The next volume, beginning Winter ’72, begins with our first week-long intensive seminar. Some really bizarre group action, both from the guests and the staff.
The volume also includes my trip to Ohio for Grandma’s funeral; she died June 21. 1972.
~*~
Afterward, reading my seminar notes aloud to Swami, Cedar flipped out. “You just kind of pass through my life, but from your reading, I realize I’ve had you completely wrong.”
Now I know why I write: it’s the way I can be me, release my inner voice.
In mid-February, Swami announced she was closing the place, sending us into a tizzy. On the 17th, I recorded: Swami sez I have so much hate. [My unspoken reaction, I’m guessing.] It is necessary energy arising from saturation, frustration; I am different, and anyone who tries to make me like them is desexing me, perverting my love.
On the 22nd, I noted a Binghamton trip, believe it was my first of manicotti (when I wanted pizza) and spending the night with Celeste. Among other things, she said she cannot kiss someone she cannot look in the eyes and know she’s communicating with. (She is so much more than her body, which is where I too often stop communicating.)
In bed, to me: “and we will never marry,” in a positive voice. “Sometimes I think you’re too self-critical.”
I TRY TO POSSESS BECAUSE I AM INSECURE
24 February went to Philadelphia with Swami to sell her diamond wedding ring. “Everybody is so slow (unlike NYC), but dead eyes, no smiles except a fleeting twinge …
In meditation: WE ARE ALL LITTLE FISHES IN A VAST OCEAN OF AIR.
“Truth can be reached only through a comprehension of opposites.”
Swami Sivananda was a fruitcake.
(2 days later: all of us here but Swami are fruitcakes)
Beware of the vegetables.
Ria (and others) said they like my hatha classes “because you give long rests”; tonight I gave a hold-the-position (once) class, and she (and they) said “you were like a drill master.”
25:III:72, after one of our spring break seminars, Swami laid it on me heavy; Levi said he felt apologetic in asking me to do anything – a reading fast, for one thing …
Sometime later, Swami: “Jnana, he’s solid. He doesn’t always look it, when he’s walking around here, looking like he’s not doing anything, but he’s like Levi. Don’t worry about it. Also, he can’t say what he’s thinking. What’s in his head is very beautiful, but it just comes out different. His tongue gets him in trouble. As I said, he’s solid and as much a part of the ashram as the stone. He won’t collapse until the stone does.”
Harmony talked about her being pimped experiences.
Cedar: Can’t you accept the idea that someone might be superior to you?”
“Very difficult.”
Swami: loud, crass, crude: nouveau riche. Wants to be a big shot. And we are her playthings.
A dream of climbing up a glacier (or frozen stream/gorge like Buttermilk Falls / years before Rainier! – one of our party slips and lands far below, not dead: Rainbow, nude, as usual. Johnny Cash comes up behind her, singing …
~*~
To continue:
Since we lowered our rates, the people who used to come and stay free (because “we have no money”) now pay; so now we probably come out about the same as before, except now everybody contributes.
36 people for brunch after everyone had left from a crowded weekend
On my trip to Grandma’s funeral, I slipped off to Quaker Meeting in Yellow Springs: such a high!
The members look weak and shaky, nervous and overly intellectual, almost ineffectual: but also strong in their vibrations!
“The other day, a 7-year-old Quaker came in the house and asked her mother, ‘Do we Quakers believe in God?’ After hemming and hawing a few minutes and saying essentially yes, the mother asked what brought this question on. ‘Oh, my pal at the playground says they don’t believe in God, they believe in revolution”
(Ten minutes or later:) Mention of a vigil at Wright-Pat the previous day and how a mocking bird singing from within the base reminded her of a verse about how out of the mud and mire a song always rises.
Next message: how many woes arise out of either/or thinking. There are so many more alternatives.
And finally: “Our Father! I am grateful for the world the way it is! For all of its riches, and for all of the problems we can apply ourselves to. Let us use our goods and riches for others, to make the best use of them, to share and multiply them. Bless our fellowship and interaction!”
Girl afterward: “I had given up on religion. I had tried everything, including Bahai, then last week I went to Meeting. I feel like I just smoked marijuana.” (Yep!) She thought I was in yoga; the straight back, closed eyes.
Nikki assumed art to be religion … were it so, artists would not be so fucked up, so neurotic and selfish! (Malcolm Frager’s wife told him his work as a pianist is no greater than anyone else’s work, including the janitor; that deflated him, until he saw its wisdom.)
Fay? “Kissin’ F, the Witch Goddess, the Lid … she stood me up the night before I left for IU …
Norman O. Brown: negation begins with the denial of being born, separated from the womb …
Mistake of many: the Good Life depends on things.
Susan Sontag: “Of course, a writer’s journal must not be judged by the standards of a diary. The notebooks of a writer have a very special function; in them he builds up, piece by piece, the identity of a writer to himself. … The journal is where a writer is heroic to himself. In it he exists solely as a perceiving, suffering, struggling being. … Solitariness is the indispensable metaphor of the modern writer’s consciousness.”
Paradox of self-hate: you can’t decide to get rid of it, that leads you to hate yourself for hating yourself. You must accept the self-hate. By loving it and yourself, you no longer hate yourself.
[Incinerated]
~*~
From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.
Jnana's Red Barn 