abilities experience suffering when those attributes fade and disappear, as of course they will, Their very identiy that was based on them is then threatened with collapse. In either case, ugly or beautiful, people derive their identity from the I-thought that they erroneously attach to the mental image or concept of their body, which after all is no more that a physical form that shares the destiny of all forms – impermanence and ultimately decay.

The conceptual “I” cannot survive without the conceptual “other.” The others are most other when I see them as my enemies. At one end of the scale of this unconscious egoic pattern lies the egoic compulsive habit of fault finding and complaining about others. Jesus referred to it when he said ” Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notic the log that is in your own eye?” At the other end of the scale there is physical violence between individuals and warfare between nations. In the bible Jesus’ question remains unanswered, but the answer is, of course: Because when I criticize or condemn another, it makes me feel bigger, superior.

Complaining is one of the ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself. Every complaint is a little story the world makes up so you completely believe in. Whether you complain aloud or only in thought makes no difference. Some egos that perhaps don’t have much else to identify with easily survive on complaining alone. When you are in the grip of such an ego, complaining especially about other people, is habitual and, of course, unconscious, which means you don’t know what you are doing. Applying negative mental labels to people, either ito their face or more commonly when you speak about them to others or even just think about them, is often part of this pattern. Name-calling is the crudest form of such labeling and of the ego’s need to be right and triumph over others: “jerk, bastard, bitch” – all definitive pronouncements that you can’t argue with. On the next level down on the scale of unconsciousness you have shouting and screaming, and not much below that physical violence.

Resentment is the emotion that goes with complaining and the mental labeling of people and addseven more energy to the ego. Resentment means to feel bitter, indignant, aggrieved, or offended. You regret other people’s greed, their dishonesty, their lack of integrity, what they are doing, what they did in the past, what they said, what they failed to do, what they should or shouldn’t have done. The ego loves it. Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it into their identity. Who is doing that? The unconsciousness in you, the ego. Sometimes the “fault” that you perceive in another isn’t even there. It is a total misinterpretation, a projection by a mind conditioned to see enemies and to make itself feel superior. At other times the fault may be there, but by focusing on it, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, you amplify it. And what you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself.

Non Reaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways not only of going beyond the ego in yourself but also of dissolving the collective human ego. But you can only be in a state of non reaction if you can recognize someone’s behavior as coming from the ego, as being an expression of the collective human dysfunction. When you realize it’s not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were. By not reacting to the ego, you will often be able to bring out the sanity in others, which is the unconditioned consciousness as opposed to the conditioned. At times you may have to take practical steps to protect yourself from deeply unconscious people. This you can do without making them into enemies. Your greatest protection is being conscious. Somebody becomes an enemy if you personalize the unconsciousness that is the ego. Non reaction is not weakness but strength. Another word for non reaction is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence.
The ego loves to complain and feel resentful not only about other people but also about situations. What you can do to a person, you can also do to a situation: make it into an enemy. The implication is always: this should not be happening; I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be doing this, I am being treated unfairly. And the ego’s biggest enemy of all, is of course, the present moment, which is to say, life itself.

Complaining is not to be confused with informing someone of a mistake or deficiency so it can be put right. And to refrain from complaining doesn’t necessarily mean putting up with bad quality or behavior. There is no ego in telling the waiter that your soup is cold and needs to be heated up – if you stick to the facts, which are always neutral. “How dare you serve me cold soup”, that’s complaining. There is a “me” here that loves to feel personally offended by the cold soup and is going to make the most of it, a “me that enjoys making someone wrong. The complaining is in service of the ego and not of change. Sometimes it becomes obvious the ego doesn’t really want change so that it can go on complaining.

See if you can catch, that is to say, notice, the voice in your head, perhaps the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is: the voice of the ego, no more than a conditioned mind pattern, a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it. In fact, you are the awareness that is aware of the voice. In the background there is awareness. In the foreground, there is the voice, the thinker. In this way you are becoming free of the ego, free of the unobserved mind. The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old conditioned mind pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist. The old mind-pattern or mental habit may still survive and reoccur for a while because it has the momentum of thousands of years of collective human unconsciousness behind it, but everytime it is recognized, it is weakened.

There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position – a perspective, an opinion, a judgment, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, and so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right. In other words: you need to make others wrong in order to get a stronger sense of who you are. Not only a person, but also a situation can be made wrong through complaining and reactivity, which always implies that “this should not be happening.” Being right places you in a position of imagined moral superiority in relation to the person or situation that is being judged and found wanting. It is that sense of superiority the ego craves and through which it enhances itself.

Ego takes everything personally. Emotion arises, defensiveness, perhaps even agression. Are you defending the truth? No, the truth in any case needs no defense.

All religions are equally false and equally true, depending on how you use them. You can use them in the service of the ego, or you can use them in the service of the Truth. If you believe only your religion is The Truth, you are using it in the service of the ego. Used in such a way, religion becomes ideology and creates and illusory sense of superiority as well as division and conflict between people. In the service of truth, religious teachings represent signposts or maps left behind by awakened humans to assist you spiritual awakening, that is to say, in becoming free of identification with form.

When Jesus said “I am the way and the truth and the life.” They are most direct and powerful pointers to the truth, if understood correctly. If misunderstood, however, they become a great obstacle. Jesus speaks of the innermost I Am. When you are in touch with that dimension within yourself – and being in touch with it is your natural state, not some miraculous achievement – all your actions and relationships will reflect the oneness whi all life that you sense deep within. This is love. Laws, commandments, rites, and regulations are necessary for those who are cut off from who they are, the Truth within. They prevent the worst excesses of the ego, and often they don’t even do that. “Love and do what you will,” said St. Augustine. Words cannot get much closer to the Truth thatn that.

Both sides of the conflict are equally identified with their own perspective, their own “story,”
that is to say, identified with thought. Both are equally incapable of seeing that another perspective, another story, may exist and also be valid.

Here it becomes obvious that the human ego in its collective aspect as “us” against “them” is even more insane that the “me,” the individual ego, although the mechanism is the same. By far the greater part of violence that humans have inflicted on each other is not the work of criminals or the mentally deranged, but of normal, respectable citizens in the service of the collective ego. One can go as far as to say that on this planet “normal” equals insane. What is it that lies at the root of this insanity? Complete identification with thought and emotion, that is to say ego.

omg. i still have 7 journal pages on this book. i am not transcribing it all. needless to say, i dig this kind of psycho-babble.

I like this definition of yoga.

Yoga is truly a mind/body experience of exercise. The mind focuses on the body, the body responds to the mind and the breath bridges the two. Through this conscious process, your whole being becomes integrated.

Joy, bliss, ecstasy – whatever you want to call it – is yoga’s big payoff. No matter who you are, no matter what has happened to you in your life, you have the capacity for joy. Deep inside you, bliss waits for you to find it. With relentless persistence, yoga can help you find that joy and release it.

But make no mistake: It isn’t easy to release your inner delight. A body that is undisciplined and weak saps all your inner energy just to keep it maintained. A mind fraught with chaotic thought is too absorbed on the surface level to delve deep enough to find inner joy. But with a persistent yoga practice, the body becomes strong, controlled, flexible and disciplined. The mind becomes quiet, calm and tranquil. In time, a restless body that once struggled and a mind that regularly wandered without purpose, now both respond with focus and commitment.

I took a private yoga session with Rochelle Sheik at Bikram SLO and it was amazing. Here are the notes she gave me.

Breathing Exercise: Set your mental focus and concentration for class by
listening to your breathing vs. listening to internal dialogue. Like a
light switch, turn the thinking/analyzing frontal lobe part of your brain
off and travel into the back of the brain which is sensing and feeling.
Physically in this pose, good job with a long spine now “tuck your pelvis
under so the tailbone is pointing down and push your hips more forward so
you have a perfectly straight spine.”

Half Moon: same thing with the hips, tuck your pelvis under and suck your
stomach in, practicing 80/20 breathing. You are doing a great job with
alignment and stretching this pose. Final adjustments, squeeze your palms
as much as possible, suck your stomach in and energize your pose.

Backward Bending: Be brave and be smart by supporting yourself and squeezing

your legs, pushing your hips MORE forward while arching your whole spine
back. BREATHE! Coordinate breath and movement for example- inhale chest up

exhale arch back inhale push hips forward exhale look back more.

PadaHastasana Hands to Feet pose: Beautiful! Final adjustments- hips more
forward to the mirron and stretch your spine down, sliding your face down
your shins and getting your top of the head closer and closer to the top of
the feet

Awkward: More belly in on the 1st one-practice seeing your abdominal muscles

contracting while still breathing more into the lungs. 2nd part- Tuck your
pelvis under, suck your stomach in very tight, 3rd part- straight spine like

you are leaning against a supporting back wall, pelvis under and belly in!
This is great for building muscular strength and mental strength
(concentration).

Eagle: A great pose for stretching the joints. Think to yourself
Squeeze your legs and stretch your hips
Squeeze your abs and stretch your spine
Squeeze your arms and stretch your shoulders
More melting into the pose

Standing Head to Knee: Press your foot down into the floor to spread out the

weight evenly vs. pulling the foot up. Less squeezing your hips and MORE
squeezing your quadricep muscle as much as possible as hard as possible like

you are trying to create a cramp on the top of the thigh. GREAT alignment
as you kick out!

Standing Bow: Think directions. CHARGE your upper body FORWARD, KICK your
leg BACK, DROP your body DOWN, KICK your leg UP! Now all at the same time
while stretching your hips instead of clenching them and like I am pulling
your toes up and your fingertips foward. Take up as much space in the room
as possible and most of all BE VERY NICE TO YOURSELF. ENCOURAGING YOURSELF
LIKE A GOOD FRIEND. TELL YOURSELF YOU CAN DO IT. STRONG MIND WILL LEAD YOU

TO A STRONG BODY.

Balancing Stick: Wonderful alignment. Now energize more by stretching
foward and back as much as possible like a natural human tug of war and
BREATHE!

Standing Separate Leg Stretching: Every 1st set touch your forehead to the
floor by spreading your legs out more and more and more until it touches.
Hips more forward like PadaHastasana (4th part half moon) and hips relax and

stretch. Squeeze your quads, stretch your hamstrings, squeeze your biceps
as you pull, stretch your hips, squeeze your abs and stretch your spine!

Triangle: Good! Now master the pose by Everyday you have to TOUCH THE
TOES, TWIST YOUR SPINE AND BREATHE TWICE AS DEEP AND TWICE AS SLOW AS YOU
ARE WHEN YOU FIRST START THE POSE! Feel the opposites- for example: first
side bend your right knee and feel right elbow pressing right knee back,
right knee back and left hip forward, left hip forward and left shoulder
back, left shoulder back and right shoulder forward, right shoulder forward
and right knee back. Got it? Twist and stretch up!

Standing Separate Leg Forehead to Knee: Balance by pressing the metatarsals

(bones of your foot under the toes) DOWN, keep your throat choked the whole
pose (especially as you go into it) and energize by pressing your hands more

against the floor, pressing your forehead more against and knee and sucking
your stomach in very very tight!

Tree: Very good. On days when knee feels ok, slowly gently guide your knee

back to have two shoulders, two hips and two knees all in a straight line,
the same plane. Belly in and stretch up!

Toe Stand: You can do it! Don’t do this pose on days when the knee is
cranky. The key to the pose is focus and concentration. Focus one point
and don’t even blink your eyes as your practice.

Savasana: Inhale: Slow Down (physically and mentally) Exhale: Let go (of
physical tension of reoccuring thoughts)

Wind Removing: Practicing mind body connection, roll weight to opposite side

if right leg is up make sure left shoulder, hip and calf muscle are all on
the floor.

Cobra Series: 80/20 breathing. Keep practicing it! All the postures
themselves are very good. Now master the breathing and concentration (which

are the most important parts)

Fixed Firm: CHEST UP! ok to separate knees on cranky knees days, otherwise
keep them together.

Half Tortise: Never daydream this pose. Always 100% relax and listen to
your breathing. Try to feel your back muscles become as comfortable as
possible. Great job keeping your hips down!

Camel: Focus with your eyes and coordinate breath with movement like in
standing backward bending. Inhale Chest Up, Exhale push hips forward,
inhale chest up, exhale look back and arch back, etc. Beautiful pose.
Breathe!

Rabbit: PULL ON YOUR HEELS AND SUCK YOUR STOMACH IN AND STRETCH WITH LOTS OF

ENERGY! PULL ON YOUR HEELS, PULL YOUR BELLY IN AND STRETCH!

Forehead to Knee: You got it! Next step forehead higher on your knee,
listening to your breathing and feeling your breath as it moves through your

body. With both legs: Pull on your toes and visualize creating more space
between each and every vertebrae in your spine from the coccyx to the neck.

Pull your toes and stretch!

Spine Twist: Imagine belly button to point to back or front wall depending
on leg and twist your spine without clenching hips and back too much.
Breathe and twist and breathe and twist. Good spine stretching up. Exhale
more at the end to deepen the twist.

Kapalbhati: 10x harder exhale and SNAP the belly in. Focus one point in the

mirror. COMPLETE concentration. Detox the lungs and mind completely so you

are fully cleansed for your final relaxation.

Savasana: When you feel like you are ready to go. Stay and take 10+ more
deep breaths. Always!

Hip Opening Series:
Lying on back hold all stretching minimum 30 seconds and up to a couple
minutes
1) Lift straight leg up and To go deeper, bend your elbows and relax your
hips and leg. Switch sides.
2) Wind Removing: Right leg, left leg and both
3) one leg down one leg over for twisting hip stretch. Both shoulders on
floor, look the opposite way your leg is going, and completely surrender
this pose. Stop trying to do it and let your body melt into it. switch
sides
4) Happy Baby Pose: relax your hips more, lengthen your hamstrings, gently
pull down, back flat on floor
5) Bridge: feet close the seat and feet parallel to each other, push your
hips up to the ceiling and feel a stretch on the front of the hips. Don’t
sink, squeeze your glutes and push your hips UP. To come down lift your
heels up and lower vertebrae by vertebrae from the neck down.
6) Place soles of the feet together and let your knees drop open.
Completely relax hip and knee joints as well as the lower back. Deep
breathing
7) Roll over and get into downward dog 1/2 pigeon- completely relax your hips and lower back. Stay for awhile
this one really melting into it and peeling away any resistance. Come up to

dog and switch sides
9) keep left leg bent and bring right leg on top trying to stack the knees
for cow face pose. With knees stacked, fold forward with a long spine
touching stomach to thighs, chest to knee and relax your neck with your head

heavy. Breath into your outer hips and completely relax. Come up slowly,
rock the baby and stretch with your shins stacked and come forward. Take a
couple breaths, go forward one more inch, etc. Switch legs and do cow face,

rock the baby and shins stacked go forward
10) straddle stretch with legs open, slowly fold forward completely relaxing

your leg muscles and hip joints (perfect TV pose)

Book Recommendation List:

Light on Yoga by Iyengar (great authentic description of yoga)
Sivananda Companion Book (great with pictures and descriptions of postures
as well as a good introduction to meditation, a yogic diet, history of yoga,

breathing, alignment, etc.)
Yoga and the Quest for the True Self by Stephen Cope (great for spiritual,
psychological awareness of what happens in a yoga practice and addresses
some of the road blocks people come across and talks about the importance of

balance)
Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga by Deepak Chopra (great book for going deep
into the symbolism of things we practice in yoga and how they relate to our
life/lifestyle- i think of this book a lot)
Journey into Power by Baron Baptiste – (highly recommended for you more than

any of the others so far because he does a great job explaining the do’s and

don’t of a yoga practice and making it very accessible for the curious yoga
student. great book text wise and all the postures from vinyasa are in
there, which I think would be a good supplement to your bikram book and
training).
Anusara Yoga- when you mentioned exploring more spiritual aspects of yoga,
this style came to mind for me to share with you if you haven’t already
heard of it. It’s a beautiful style talking about aligning the body,
aligning with your spirit and God and having a physical goal of softening
your heart in every posture. I believe they have a book out or at your next

yoga conference, check it out!

Blessings Roxy! You are so beautiful and sincere. I wish you all the best
on your yoga path. Please keep in touch!

Written by Malcolm Gladwell

Introspection destroyed people’s ability to solve insight problems.

In earlier discussions, however, I was referring to things that impair our ability to solve problems. Now I’m talking about the loss of a much more fundamental ability, namely the ability to know our own mind. In this case we have a much more specific explanation for why introspections mess up our reactions. It’s that we simply don’t have any way of explaining our feelings about things.

By Tom Robbins

Meet me in Cognito, baby,
In Cognito we’ll have nothing to hide.
Let’s go in Cognito, honey,
And let the world believe we’ve died.

Why would they feel trees but leave men standing? Trees are a damn site more useful that people, and everything in the world knows it except people.
Trees do generate more oxygen.

Written by George Orwell

We present our society as being on of free initiative, individualism, and idealism, when in reality these are mostly words. We are a centralized managerial industrial society, of an essentially bureaucratic nature, motivated by materialism which is only slightly mitigated by truly spiritual or religious concerns.