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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