23 April 2004: Indra's Net

This past September, I started attending the yoga classes at the Y where I teach aikido. They’ve got a huge yoga program there.

Mendhi quickly became one of my favorite yoga teachers. She and I recognized one another as kindred spirits. A couple of months after I started attending her yoga classes, she and her husband started attending my aikido classes, and have continued to do so as often as their childcare situation allows (they’ve got a charming youngster, whom I met when they brought him to Foxfire’s yudansha test celebration).

One of the many peculiar aftereffects of the Initiations lab was that it left me with a strong sense that I ought to learn to stand on my head.

Five weeks ago, in my Psychology class, we were studying learning, conditioning, motivation, and behavior modification strategies. The teacher assigned us to write up a detailed plan for how we might use some of the strategies we’d studied to modify our own behavior in some way. She also challenged us to actually put the plan into effect.

I wrote up a plan for teaching myself to stand on my head, and proceeded to put it into effect. Part of my plan was to work on headstands for a few minutes immediately after each yoga class I attended, since I’d be well-warmed-up and there would be people around who might be able to give me pointers, and since linking the habit I wanted to develop (practicing headstands) to an already-established habit (attending yoga classes) was one of the strategies we’d studied in the Psychology class.

Four weeks ago, I handed in the homework assignment, and got an A.

Three weeks ago, I was able to do an unsupported headstand. I have since maintained the habit of standing on my head for a minute or so after most yoga classes.

Two weeks ago, on Saturday the 10th, I went to Mendhi’s Saturday yoga class. At the end of class, Mendhi encouraged her students to attend my second Aiki Dynamics worskshop, which was scheduled for the following Saturday (this past Saturday, the 17th). After class, I stayed to stand on my head. I was approached by a tall woman in her forties, who told me she hoped to be at the Aiki Dynamics workshop but might be too busy, and asked whether I was planning on doing more of them. The woman had an aura about her that made a strong impression on me, but which I was unable to place.

This past Saturday, the 17th, I taught my second Aiki Dynamics workshop at the Y, as scheduled. It went well. The tall woman didn’t make it.

On Monday the 19th, I went to Mendhi’s Monday morning yoga class. After class, I stayed to stand on my head. The tall woman approached me to ask how the Aiki Dynamics class had gone and to say that she was sorry she hadn’t been able to make it. Before I could reply, Mendhi had appeared beside us and was saying, “Oh, have you two met already? I’ve been meaning to introduce you...”

The tall woman was Mama Rasa, owner of Studio Rasa, a new yoga studio in West Berkeley that Mendhi has been teaching at. We talked for an hour. After five minutes, I figured out what it was about her that had made such a strong impression on me: she was in the Groove. She had moved into one of those phases in which everything is perfectly aligned, in which the will of God is absolutely clear, in which life is a symphony of synchronicity.

Two days later, Old Cutter John would remark on the same phenomenon in his own journal: “All day yesterday, and so far today, I've tracked the will of God perfectly and effortlessly.”

Like any other Tiphareth-based experiences,this state cannot be explained to those who haven’t experienced it, and doesn’t need to be explained to those who have.

Of course, for those of us who do experience the phenomenon, it’s useful to have terms by which to talk about it among ourselves.

I like “in the Groove,” which I picked up from a Blues Traveller song. This week, though, a new term for it has been popping up in my head... and the way things are going, I’m not about to ignore such a thing.

The term is “walking Indra’s Net.”

Indra’s Net is the traditional Hindu metaphor for the Machinery of the Universe, the Grand Design, the warp and woof and wondrous weblike workings of God’s will.

Walking Indra’s Net.

I’ve found myself walking Indra’s Net often lately, as you know if you’ve been following this journal.

Mama Rasa had been walking Indra’s Net for months. A year ago, she hadn’t even had the slightest intention of opening a yoga studio. It had just... happened.

Mama Rasa’s dance along Indra’s Net had just intersected mine. By the end of our hour of conversation, we’d decided that I was going to be teaching aikido at Studio Rasa.

On Tuesday night, I went to a dance class at the Y, and Mama Rasa was there. She and I had both been attending that particular teacher’s dance classes for months (in fact, the teacher was also teaching at Studio Rasa, and had also been very helpful in helping me promote the Aiki Dynamics workshops) but we’d somehow never both been there on the same night, or at least never noticed each other. I told Mama Rasa that based on a quick email poll of my Y students, the Monday 5:30-7 class time she had offered me seemed to be workable. She offered me an additional weekly class, in the same time slot on Wednesdays. I accepted it on the spot. She asked me when I wanted to start. I suggested May 3rd (one week from this Monday and two weeks after our first conversation about the class). She said that was fine.

I announced it to my Y students on Wednesday.

Early today, I went to Studio Rasa for the first time. It’s beautiful. a perfect space for yoga, and for the sort of vibe I prefer my aikido classes to have. I participated in a yoga class taught by Mendhi, which was photographed by a very pleasant and talented photographer (also a yoga student, who I’ve encountered at the Y). After the class, a bunch of us stuck around for an extensive photo shoot, to get images for brochures and for the Studio Rasa website (I’ll post a link to it in a future entry, after the photos are up – there’s nothing there to see right now). I ended up being there all afternoon. It’s a really nice space.

God, of course, couldn’t resist showing off Her artistry further, so it turned out that Studio Rasa’s business manager/admin guy was Jah Rule, Abindigo’s housemate, who had seen Orphans of Delirium and been totally blown away by it, and whom I had met at Abindigo’s house when Salamander and I had hung out there the day before the final Orphans performance.

After much yoga and photo shooting and hanging out, I walked back home, stopping at Chaat Cafe, a local Indian restaurant, because I was famished. The last time I had been at Chaat Cafe, there had been a flyer up on their bulletin board for the showing of Hysteria that I went to last Thursday. I noticed that it had been replaced by a flyer for someone’s massage therapy practice, and then did a double-take: it was a flyer for Salamander’s new massage therapy practice.

I read the flyer, and when I turned around, Abindigo was standing behind me.

“Would you like to join us?” she asked.

“Us” proved to be her and her other housemate, whom I’d met the same day I met Jah Rule.

“I just saw your other housemate,” I said.

“Well, you just missed Sherpa,” Abindigo said. “He was on his way out when we walked in a few minutes ago.”