Narayana and Practice
Doctors prescribe yoga. Gyms franchise it. Most people come for strength, flexibility, and a little less cortisol—and yoga will deliver all three. That’s fine. That’s the surface.
But yoga is about returning to the collective of all things. Not just a Wilberian unity consciousness—but the nexus, the intersection, the confluence of all things.
Every life that’s ever lived. Every joy. Every sorrow. More than Gibran promised. No longer our own sorrow unmasked, but every sorrow that has ever sorrowed—the most unspeakable of horrors.
But every joy. Every triumph. Every first moment a mother holds her child. Every first puppy adoption. Every accepted proposal. Every kiss goodnight, for every kiss and every night.
Who wants all of this? To be up to one’s ears in the everything of it all. Waterboarded by every memory ever made, and every event that passes by unremembered.
Our union—the yoga—is with all of this. Learning to breathe the blood and water that makes each of us Narayana, when showing his form would spook practitioners.
When I was held by Narayana, I could not stop the feeling of drowning. Even as Narayana sang to me the song of still-aliveness, I could not comprehend. I did not know I was safe.
Poor Narayana. Exalting me with his Form, and I could not exalt back. Narayana must have seen my fear. How sad it must be to show your most majestic, infinite form to the world—and have the world fear it.
No. Fuck that. Not even the world. To show your child. Your students. Your beloved. A form so incomprehensible that it feels like dying. Drowning. My breath would not come, because I was choking on my ignorance.
Narayana showed me the underworld, the overworld, and a glimpse of my tiny planet from such a great height that the rotation of the sun cast three-quarter-world shadows. All night I retched on my own limited capacity to hold a greater view.
Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya.
Swami Swaroopananda gave me a name on purpose. Charmer. Trickster. Pretty boy. And capable of greatness. I was so ignorant to my own nature that the name fell on deaf ears. I am a charmer, a trickster, and a lover. I would bleed my own blood to heal the injustice.
