Ballad of a reluctant Yogi-Part 4

I went back to my practices and committed wholeheartedly. I went deeper. And as grace would have it, the advanced program that I had run away from some years back was scheduled again about the time my 90 days was up. The program offered an experience that enabled a person to experience themselves beyond the wall of the physical self—beyond what we have accumulated in this life. Something told me I had to go. So, I got on a plane, and a bus, and scooted up the hill to the ashram. As soon as I entered the ground, my ego knew something was up. The fear was immense. But maybe I was open enough. Maybe the soil was ripe for expansion. As soon as I walked into the mediation hall, the bottom dropped out for me. I didn’t have a concept of what was “me” and what was not “me” anymore. I entered a completely new dimension of myself. When I accessed this space, there was an explosion of joy and bliss. I didn’t even have to finish the process. It hit me as soon as I walked into the energy charged environment. I was blown wide open.

Coming down the hill into town after the program, I was ecstatic. I took a walk in a park, and with my mind, I had to consciously bring myself back into the form of my own body by defining myself as independent and separate. I would come up to a tree, look at it, and say to myself, “Ok, this is me,” and then touch the tree and say, “This is the tree.” I had to consciously define myself as a separate entity. This went on for a few hours. I visited my family and was overjoyed to see them. I was exploding with energy. When I came home to Colorado, it continued. There was an inner pathway to an energy that I had never experienced before. I could ride my bike for thirty miles at a click and never be tired. I had connected to a dimension of myself that was profound, energy charged, and free of my conditioned thinking and responses. Over the next few weeks, I began to notice the change that had occurred within me. My PTSD was gone. My system had completely reset. I never again woke up in a nauseous state of dread, separation, and fear as I approached the day. A tremendous amount of useless information had been instantly downloaded from my mind, leaving me with a new dimension of intelligence that was beyond accumulated thought and learning. There was a sense of ease and freedom that I had lacked all through my recovery process. I had found the freedom that had been promised in the rooms of AA and ACOA that had never been granted me.

Has my journey continued? YES. I’ve still had to work and recognize my old, subconscious, learned patterns. I’ve come to see that I tend to use the old survival tools that I have been given to incorporate, function, and survive in the world. But the PTSD and trauma response has been removed. I still have to live and be a part of the physical world, but if I maintain my connection and practice, I’m able to have one foot in the dimension of myself beyond what we refer to as name and form. That dimension is always available to me if I continue to evolve and practice. I still experience fear, but it's normal to circumstances. It's not an inherent, forever on alert fear which crippled me in the past. As I have proceeded in the world of recovery and trauma informed care, I really don’t hear anyone talking about this kind of experience. Can we manufacture this kind of experience for all who suffer this ailment of trauma and addictive conditioning? I have not encountered anyone that has revealed this type of experience to me. So, I have looked back on my 17 years of recovery and yoga practice to try and identify some key factors in relationship to what, why, and how it happened. What happened in relation to my experience as a recovering addict, ACOA, trauma survivor, and human being? Yes... human being. What enabled me to experience myself in such a way that my system remembered who it was beyond my conditioned responses to life? What did I recover and why? It's taken some time to identify and pinpoint it in relation to recovery and spiritual lore. I hear a lot of talk in recovery circles about people living with trauma response, but no one really talks about transcending it. But it happened to me... Why?

I never wanted any of this recovery and spiritual nonsense—I was suspicious and reluctant the entire way—but it happened anyway. What follows is a somewhat academic approach to a system of spiritual technology and self-inquiry that gives us an experiential possibility of transcendence. This transcendence is what is referred to as samadhi, self-realization, Christ consciousness, buddha nature, or the access to the dimension of ourselves that lies beyond name and form—beyond what we have accumulated as body, mind, emotion, and experience. I feel it’s the secret of recovery. It’s a combination of contemporary recovery tools and the 5,000-year-old science of experiential spiritual practice, that when incorporated together, expedites the process of recovery and spiritual transcendence. The process is tailored to unclog the pathways of energy in relation to our physical, emotional, and energy bodies, giving us the possibility to experience ourselves in a new dimension of grace. I’m not a yogi in the traditional sense. “ I am.” I’m no different than you. Anonymous through and through. I don’t sit on a pillow in Yogic garb, dispensing philosophy from a cave or temple. I'm not repeating quotations or philosophy out of books beyond my own experience. All the philosophy everyone is quoting doesn’t create an experience. The experience created the philosophy. What is your experience up until this point? Ask yourself.

Really, I’d rather write poetry or songs than to write this book. I’d rather sit at the corner café, musing with the fluttering of birds and passersby, contemplating the push and pull of the sun and moon. I’d rather be eating or fishing. But the result of this process was so profound for me that I feel it's my duty to pass it on, so you might have the possibility of staring into the abyss of a bliss and happiness so deep that it changes the reality of your existence and the world. Grace is always a factor. No one can be successful without grace. It's impossible. I’m living proof. It’s a fact. I didn’t choose this path …. It chose me. It showed up. My imperfect family showed up. Spiritual abuse showed up. The drunkenness showed up. The misery showed up. Shame showed up. Failure showed up. Sorrow showed up. Then sobriety showed up—in spite of myself, and who I thought I was. The terror showed up. The freaking Indian Yogi Guy showed up. It all just showed up. I’m so lucky. The universe conspires always to reveal to us just what needs to be revealed. It’s the definition of perfection, really. We just have to listen. Did I try at every turn to run screaming from the burning building and back to the known and my old self? Yes. I don’t know what kept me crawling back and moving forward. It was probably a deep-seated voice beyond the subconscious that was strong enough to outweigh the fear—the The Secret of Recovery 15 fear that deep down I knew was just a wall blocking me from something greater. To the union that I begin and end with . A place I like to call “Home”. I’ve laid it out because…if you are meant to…you will find it too.

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Success

Success is not success without a willingness to fail. How does success look in this program? For me it was accessing a dimension of myself where i was separate from my past conditioning. That meant not waking up in a ball of fear every morning that was debilitating. I had to have tools and people to help me not succumb the the paralysis it created. I had to separate from my thoughts so I could experience the distinction between who I was and my protection mechanisms.

For everyone the path is different. The one thing that is not different is our approach and the spirit in which we approach our recovery.

WHERE WE BEGIN AND END

We begin where we are, accept ourselves where we are, and how we are, and whatever happens … happens. If we think we know where we are going, we are selling ourselves way short. By thinking we know where we are going, we create a barrier that prevents us from accessing the miracle of the unknown. The Secret of Recovery is a science. In our recovery practices, we perform action. Every action has a reaction. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It’s a law of science that what we resist persists. So, we start our action where we are with no desired destination in mind. We just do. We get rid of our foresight. We do and observe. This requires an openness and a willingness to let action take us wherever it wants us to go. We trust. We get out of the driver’s seat. We do without knowing where it will take us. Only then can transformation happen. We will repeat this affirmation …

Ballad of a Reluctant Yogi-part 3

All this happened within a week. There were participants that had shared about an advanced program that they had taken. When they shared about it, they could not contain themselves. They fell apart with joy and tears. This scared me even more. The only thing scarier than our self-imposed, comfortable prison is the raw joy of experiencing a piece of unbounded freedom. It seems every time the ego butts up against the possibility of its own demise, it spits out its own form of squid ink called fear. That fear blots out the sky and disorients. It clouds the path one must take for one's own good. It’s a tremendous hurdle. For trauma people, it's even worse. The transcendent experience to overcome and reset the conditioned trauma response is almost a traumatic experience in itself. Asking a trauma person to do what is needed to realize himself beyond his or her protection mechanisms is like asking him to go insane.

That’s what it felt like anyway. But that's what is actually needed. I left that week overjoyed and committed. I started doing kriya yoga practices. Things started to move within. But what I thought was going to be a peaceful process was instead tumultuous. The practices started to open me up. Shit was moving and coming up. What was coming up wasn’t so pretty. The self-inquiry element in my AA program gave me something to do with it that was concrete. Slowly, the practices loosened, brought The Secret of Recovery 9 up, and revealed my interior life. My motivations, fears, regrets, loss, shame, guilt, and dishonesty were all revealed and came up for me to deal with. My distorted, protected, and comically put together self started to become unglued, and then I worked it out through the process of the program steps. This took time. Everyone is different. For me, the next few years was a back and forth dance on a train I was unable to get off of. Every time I had tried to exit stage right, the doors would slam shut. And I would find myself crawling back with the realization that there was no other option but to move forward. I did the back and forth dance that grace required for me to transcend my own trauma response. Most of the dance was not pretty. I did my best. I thought AA and therapy would help fix it and restore me to sanity. Although it helped to know where my trauma responses came from, it did not ultimately carry me all the way across the stream. Self-knowledge availed me nothing when it came to trauma. I was trapped in a never-ending cycle of a conditioned response that I had no control over. I could not solve the problem with my knowledge or willpower. I went in and out of my practices and tried to move forward. I’d drop them and start them again.

The inner fear was overwhelming at times, but I carried on. I never let the fear get the best of me. I plowed through it, but I was not free. I’d wake up terrified in the mornings. I’d throw up in trash cans before performances. I’d throw up dealing with my son. The whole public-school system was a huge trigger. I went back to a counselor. She identified the abuse and flaws in my upbringing and then offered me a book on Jesus. I did EMDR. I redoubled my efforts in the program. I tried the advanced program with the little, Indian man, and I was so terrified that I left. I did another yoga program. I would re-up my practices and then quit them altogether. Back and forth I went. Mind you, I never wanted any of this shit—it just happened. I crawled back into AA thinking I was the problem, only to become more depressed. The AA crowd would just look at me like I was doing something wrong. An AA guy’s biggest fear is that the program is not going to work. He hangs on to the program like it’s life or death because it is. But I re-committed myself. I did more inventories, looked at myself and my reactions to things. But my identification as a 100% be all, end all, selfish addict didn’t add up. I was trapped in a bubble that I couldn't explain. I rolled out of bed every morning feeling sick to my stomach and dragging myself through each day. For almost ten years, I did this in recovery. For ten years, the freedom they promised eluded me.

Then the wheels came off, and I crawled into ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) and found out the root of my PTSD and trauma. I did the work. I accumulated an immense amount of knowledge about my predicament. But in the end, self-knowledge still availed me nothing. I was trapped in a conditional response, as a result of my story, that I had no control over. Finally, I had had enough. I was at the end of my rope. In the first yoga sutra, it says simply, “And Now Yoga.” Why? Because we have tried everything else. I had done the yoga kriya practices I had been taught, but I had never done them completely to open and make them a part of my system. If we start a somatic or yoga practice, we must do it once a day for ninety days, or twice a day for 48 days, for it to become a permanent part of our system. What we are doing is balancing our system and paving new energy pathways to access deeper states of consciousness. This breaks down the walls of our cellular protection mechanisms. If we fail to do this, energy just takes the path it once took. It always takes the path of least resistance and goes right back where it came from into the old riverbed in our bodies. In hindsight, I did it all half-assed. I was undisciplined. I always took the easier, softer way. I wasn’t all in. But at this point, I committed myself to a daily Kriya that opened and balanced the system. (Yoga kriya is a combination of asana, pranayama, chanting, and meditation. It takes about 25 minutes to do.) I did not want to do it. But I found myself doing it anyway.

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Ballad of a Reluctant Yogi -part 2

Up to that point, I had tried and experimented lightly with different forms of spirituality in the past. I stole the teachings of Buddha from a Japan-town hotel in San Francisco. I skimmed it a bit. I tried meditating with a candle. I read the Dharma Bums again. I said Hail Mary’s when I heard an ambulance. When I got sober, I was so desperate, I even went back to Catholic mass. I was fine until I got to the professions of faith. I had that same feeling of inner knowing that I had had when I was six. It stuck in my throat. I fought my middle finger. So, in a purple flash of Lenten guilt, I left. After four years, I was still basically lost in a dark night of the soul, so to speak. I was willing. I tried to pray, but later I came to find out I was conditionally incapable of receiving. My trauma protection mechanisms had become too strong. I didn’t know how to pray, as well. I only knew how to beg. My inner soil wasn’t mixed right energetically to receive. I was closed off in an unconditional traumatic protection response that I had no control over. I was stuck in an energy vortex that was constantly folding back on itself and keeping me stuck.

But that night, as the moonlight shone down, and little Jimmy Dickens faded out with a twang, I must admit, in hindsight, there, in that moment, that I asked the universe for something. In that place, under that moonlight, a call went out, and it was heard through some kind of quantum vortex. That request was received somewhere, somehow out in the energy field of the cosmos. Even now, it brings tears to recall it. But at the time, I thought nothing of it. I looked at my watch, cranked up the car, hit the headlights, and weaved my way down the road to the meeting. As I walked into the meeting, a buddy of mine came up to me straight away and said, “Dude, I gotta talk to you. I met this guy, and he is amazing. You have to check him out. It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever experienced.” I paid him no mind and said, “Whatever, man. I gotta get a cuppa joe,” and pushed my way past him toward the pot of shitty AA coffee. I knew I had time for one more cig before the meeting started. If I timed it right, I could take my seat just as they were finishing the annoying AA preamble. But my buddy wouldn’t give up. He followed me outside and kept yakking incessantly about some little, Indian guy that did amazing things. I got my coffee and headed outside with him following me all the way. I lit my smoke and felt that awful vapor hit my lungs. My friend continued by saying that this guy was giving a talk and that I had to come with him.

I hemmed and hawed and said, “Man, I’m really not into it. I have a very busy schedule. Ya know?” Trying to be a rock star took a lot of time. On top of that, I had a two year old, I was working a job, I was broke, I wasn’t feeling very well these days, it had rained that day, the moon was in the second house, I was out of smokes, my family needed me, I needed to get laid, I already had a service commitment, it was daylight savings time—you know, anything—but that. But he persisted until he found my weak spot. And as we all know, Grace always finds the weak spot. He said if I went, he would buy me dinner. I lit up, and I swung around. “Steak?” I said. “Whatever you want,” he said. I said, “You are on,” and we set the date.

A few days later, my buddy picked me up on a dark, rainy night, and we went for steak. He went on and on about how amazing this little, Indian guy was. I tried to change the subject, as really, all I was interested in was the steak and hanging out with another sober guy in the program, but he wouldn’t shut up about it. He was profoundly affected by the guy. I tried yucking it up, yakking about the program, and recounting all my personal recovery woes, but nothing worked. We cleaned our plates and headed down the road to the Unity Church. I was thinking to myself that it would be good to get this over with. My head was full of the week ahead and all the shit I had to do to propel myself into greatness. Walking in, I got the same terrible feeling I always got when I walked into a church. But the crowd was thick and that soon faded. There was some light Indian music playing. The air smelled sweet. It was a fragrance I had not smelled before. I asked a volunteer what incense they were burning. He said they weren’t burning any. There was a chair covered in white cloth with fresh flowers around it. We took our seats. Then a presence The Secret of Recovery 7 seemed to overtake me that was a part of the fragrance itself. Next thing I knew, this little, Indian man was walking down the aisle. People were bowing to him and obviously ecstatic to see him. The whole energy in the room seemed to shift, and as he took his seat, I felt something inside of me shift as well. What proceeded to happen over the next hour, as he quietly spoke and took questions, I cannot really explain. But to put it simply, when the man opened his mouth and started to speak, it was like I had been waiting to hear what he had to say my entire life. I’d never seen or heard anyone speak, laugh, and expound that way. He was an explosion. It was like he was speaking from another dimension entirely—a human dimension.

I was well read. I could explain, pontificate, and process things intellectually. I prided myself on it. But this was beyond that. He glowed in a way I’d never seen a person glow before. His skin was electric. He was ageless. Although he was spotted with gray hair, I would have not been able to even approximate his age. He resonated from the inside out. People were caught in his spellbinding energy and presence. He answered questions with a deep knowing and sense of humor without an ounce of reservation or pause. The whole room would respond with laughter and joy at his responses. He spoke on a wide variety of subjects and took idiotic questions with the most awe-inspiring grace, humility, and humor. I have never seen, heard, or experienced anything or anyone like it—then or since. In his presence, my cynicism faded, and something clicked deep within that I really couldn’t put my finger on. I looked at my friend, and he was smiling ear to ear. He said, “Ya see? I told you.” He was right. I had to admit it... It was amazing. The short of it was that they offered a yoga program that started the next week. I signed up. I went and spent a week with the man. He taught me things and practices which I did over the next ten years that set me on a path that would completely rewire and change me from the inside out. It was beyond knowing. He did things that I could not explain. He moved the energy in the room. He moved the energy inside of me. He would open us up and start singing, and the whole room would start weeping. I would go home at night, and I couldn’t sleep because energy was billowing up my spine. He had a way of opening us up that I could not put together with my own mind. It was beyond the comprehension of my little mind to understand it…yet I could not deny that something was happening. There was a deep fear that bubbled up as well, and I fought the urge to run away from it. In hindsight, I realize that my ego knew the jig was up. When the ego senses this, it responds fiercely.

Yoga and Trauma

Trauma is not a psychological issue it is a physiological issue. We can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it. The mind cannot overcome the response and conditioning it created by itself. It’s impossible. It's an existential problem. So we have to experience ourselves beyond the mind that created the condition. Only then can we understand. We understand by experiencing ourselves beyond the mind. Then we transcend.

When we say trauma is a physiological issue we mean that our experience has accumulated and set up shop in our bodies. It’s lodged itself in the cells of our bodies and minds to protect us from ever experiencing the traumatic event again. We are hot-wired by our experience. Our experience has embedded itself in our cells. The ultimate result is a presence that is not presence at all but a reaction to past stimuli and experience.

In some circles they say our issues are in our tissues.  This is true with trauma. Our issues have actually become a part of our physical person-hood. For people that have experienced trauma it becomes extreme. I used to work in addiction treatment centers and I could tell the trauma people just by the way they stood in the corner or walked across the floor. They held themselves in such a way that the trauma revealed itself in their physical presence. They were stuck in a bubble of response which prevented them from experiencing the beauty and wholeness of the moment.

So if our trauma and past experience has wired our minds and bodies to be in a certain state. How do we transcend that state? 

Trauma therapists the world over are splitting us into many parts. They have folks negotiating and journal with the inner child, angry adolescents, the conscious adult and so on. This just further splits us into parts that keep us divided, distracted, and in our heads.  The problem is that there is only one of us here in the present moment. We don't need to split ourselves further into psychosomatic parts. The psychosomatic parts are the wall itself that the trauma has created. We need to jump this wall so as to experience ourselves in the dimension beyond the parts. This is what’s required for recovery. The parts are just behavioral and emotional responses based on our experience. Which is our trauma. Our trauma's job is to split us into parts to protect us. 

Our job as trauma survivors is to experience the wholeness of our being in the present moment. How do we jump our current wiring, accumulated muck and reaction to our past so we can experience the wholeness of ourselves in the present moment? For trauma folks this moment is not safe.  But this is the job of the trauma survivor. Once we experience ourselves in a complete and utter state of wholeness in the present moment we can clearly see what is true and what is not. And the truth is what sets us free.

So how do we go about this process of experiencing our wholeness?

Yoga Means Union or to Yoke. . . or to Become One With Something. The word “yoga” essentially means, “that which brings you to reality or truth.” Literally, it means “union.” Union means it brings you to the ultimate reality. —Sadhguru 

What we are doing in the yogic process is breaking open our protection mechanisms in a very subtle and beautiful way, so as to experience a dimension of ourselves we have forgotten.  The dimension of ourselves is beyond our trauma response. That dimension is our wholeness...not our parts.  In our program we incorporate practices that enable people to have the potential to open and balance the physiological system in a certain way -so as to experience themselves beyond their current makeup and system. This is beyond the division that the trauma experience itself has created.

Trauma is like the social media of the psychological world. It divides, separates and identifies us so as to protect us from future trauma.  What we don’t want to do is reinforce or re- emphasize that division. We’ve already spent most of our lives living, processing and making decisions in the world through this division. So much so that we don't know who we are anymore. We are just a reaction based on what happened to us in the past. I can journal with my scared inner child all day...But am I my inner child or am I the person that stands before you right now? Am I responsible as the person who stands before you right now or am I responsible as the person I was when I was a child? That person that used to be doesn't even exist anymore. Why am I still carrying him around and letting him make my decisions for me? Why am I reinforcing him by having conversations and journaling with him? Why?... because I’ve forgotten my inherent wholeness.

The yogic process we teach has the ability to crack open the fallacy of our parts so we can experience ourselves in wholeness. The process involves simple breath work and movements that take about 20-25 minutes per day mixed with a self inquiry process that deals with the energy and emotional bodies These are easy and simple to master. Over time we start to see our parts fall away. A new dimension of ourselves is revealed beyond the trauma response. This is our inherent wholeness.

The tools we employ open the energy in the cells and start to release the accumulated trauma self- which is a false self.  When we start to experience ourselves beyond the accumulated self we start to have what is defined as a spiritual experience. We start to realize ourselves beyond what has happened to us. A new self is revealed. This self has been there all along but we could not see it. It was blocked by our trauma response. This is what we are trying to recover. This is what is required to recover.

Jeff Finlins new Book-”The Secret of Recovery-and enlightened guide to transcending the pitfalls of trauma, addiction, co-depedence and life in general is now available on amazon”

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How do we start this recovery dance

So you find yourself here at the beginning. 

What is required? 

What is the first step? 

What can you expect in this recovery process?

Well my first job as a teacher is to put you at ease. The hurdles you have to jump are not that big of a deal. The spiritual process can be a tumultuous one but it's all going to be ok.  It's a  grand adventure. My job is to go through the process with you and let you know where the ground is.  I can do that by sharing my own experience and holding your heart along the way. It's not going to be easy at times and it's going to require a commitment and a devotion to the process.  This process will align your energies in such a way so you can experience life to its fullest. We want as much ease and comfort as is possible. This process has to be a priority in your life. Why? Because every outside situation in our lives is the result of who we are at this moment on the inside. The whole goal of any recovery or spiritual process is to align you with the forces and the flow of the cosmos, so we can experience life to its fullest. So that's what we are going to do.

How do we do that?

We do this by getting rid of all the things that get in the way of that. A great yogi once told me that the recovery I sought was already inside of me. My job was to remove all the muck and conditioning that I’d accumulated so I could experience it directly.  My job in recovery is not to accumulate more information, it's to empty the vessel. It's to lighten the load. Self knowledge we found out avails us nothing anyway. In this process we are going to incorporate and do things that eventually lighten our load so we can walk around happy, joyous and free. That is the promise. This takes a willingness to discover something new.

So the first step is to admit we do not know. We also have to admit that we don’t know where this process is going to take us. Then the next step is we have to get on the train of action and ride. This will enable us to have a new experience of ourselves. The vehicle we ride is simply  a self-inquiry process  mixed with a somatic practices that open and balance our system. This is our discipline. Most people think freedom is doing whatever the hell you want. But freedom is about discipline. This enables us to experience a new dimension of ourselves. 

A second very important element that is required is radical acceptance of who we are and the predicament we find ourselves in. We may have done terrible things, we may have found ourselves in all kinds of sordid places. We might not feel very good about ourselves. But we have to accept where we are as part of our path. We cant be taking these actions of recovery and spirituality to deliver us from all our evils. We have to start where we are with a clean slate. This can be difficult. Most of us crawled into recovery in a really bad place. But we still have to accept and love ourselves for who we are right now. We go from there.

We start with a program of action that embraces our everyday activities and then investigate how we respond to this thing called life

Our ultimate goal is to realize ourselves as a piece of life.

So put your mind at ease and we will go on a great adventure.

The adventure is recovery

Bocephitas

Im so happy that Anti Heroine chic published this funny little essay I wrote on emotional support...I hope you all enjoy—-Jeff

I was in the airport recently and a waifish looking millennial was walking gingerly toward concourse B. She had a dog with her and I struck up a conversation about the pooch. She was obviously not blind. I asked her what the dog’s name was. She said, Jako and then said, He’s my emotional support animal. I said, “What is an emotional support animal? She said she had a lot of anxiety in her life and her animal was an emotional support for her. They allowed her to take the animal almost anywhere so she could be emotionally supported. I asked her if this was a “thing”? She said yes, that lots of her friends with anxiety had emotional support animals to help them navigate the pitfalls of this emotionally challenging environment we live in today.
 
I walked away a bit flabbergasted. I grew up in the seventies. If I needed emotional support, or even gave a hint of it, I might have been beaten beyond recognition. I wouldn’t have been beaten at home but certainly shamed. They would say something like “Who the hell do you think you are the queen of Sheba? And then made fun of my general lack of character and weakness. They would have laughed me out of the living room. In some ways that reaction was a good thing. In some ways it was bad. The bad part was that we eventually wore black leather and became drunk and disgusting. The good part was that, we eventually, learned that emotions were limited and not permanent. You realized you could live through almost anything.
 
Back in those days, if you really had issues, they would put you on lithium. There was no in between. Schizophrenia was schizophrenia back then. There was no mild bipolar shit. If you were mildly bipolar it just meant you were an artist or a musician, painter or poet. You felt more deeply and were a little kooky. There was no diagnosis for that. You didn’t get a dog to go with that everywhere you went. If you had good parents, they accepted that in you. If you had bad parents, they tried to get you to be something else.  Most had bad parents. Now they want to medicate you if you get a little blue when it rains. They medicate little children because they don’t act like well-adjusted adults. They put children on trial as adults. Well, they are not adults. They are children. And if you treat them like adults when they are children, then part of them will still remain a child as an adult. It’s kind of a crazy paradoxical thing.
 
Now, if you have trouble holding a job or can’t pass algebra two, they give you a psychological diagnosis. Who the fuck can pass algebra 2? No one I know? Certainly not me then or now. Cell phones and social media don’t help. None of our kids these days are grounded in the earth. So, they are wracked with anxiety.
 
There is no in between anymore. Only black and white. You are either in or out- on the bus or off the bus. But an emotional support animal? Seems to me these are the folks the dinosaurs would have eaten. At some point in the 50’s we toughened the hell up and the dinosaurs went extinct. Right? Either that or they drank themselves to death because they didn’t have emotional support animals.
 
Survival is still a part of the picture. In places where survival is imminent people have to get their shit together. That’s why I like going to Wyoming in the summers to visit my people there. Up there, survival lives a little closer to the bone. There’s not much work, its 20 below in the winter and the wind is howling at 50 miles an hour. You have to figure it out quickly up there or you’ll starve or freeze to death. There’s no fat on the land to hustle for. I always notice people are a little more emotionally stable in these environments. They are more direct and resourceful. They are little more awake. They have to know about a lot of things in order to survive-like being handy with a hammer, a saw, an ax or money. There’s less class hierarchy up there. A plumber is just as valuable as a doctor. Sometimes more so. There’s not as much time to dilly dally around emotionally. Even the artists I know up there are tough, direct working people. Emotions really don’t serve survival very well.
 
I broached this emotional support subject with my best friend. He’s a Montana cat. He grew up in the desolate shit show of a dysfunctional family in the wilds of nowhere. He once got in a drunken fistfight with Evel Knievel in his underwear. I’ll say no more. That’s the kind of guy he was. Now he is a sensitive loving man.
 
My friend was a bit flabbergasted about the emotional support critter as well. I said, “if we would have had emotional support animals back in the day, in light of all the abuse, shame and drunkenness of our youth, what would this creature look like? What would it encompass?”
We went straight in.
 
We decided our emotional support animal would have been an angry, ex circus chimp named Bocephus. He would probably sport a backwards baseball hat and chain smoke Pall Malls. He would probably be prone to grabbing people inappropriately and throwing his feces at you through the bars of his shattered soul- just for a good laugh. He would probably do backwards flips for more cigarettes, beer or bananas and flip you off at any sign of emotional vulnerability. He would touch himself inappropriately in public and bullfighting would be his favorite sport. I found his long-lost brother in Mexico this week (in the picture above). His Mexican counterpart would be named Bocephitas.
 
Of course, all this emotional bankruptcy comes from having to walk around with a starving heart. Sometimes there is nowhere to turn to feed a starving heart in this world. Especially in America. We are living in dark times. But what I’ve found is the heart flowers in the soul beyond emotion. You just have to sit in said emotion, without resistance and support, till the grief of it all exhausts itself as a solution. It’s the only way to transcend it. It’s the only way to see emotion for what it is. “Ya got to sit in the ugly spot and not resist it”,  as my beautiful Montana buddy always says.
 
There, Bocephus and his ugly Mexican brother Bocephitas die a strung-out lonely death. Out of their decaying corpses sprouts the flower of love incarnate…Love supreme…Suprema amor.
 
I love u all

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Born in Cleveland Ohio, Songwriter and writer Jeff Finlin was born the grandson of Irish railroad workers (who seemed to be in the habit of leaping from trains.) Having released 12 records to critical acclaim around the world. His Song “Sugar Blue” was featured in The Cameron Crowe classic film-----“Elizabethtown.”

The Chicago Sun Times writes of Jeff Finlin--- “Finlin writes with the minimalist grit of Sam Shepard and Raymond Carver. Tune in for an elusive magic.”
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Jeff has written two books of poetry and prose and a book on yoga and recovery.  His latest book is The Secret of Recovery. He has written extensively for the East Nashville Magazine and been published nationally in American Songwriter, Elephant Journal, Huffington Post as well as the  other online rags. Visit him at https://www.jefffinlin.com/

Trauma, Yoga and Spiritual Recovery

Listen to the enlightening Podcast. Jeff talks with Dr. Craig Heacock about Trauma, Yoga and the profound possibilities of spiritual recovery.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trauma-yoga-and-spiritual-recovery/id1469826718?i=1000489783248

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1rs42DSDYOhNiICHArT4cy?si=HyXWsv9hTUy8THv_VI7bjw

The 5 levels of being—part 2

THE ENERGY BODY—

PRANAMAYA KOSHA

Pranamaya means composed of prana or energy—the vital principle, the force that vitalizes and holds together the body and the mind. It's invisible and can only be measured through physical response. It pervades our whole organism; it's one physical manifestation is the breath. As long as this vital principle (the breath) exists in the organisms, life continues. This layer has a power all its own. It connects and holds our physical form together. Let's go back to the exercise where we hold our breath to try and kill ourselves. The breath connects our physical being to the forces that lay in and outside the body. This is why the breath is used in so many ways to help us realize the connection between the physical and non-physical part of ourselves. We need the breath and exchange of the breath to maintain our physical existence. Once the breath stops, the physical body just falls away. It cannot be maintained. The breath is impermanent. When we identify ourselves in this layer, we say— I am the breath.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DSVHQRF/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3

The Five layers of being part 1

In Yogic lore, there is something called the Koshas that identify the five levels, layers, or sheaths that make up a human being. The layers are: The Food Body (Annamaya Kosha) 41 The Energy Body (Pranamaya Kosha) The Emotional Body (Manomaya Kosha) The Intellectual Body (Vijnanamaya Kosha) The Bliss Body (Anandamaya Kosha) Let's take a look at how we experience ourselves in relation to the five levels of being that make up our existence as humans.

THE FOOD BODY—ANNAMAYA KOSHA

The Food Body is what we refer to as our Earth element. It’s the part of ourselves that is made up of Earth. When we are conceived in the womb, the physical aspect of us is just a tiny cell. The Earth feeds our physical being, and it grows. We are fed through our mothers in the womb and our cell multiplies. We become bigger in size and form. When we are born, we eat food that comes from the sun, and we grow in physical form. Our bodies change and form as a result of what we eat. The food body is the sheath or layer of ourselves that is made up of food. This is the sheath of the physical self, named from the fact that it is nourished by food. Living through this layer, humans identify themselves with a mass of skin, flesh, fat, and bones. The body is an accumulation of the physical world. When we identify ourselves with this kosha, we say—I am the body. This dimension of ourselves is accumulated and impermanent.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DSVHQRF/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3

Our Bottom

Our Bottom

The beauty of our bottom is that we have been surrendered. Surrender is not something we do. It’s something that naturally happens when we are not. Our bottom shows us this in clarity and color. The moment of our bottom is an enlightened moment. In a flash, we realize we have exhausted the possibility of the ego and intellect (the conscious mind) to solve our core problem. Exhausting the possibility of the conscious mind we are naturally surrendered. Only then, do we have complete and unfettered access to the subconscious mind.

There our journey begins.

The Secret of Recovery is now available!

The Secret of Recovery-an enlightened guide to transcending the pitfalls of trauma, addiction, codependency and life in general

is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DSVHQRF/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3