Adjustments for FB and Twists

Spiritually Transmitted Diseases

10 Spiritually Transmitted Diseases                  August 1, 2010  The Huffington Post
BY  Mariana Caplan, Ph.D.
Author, Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path
1. Fast-Food Spirituality: Mix spirituality with a culture that celebrates speed, multitasking and instant gratification and the result is likely to be fast-food spirituality. Fast-food spirituality is a product of the common and understandable fantasy that relief from the suffering of our human condition can be quick and easy. One thing is clear, however: spiritual transformation cannot be had in a quick fix.
2. Faux Spirituality: Faux spirituality is the tendency to talk, dress and act as we imagine a spiritual person would. It is a kind of imitation spirituality that mimics spiritual realization in the way that leopard-skin fabric imitates the genuine skin of a leopard.
3. Confused Motivations: Although our desire to grow is genuine and pure, it often gets mixed with lesser motivations, including the wish to be loved, the desire to belong, the need to fill our internal emptiness, the belief that the spiritual path will remove our suffering and spiritual ambition, the wish to be special, to be better than, to be "the one."

4. Identifying with Spiritual Experiences: In this disease, the ego identifies with our spiritual experience and takes it as its own, and we begin to believe that we are embodying insights that have arisen within us at certain times. In most cases, it does not last indefinitely, although it tends to endure for longer periods of time in those who believe themselves to be enlightened and/or who function as spiritual teachers.

5. The Spiritualized Ego: This disease occurs when the very structure of the egoic personality becomes deeply embedded with spiritual concepts and ideas. The result is an egoic structure that is "bullet-proof." When the ego becomes spiritualized, we are invulnerable to help, new input, or constructive feedback. We become impenetrable human beings and are stunted in our spiritual growth, all in the name of spirituality.

6. Mass Production of Spiritual Teachers: There are a number of current trendy spiritual traditions that produce people who believe themselves to be at a level of spiritual enlightenment, or mastery, that is far beyond their actual level. This disease functions like a spiritual conveyor belt: put on this glow, get that insight, and -- bam! -- you're enlightened and ready to enlighten others in similar fashion. The problem is not that such teachers instruct but that they represent themselves as having achieved spiritual mastery.

7. Spiritual Pride: Spiritual pride arises when the practitioner, through years of labored effort, has actually attained a certain level of wisdom and uses that attainment to justify shutting down to further experience. A feeling of "spiritual superiority" is another symptom of this spiritually transmitted disease. It manifests as a subtle feeling that "I am better, more wise and above others because I am spiritual."

8. Group Mind: Also described as groupthink, cultic mentality or ashram disease, group mind is an insidious virus that contains many elements of traditional co-dependence. A spiritual group makes subtle and unconscious agreements regarding the correct ways to think, talk, dress, and act. Individuals and groups infected with "group mind" reject individuals, attitudes, and circumstances that do not conform to the often unwritten rules of the group.

9. The Chosen-People Complex: The chosen people complex is not limited to Jews. It is the belief that "Our group is more spiritually evolved, powerful, enlightened and, simply put, better than any other group." There is an important distinction between the recognition that one has found the right path, teacher or community for themselves, and having found The One.

10. The Deadly Virus: "I Have Arrived": This disease is so potent that it has the capacity to be terminal and deadly to our spiritual evolution. This is the belief that "I have arrived" at the final goal of the spiritual path. Our spiritual progress ends at the point where this belief becomes crystallized in our psyche, for the moment we begin to believe that we have reached the end of the path, further growth ceases.

"The essence of love is perception," according to the teachings of Marc Gafni, "Therefore the essence of self love is self perception. You can only fall in love with someone you can see clearly--including yourself. To love is to have eyes to see. It is only when you see yourself clearly that you can begin to love yourself."

It is in the spirit of Marc's teaching that I believe that a critical part of learning discernment on the spiritual path is discovering the pervasive illnesses of ego and self-deception that are in all of us. That is when we need a sense of humor and the support of real spiritual friends. As we face our obstacles to spiritual growth, there are times when it is easy to fall into a sense of despair and self-diminishment and lose our confidence on the path. We must keep the faith, in ourselves and in others, in order to really make a difference in this world.
Adapted from Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path (Sounds True)

Module 2 Dates

January 5, 19;  February 2, 16;  March 2, 16, 30; April 13      February 9th is a Meditation Intensive (optional).

Just let go

She let go. 

Without a thought or a word,

she let go. She let go of the fear.

She let go of the judgments. She

let go of the confluence of

opinions swarming around her

head. She let go of the committee

of indecision within her. She let

go of all the 'right' reasons.

Wholly and completely, without

hesitation or worry, she just let go.

She didn't ask anyone for advice .

She didn't read a book on how to

let go. She didn't search the

scriptures. She just let go. She let

go of all the memories that held

her back. She let go of all the

anxiety that kept her from moving

forward. She let go of the

planning and all of the

calculations about how to 

do it just right.

She didn't promise to let go. She

didn't journal about it. She didn't

write the projected date in her

Day-Timer. She made no public

announcement and put no ad in

the paper. She didn't check the

weather report or read her daily

horoscope. She just let go.

She didn't analyze whether she

should let go. She didn't call her

friends to discuss the matter. She

didn't do a five-step Spiritual

Mind Treatment. She didn't call

the prayer line. She didn't utter

one word. She just let go.

No one was around when it

happened. There was no

applause or congratulations. No

one thanked her or praised her.

No one noticed a thing. Like a

leaf falling from a tree, she just

let go. There was no effort. There

was no struggle. It wasn't good

and it wasn't bad. It was what it

was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let

it all be. A small smile came over

her face. A light breeze blew

through her. And the sun and the

moon shone forevermore.. ♥

~ Reverend Safire Rose

https://www.facebook.com/pages/How-to-Raise-Your-Vibration/204840666199710

The Threat of Yoga

Alan Jones

Dean Emeritus, Grace Cathedral

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The Threat of Yoga

Posted: 10/25/2012 6:34 pm

Yoga is getting a lot of attention lately -- from news of people overdoing it by mistaking it for a competitive sport to objections to its being taught in schools as a means of religious (in this case Hindu) indoctrination.

I attend yoga classes three times a week at The Mindful Body here in San Francisco. The practice keeps me fit and focused and I haven't, as yet, been turned into a Hindu (although I remember Ram Dass confessing that he was more of an Undo than a Hindu). I come away grateful and refreshed, having been in the company of sane teachers and practitioners who are in no way spiritually whacky.

In other parts of the state and country, there is fear that yoga might have a corroding effect on children if classes were to be offered in schools. A group of 60 Southern California parents thinks so. The teaching of yoga is seen as a subversive effort to slip religion into our schools at tax-payers expense (although, in this case, the proposed teaching is privately funded). The question is, "Is yoga a religious practice?" Well, yes and no. "Religion" is an umbrella term for so many things that it becomes almost meaningless. Aldous Huxley pointed out years ago, the word religion, 

"is used to designate things as different from one another as Satanism and satori, as fetish-worship and the enlightenment of a Buddha, as the vast politico-theologico-financial organization known as churches and the intensely private vision of an ecstatic. A Quaker silence is religion, so is Verdi's Requiem. A sense of the blessed All-Rightness of the Universe is a religious experience and so is the sick soul's sense of self-loathing, of despair, of sin, in a world that is the scene of perpetual perishing and inevitable death."

The too easy invocation of the separation of Church and State can be used, not only to inhibit free speech, but also to deprive (in this case) students of ways of being and thinking that can be healthy and healing.

Like the word "religion," yoga can take on many forms. One local yoga studio -- to my mind -- offers little more that calisthenics for the under-30s. Most studios throw in a few Sanskrit words -- an Om Shanti or two, and we often acknowledge each other with a reverential Namaste. Deeply meaningful to some, a way of respectful focusing to others: harmless stuff, I'd say. In fact, I find such kindly and respectful acknowledgements totally compatible with my faith. No doubt there are some who practice yoga who corrupt it with self-centered attitudes. But that's true of all groups of the committed. What disturbs me is the appalling ignorance behind the objections to a healthy practice of yoga that could greatly help those who choose to do so. It's as if the Christian God were some senile benevolence who cannot defend himself. St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out that the truth from whatever source is of the Holy Spirit and there is a deep truth in good yogic practice. 

On quite another issue, a group of high school cheerleaders in Texas won the latest legal skirmish over their display of religious slogans on banners used at football games. A judge agreed with the students that the slogans were an individual expression of private free speech. As was to be expected, "The Freedom From Religion Foundation" got involved in this one. They worry too much and can't see that their movement smells religious too. I want to found "The Freedom from the Freedom From Religion Foundation" in protest to the banishing all religion from the public square in the name of freedom. This banishing has a corroding effect by undermining the bonds of culture without which we are victims of fragmentation and division. We need tradition: that flow of life, which takes history seriously. I find it in the oddest of places. There it is in my yoga classes and recently, while staying with friends in Santa Fe, I attended a sangha -- a monastic Buddhist community. We sat in silence for half an hour in a lovely space and then listened to a meditative talk. It had the unnerving affect on me of a kind of homecoming -- the silence, the bells, the candles, the iconography all bearing witness to holiness, transcendence, even sacramentality, which I miss in most of the churches I attend of whatever denomination. They seem only concerned with the horizontal and the narrowly therapeutic. There's little of the vertical. Being with that Buddhist community revived in me my appreciation of being nurtured by a Christian sensibility.

The controversy over yoga makes me wonder how we're going to express our differences and celebrate what we have in common. Perhaps one way is not only to be prepared to learn from one another but also to acknowledge that the last word hasn't been spoken about the traditions in which we locate ourselves. As a Christian, I like the end of Diarmaid MacCulloch's "Christianity: The First 3000 Years": 

"Original sin is one of the more plausible concepts within the Western Christian package, corresponding all too accurately to everyday human experience. One great encouragement to sin is an absence of wonder. Even those who see the Christian story as just that -- a series of stories -- may find sanity in the experience of wonder: the ability to listen and contemplate. It would be very surprising if this religion, so youthful, yet so varied in its historical experience, had now revealed all its secrets."

One of the side-effects of yogic practice is what G.K. Chesterton called "the sunrise of wonder." And wonders never cease. A friend of mine, an observant Jew, has been practicing yoga for more than 30 years and, he says, "I'm still a good Jewish boy!"

So, we shouldn't worry about teaching yoga in schools. At its best, it deepens what it already there.

 Hello everyone.  It was so good to see you at training yesterday.

I'm posting an interview on Fresh Air.  Terry Gross spoke with an anthropologist who studied evangelical Christians at the Vineyard Church, which is probably not a typical evangelical church.  I found it very intriguing, and it sheds some light on spiritual experiences in general as well as some of the tension that many of us have with various forms of theology.  Since we discussed yoga and religion yesterday, I thought I should share this.  This kind of spiritual experience, having a personal relationship with God, has always seemed strange to me.  However, after listening, I have to admit that there are some parallels with my own experience. 

Keep in mind, also, that you may encounter students who have these kinds of spiritual practices.


http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=165270844&m=165278424

Cheers,
Brad

Adjustments in Standing Poses and Backbends

PRINCIPLES OF ADJUSTING STUDENTS

Students need to feel safe, physically, emotionally and spiritually.  The teacher’s job is to create that environment.  The teacher is the creator and holder of the sacred space of the classroom. 

Touch people with respect, caring and consciousness.  If you can’t do that, don’t touch them.   Use your voice instead to give information.  If you are having a bad day, and your own energy is not good, it is best not to touch them at all.

Don’t touch people with the idea that you are “fixing’ them.  View yourself as enabling them to find the joy of their own yoga--not just the way you think they should do it, or the way you like to do it in your own practice. 

Adjust the most dangerous conditions first.   Look at the base of the pose and go up.

Ask permission to touch.  “May I touch you?”  or establish an agreement with ongoing students.

Look first, then adjust.  Step in with a clear idea of what you are going to do. 

Ask, “Would you be willing to try it this way?”  Then listen to what they say.

Adjust lightly, giving feedback. Then, stabilize the person as you adjust, and don’t let go too quickly.  

In a class, don’t adjust too much.   Give them space to learn.

Don’t try to adjust everyone.

Don’t adjust one person all the time in a class.

Certain personal areas of students’ bodies should never be touched.  Absolute integrity much be maintained here, both in thought and action.  Sometime adjustments have to be done differently with men, if you are a woman teacher, & vice versa.

BASIC CONSIDERATIONS:

What does Yoga mean to you?

Adjusting depends on your assumptions about what Yoga is.

You have to have a positive idea about your concept of Yoga as a teacher.  If your assumption is that you are the authority and need to correct or fix your students, that will bring a certain kind of energy into the room.

If your assumption is that you as the teacher are the enabler so people can find their way of being with Yoga in their life, another kind of energy will be in the room.

Some of my assumptions: (Most of this from Anusara Yoga and Kashmir Shaivism)

          Yoga is about experiencing our greatness

          Yoga teachers mirror to the students their greatness and light

          Adjust for safety first, then for creating more opening, ease,

                   and grace to flow

          Look for balanced action.

          Muscular vs. organic energy

My job as the teacher is to create & hold the sacred and space for the students to learn and grow.

Everyone's phone numbers

Teachertraining2013.blogspot.com.  Site to share  ideas and articles

Teachers phone numbers

Susan Ramani     Hm 744-3366. Cell 644-3944

Donna.    Cell   832-5767

Brad. Cell. tel:765-4706

Sean Govinda. Cell. :(316)518-8972

Jenaya 516-2122

Students' Phone numbers

Stephanie Mankins.   640-1683

Heidi Barker.   706-3600

Jaimie Johannes.   620-290-3787

Bernice Rebein.   620-338-7586

Welcome!

We welcome you with greatest love and respect!  This blog will be a place for us all to share ideas, recipes, and thoughts.  We can upload photos, articles, and handouts for our students.  Enjoy yourselves during this special time.   Also reach out and share the experience.

Love and blessings,
Susan Ramani

Photos from September 22, 2012