Feet spinning beneath me, I skim the streets of San Francisco from destination to destination. I call it Chak Chaka Utkatasana, powerful posture of spinning wheels.

Sitz bones float between two states: anchoring onto the seat & lifting when the terrain gets rough. Hands lightly balancing weight, centering, poised for maneuvers. Breath flows Ujjayi style.

Heart opens forward past handlebars. All senses tuned to the present moment: traffic & people; exhaust & fresh ocean air; earth's unwavering support underneath this most divinely efficient mode of transportation.

Obama '08 - Vote For Hope from MC Yogi on Vimeo.

What kind of presidential candidate evokes such vibrant artistry? (and from a yogi, no less.)

The kind for which I will vote.

This morning, I dreamed vibrant purple light washing down through my aura.

The memory is simply that: an indigo-violet crystalline veil expanding around me. Now, I'm riding those waves into the midday, as they reverberate through conscious thought, inflecting royal harmony into ideas & actions.

Any satvic inspiration, spark, seed can only become manifest with the rajasic fire of action. So the idea to create becomes the action of creation, and eventually the tamasic form created. (Satva, rajas & tamas are the gunas.)

The fountain of creation ever-flows. Each detachment, emptiness, really avails one to new opportunity. Leaps happen when we trust & let go; the quantum leap a sub-atomic example of our universe's proclivity for such non-deterministic behaviors.

In yoga & meditation, we practice release, opening to that from which we emerge. Chant & prayer are tools to entrain the mind when it's too noisy to just be still. As we build the muscle of mental release, the fabric of ourselves changes; a creature of grace & openness, where prosperity & abundance replace fear & longing.

So, the memory of that purple dream echoes, infusing my consciousness with divine appreciation. I'm lucky a pinch of indigo works so well with orange.

The glow of connection.

Sparks of energy swirling, lighting every corner of my body.

Those moments echo with warmth & purity.

Yogi Bhajan, our great spiritual teacher, left his physical body October 6th. "It's not the life that matters, it's the courage that you bring to it."

The past two classes I've attended, another student approached me afterward, finding beauty in our practice. Their comments resonate deeply with me.

In practice, drishti is the key:

We become aware of how our brains only let us see what we want to see—a projection of our own limited ideas. Often our opinions, prejudices, and habits prevent us from seeing unity.

Drishti is a technique for looking for the Divine everywhere—and thus for seeing correctly the world around us. Used in this way, drishti becomes a technique for removing the ignorance that obscures this true vision, a technique that allows us to see God in everything.

Yoga Journal The Eye of the Beholder David Life, p2

Release the attachment to mindful perceptions of things. Allow your primary eye-sense to relax. Whole new states of mind grow from such a fuZZy visual world.

aural » Wonder from the album Between Darkness and Wonder by Lamb

Wandering a path of spiritual expansion, I experience many moments of silent awe, echoed with notions of meaninglessness.

Meaningless inasmuch as how does one use this experience improve the world? From spiritual endeavors, one can realize the Truth, but intelligence and perspiration are required to influence the course of humanity (or even a trip to the grocery store).

The psychic and even physical powers possessed by prophets and seers are merely in the nature of manifestation, an emblem of sovereignty bestowed by nature. In the circumstance, the application of the extremely rare spiritual endowments to the solution of day-to-day problems of human physical existence, for which intellect is the proper instrument, would be no less irrational than the utilization of the quality of heaviness in gold for the purpose of crushing stones with it to provide material for roads. The curative and other powers sometimes exercised by mystics and saints never went beyond the sphere of individual application, and it was left for people of genius who brought vision to the aid of intellect to devise universally efficacious remedies for scourges like smallpox and to make other discoveries in the physical realm, a task which was neither accomplished by nor fell within the province of prophets and visionaries.

"Living with Kundalini", Gopi Krishna, pp327-328

This is the idea that prophets have been misunderstood throughout history. Such saintly humans represent a distant horizon on a path of human evolution, toward which our present intelligence and perspiration just might serve to deliver us.

aural » Dyanthia from the album Datura by Lumin

In a groove. Feeling the love. Yoga.

Our senses discern variations & differences. Human nature as such is based on sensory discernment. We are programmed from millennia of evo to be mENtaL.

Yoga is evo's answer to deprogramming our brain from all that bastardized discernment. Opening, realizing, experiencing our infinite connection, prana, flow, energy, love.

Spread out, take up space, close your eyes, feel gravity, feel your breath, release every thought, BE PRESENT.

Now, do the same thing in Adho Mukha Svanasana.

Oh yeah! I just booked a flight to LA for White Tantric on April 10th. Sweetness.

aural » Remembrance from the album The Magic Dragon by Caia

Just returned from 3HO Winter Solstice. Such an amazing experience. A slideshow is available for those of you who are interested!

So, it's been four months since Solstice, and I just got around to building a new gallery of those photos. Enjoy.

To build it, I hacked Photoshop's "WebContactSheet" template system to generate almost valid XHTML. Adobe hardcoded the table row mark-up, making it impossible to build templates A) without tables and B) as valid XHTML. Grrrrrr Adobe, grrrrrrrr!