In January 2020, Pamela Dyson, a former secretary of Singh Khalsa, known as “Yogi Bhajan” published her memoir. It opens with her description of almost bleeding out on an airplane sitting next to Khalsa, caused by the abortion she’d had months before in India. Khalsa was the father. She wakes up in a London hospital wondering whether to risk telling the staff about the abortion, knowing it would expose Khalsa as a fraud. He towers over her and tells her to pray.
Guru is a Sanskrit term for a "teacher, guide, expert, or master" of certain knowledge or field. A guru is one's spiritual guide, who helps one to discover the same potentialities that the guru has already realized. The word simply means teacher.
When you are ready the Guru will appear
So this morning I answered doorbell and there He was. The Santa... Good morning, Zee - It has been brought to my attention that you have reached the point where you’re ready to receive the teaching and I am here to deliver it. 😏
Makes me sad to read and hear all bullshit about profound experiences of highly evolved yoga teachers and whatnot. Seems like I can't make half an inch of progress around awakening. I got no feelings for all these yoga gurus and their asanas, pranayamas, silence, peace and tranquility. Their message is always - be nice, be quiet, be good.
Why do we want gurus? We want a guru because we are confused and the guru is helpful, he'll point out what truth is. He'll help us to understand, he knows much more about yoga than we do...
If we were clear, we would not go near a teacher. But really, can anyone clear up our confusion? The confusion being the product of our thought process. We have created it. We cannot find truth through anybody else.
When we speak of the Yoga Guru, mention of ‘the feet’ is never far away. You surrender to the feet, you sit at the feet, you give offerings to the feet, you touch the feet, and if you are lucky enough to be graced by them, you ultimately merge with the feet of guru... in the mean time, until that happens watch for your ass.
Sexual predators are in your yoga class
Bikram Choudhury, creator of Bikram Yoga.
K. Pattabhi Jois, founder of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga.
John Friend, creator of Anusara Yoga.
Kausthub Desikachar, grandson of the "father of modern yoga" Krishnamacharya.
Yogi Bhajan — the man who brought Kundalini Yoga to the West.
Amrit Desai, creator of Kripalu Yoga.
Muktananda, founder of Siddha Yoga.and many more... "Almost every yoga tradition” is not an exaggeration.
Three of the global yoga schools inspired by Swami Sivananda’s 1930s mission (one being Sivananda yoga) are now known or alleged to have been headed up by sexual predators.
About sixteen women are on record describing Pattabhi Jois assaulting them under the guise of “adjustments.”
The Iyengar world is struggling about their senior teacher, Manouso Manos, after an internal investigation found a decades-long history of assaults.
My Guru is a God Damn Saint! (pardon the vulgarity)
So who are those yoga teachers that in last 2 decades pop up like mushrooms after rain? Well, in my opinion, they've gotten some glimpse of the transcendental state, a taste of lucidity, and it's like the most extraordinary thing to us.
They came to the West with big aspirations. They set up presentable yoga studios and started teaching. And we become their followers. They proceed to tell us about their experiences in their teacher trainings... It is all about the quality of life, personal happiness, world peace, general health, prosperity, and so on.
The world is full of respected and beloved spiritual and religious teachers. People ask them questions and they provide answers: question and answer, question and answer, on and on, talk and more talk, more like spiritual therapy than spiritual warfare, but all questions, no matter how sincere or heart-felt, are really the same question, Outward?, and all answers, no matter how profound or wise, are really the same answer. Yes.
The subtext of every question is. Am I making progress by asking questions and trying to understand the answers? And the subtext of every answer is. Yes, you are going somewhere while sitting here talking or reading. This is progress Be at peace. You are progressing and well-progressed. That's the obvious lie we want to hear and those who tell it most convincingly are the most respected and revered and sought after.
- Spiritual Warfare, Jed McKenna
We practice yoga so hard but why there is no awakening? Because we're a yogi, convinced that we are going somewhere. Because our guru, spiritual master and adviser tells we are. We picked up our teacher, and we get what we wish for. We want cozy, uninterrupted sleep only dreaming of awakening, and that's what we got.
